Building software is not as easy task as before. Nowadays software become more complex. The complexity comes from its usage scenario or its technical aspect. DevOps team needs to do any developments and operations tasks efficiently so that unnecessary step can be excluded in the process. One way to find out what content is needed in an application is to use an information architecture. then is information architecture useful at the stage of software development? This article will discuss about it.
What is Information Architecture?
There are so many definitions of information architecture, but you can define information architecture is
"what" content that you need to display and to communicate so that people can understand and use your application
Information architecture is just like any other architecture. It has entity and relation. You can visit the fundamental aspect of information architecture here
How to build Information Architecture?
You can build information architecture with many ways. But a good reading for this step is here. The common way to create information architecture is card sorting. Card sorting is similar with user story creation, Kanban board, or planning game. So, people from Agile process wont have issue to do that.
What form of Information Architecture?
There are so many forms of information architecture.
- Brainstorming diagram (Mind map). Recommended for general application
- Cause and effect diagram (Fish bone). Recommended for Ai application like chatbot, embedded.
- Site map. Recommended for Website
- Entity Relationship Diagram. Recommended for data processing application
Based on the forms, we can say there is still silver bullet to build information architecture.
Do we need information architecture?
This is author opinion, if you feel your user story or use case is not enough you can build information architecture. How to identify that our user story / use case not enough?
- Complexity of the content. User story and use case doesn't discuss the content.
- Complexity of the relation of entities. Although database tells about the relationship between table, it doesn't discuss the real relation between object
Step after information architecture?
You can do database modelling or user interface modelling
Have a good / bad experience in information architecture? Lets discuss!