This year the O.B.A.M.A. award goes to the man himself, for his live demonstration of meeting management soft skills for over seven hours, on television! This is NOT POLITICAL - it is just an observation that President Obama is practicing these skills in the face of a very chaotic stakeholder environment.
So, what skills?
Attending the PMI Global Congress a couple of weeks ago reminded me that good ideas have staying power. There were several presentations on managing agile projects. As I listened, I was reminded of some of my past projects. Here are a few principles that have always worked for me and that can apply to agile projects.
In my job, I get to hang out with a lot of very senior people and talk with them about requirements and business analysts. The one complaint I hear over and over: "Our BAs are not proactive". Maybe some in the organization are being a bit passive, but the executives I talk with are most concerned that the BAs are order takers, rather than being seen by the business as really driving the process. You need to ATTACK requirements. Be proactive! And, know the right questions to ask to motivate stakeholders to get you the right kinds of information. Here's the problem - many analysts get in the way of their own success.
My friend and fellow author on BA Times, the Bad Ass BA, just wrote an article, The Bad Ass BA Observes the Hunt for the Right Business Analyst. In the article she discusses different types of business analysis job requisitions that are currently on all the job boards. One type that she highlighted got me thinking about an issue which companies deal with every day. The type of job requisition she touched on was the "clone the 25-year veteran who just retired" job opening. This is where a hiring manager wants to have someone with the exact experience and knowledge of someone that has been working on the same application and with the same customers for years.
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