Critical appraisal is the done at the end of designing phase, the main purpose of this task is to do a final check between proposed solution and physical design, this task along with solution walkthrough gives the stakeholder and the team a common understanding and also the opportunity to identify any missing requirement and most importantly to validate the proposed solution.
The following people (or group) should be attending this meetings
- Business Analysts
- Stakeholders and SMEs
- Business Users
- Development Team
Some of the advantages of this process are
- Confirming the Business Requirement.
- Confirming the physical design.
- Improve stakeholder’s confidence in the project.
- Identify any people or organization problems.
- Identify any function or data problems.
- Identify any performance or workflow issues.
The main topic in this process is to match logical and physical design, if there are data models created, make sure the domain is complete, there are no duplication or redundant data, identify any relationship problems.
The final question BA should ask the team is ‘Does the proposed system meet the organization goals?’. Always remember it is easier to change the design and solution on paper than to change few hundred lines of code.
