When it comes to facilitating the design of your software, you're going to be working with various architects and test teams in an organization.

There are five fundamental design techniques you need to have in your manager's toolkit, which will help you communicate with and listen to your users and other design stakeholders. These five techniques are the most commonly used and trusted industry best practices to model and illustrate what your software will look like and what it will feel like to users:

• Storyboards
• Use cases
• Wireframes
• Mockups
• Prototypes

Storyboards are exactly what they sound like, a series of drawings or illustrations with a narrative showing what each step taken by a user and the resulting behavior of your software. They can be as elementary or elaborate as you make them. Their key benefits and advantages are simplicity and clarity.

Use cases...