Using the 5Ws Framework: Where

Written By Roger Mitchell

Let’s take a look at how to use the “where” of the 5Ws framework to define problems and gather requirements for a digital transformation initiative.

Where are your people?

That’s not a snarky question about low adoption or an existential life question about finding your community.

Geographically, are they in the Global North / developed markets or the Global South / emerging markets? Even lower than that, where are they located within specific countries?

There are regulations around data residency and privacy that span multiple countries (e.g. GDPR from the European Union) to specific states (e.g. CCPA from California).

Within a geographic location, from where are people working?

  • An office or coworking space

  • Working from home

  • A hybrid work arrangement

  • Working from remote locations (e.g. technicians at customer sites)

Some business processes involve physical space, like printing and packing customer orders. In those cases, where are the physical resources that a person needs to do their work?

Each of the locations above will have vastly different networking capabilities. Corporate locations often have dedicated bandwidth, while residential bandwidth is pooled amongst your neighbors; remote locations might have little to no connectivity.

Where are stakeholders interacting with your business processes?

For devices, there are many different options, each of which has different performance ranges:

  • Servers and workstations (i.e. super powerful desktops)

  • Desktops and laptops

  • Virtualized / remote desktop environments

  • 1 or more monitors

  • Tablets & phones

With each device, where are those interactions expected to occur?

  • Keyboard with a mouse or trackpad

  • Barcode scanners (a type of keyboard)

  • Touchscreens

  • XR (augmented reality / mixed reality / virtual reality)

  • Paper

Within the device, where are specific interactions expected to occur?

  • A standalone app

  • A component within an existing app

  • A modal window that appears

TLDR: Ask where questions at both macro and micro scales to discover regulatory, functional, and technical constraints.

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