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Tuesday, 21 February 2012 10:37

BACoE, Competencies, Best Practices? What Comes First?

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Where should an organization focus first? Building a BACoE, understanding the state of business analysis practices as an organization, or evaluating BA competencies? What is the right approach to all of this?

I have worked with a lot of organizations on these efforts and typically advise a handful of organizations at any given time on these topics. I have seen great success with any of the three approaches and even with all of them at once. In reflecting on what really makes the efforts successful, the following themes come to mind:

The History

Has creating a BACoE or assessing competencies or practices been done before in the organization? Has any other type of CoE or assessment been part of the organization in the past or present (PM, QA, Dev, etc.)?

Looking at the history of these types of initiatives can provide a great amount of insight into how the effort may be perceived by stakeholders in the organization. Understanding these perceptions will be crucial to developing support for the CoE. Successful CoE efforts look back at lessons learned and successes of similar efforts in the organizations to leverage the successes and manage perceptions and expectations of past challenges.

The Motivation

Who is motivated to make the CoE and/or assessments successful and why?

Where the motivation is coming from has a strong influence on the approach an organization needs to take. This can determine some of the goals and objectives and ultimately the priorities of the organization. The motivation could come from the top or from a passionate team and/or manager looking to improve a team and with its success influence the broader organization.

The Goals

What goals and objectives is the organization looking to achieve in creating the BACoE or doing as assessment?

Each organization has an interest in these efforts for similar high-level reasons, but typically more specific goals are in play. Putting on our BA hats to truly understand the drivers behind the goals is critical. I find that many teams think they have their goals defined but need another level of detail defined to effectively align to a higher-level strategy and set the path to maximize results.

The Influencers

Who will most influence the stakeholders of the BACoE or assessment and in what ways?

Influencers can be internal or external and have positive or negative influences on the effort.  Use your business analysis and stakeholder analysis techniques to discover and manage the influencers. I like to use a power/interest grid to organize my understanding of everyone impacted and my strategy to involve, communicate, educate and ultimately partner with individuals in executing the plan for the CoE. This stakeholder analysis also sets up the organizational change management pieces to plan on how to engage the influencers in supporting the changes being implemented.

The Pace

Is the pace to achieve goals realistic?

To align pace and goals, BACoEs and assessments need to take a hard look at two things;  the commitment levels of the leadership team and the change management activities to build support.

Leaders’ commitment may exist in thought, but how much time do they really have to focus on the effort vs. managing projects, people and other responsibilities. Organizations that commit more time from leadership make better progress and do so more quickly.

A common barrier to achieving goals at a desired pace is the change management needed to garner support inside and outside the CoE. Without this in place, the changes needed in practices, competency development, attitudes, and process changes will stall due to inconsistent levels of support from those who influence BAs.

Let me know your thoughts on how these factors impact the plans and progress of your CoE efforts.

I hope this provides some guidance and thoughts to consider for those thinking about embarking on or who are mid-stream in managing a BACoE.

Don't forget to leave your comments below.


Read 1514 times Last modified on Monday, 02 April 2012 15:46
Published in Angela Wick
Angela Wick

Angela Wick, CBAP, PMP – Angela advises organizations in developing BACoEs, BA practices, and growing BA competencies.  She also assesses BA practices, assesses BA competencies and evaluates existing BACoEs. She has deep experience helping organizations build roadmaps and implementation plans to improve the value of business analysis throughout the organization.  She is the Chair of the IIBA Competency Model, and an instructor of Business Analysis and Project Management at the University of MN CCE.  Angela’s contributions to Business Analysis publications include being the Chair and lead on the IIBA Competency Model v1, v2, and v3 as well as authoring the chapter on Career Models for BAs in IIBAs new book Managing Business Analysts.  

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Comments  

 
0 # Seo Keo 2012-02-21 14:37
Angela, you've created a nice list. However, one important piece is missing. Where are the competent people within the team who can make the BACoE a really working thing? Who will apply the listed techniques? And there is no one word about communication of the whole idea to a wider business community to which the BACoE shall serve. Summing up: good start but more details shall be considered. SK
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0 # Angela 2012-02-21 21:40
Keo, Thanks for your comments! I agree that people and communication are critical to the success of a BACoE as well.
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0 # shockeymoe 2012-02-22 01:04
I agree with Keo in that this is a good start. You could make a whole series of articles on this subject as it is very extensive in its implications within an organization. In the question that starts your article you imply that all of the starting points are valid and therefore each item; BACoE, Competencies, Best Practices, are important in the larger picture. This is very true, and when properly addressed in the master plan, they are the lynch pins of success. I would like to see you have the opportunity to explore some depth in these areas. The key area to guide any change like the creation of a "Center of Excellence" in an organization is of course change management. Our organization unfortunately pays lip service to OCM. My current project has a part time OCM resource with only enough budget to create an ad-hoc newsletter for the poor users who haven't a clue what's coming at them in 3 months. If we had proper OCM included in our projects we would at least be able to say we included them in the mess we are making :) A CofE around all of our Business Analyst practices would give us credibility and clout during the planning stages. We have had one failed attempt by a well meaning but overwhelmed practice leader. I am now the senior analyst of a group of 12. I am willing to discuss change with our management but I will be using OCM techniques to start the ball rolling. Any further insight into the process and pitfalls of reorganizing our team would be welcome. I will watch for future articles. Thanks
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0 # Christine Haggarty 2012-02-23 01:27
Angela, Thanks for an interesting article. I wonder if you or any of your readers have any insights on what triggers an organisation to go from not having a BA COE to realising they could use one?
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0 # Angela 2012-02-26 11:51
@Shokeymoe: I couldn't agree more on the OCM needs for a CoE! Absolutely critical to the CoE effort once the initial considerations are taken into account and the plan begins to form. @Christi ne: What I see is organizations developing CoEs from 3 different paths before having one. 1) C-level or other senior level leadership directive to address pain points that they feel will be solved by a CoE. 2) Passionate BA - starting a CoE grassroots and spreading the success and wins across the organization. 3) Passionate middle manager starting a CoE type effort for their team, and the successes spreading to other parts of the organization.
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