Author: Adrian Reed

When I first started work a lot of written correspondence was still sent via mail. 

E-mail existed, but wasn’t widespread, so if something was urgent it usually meant either picking up the phone or sending a fax.  In fact, if it was really urgent it might mean sending a fax and then picking up the phone to make sure the message had got through and was legible. I’m aware as I write this that this makes me sound about 100 years old….

This sounds so archaic now and we have so many great ways of communicating and collaborating, I can’t remember the last time I used a fax machine.  However, one thing I do miss about that period is having time to reflect.  Perhaps it’s just me reminiscing and looking back with rose-tinted spectacles, but communication seemed more purposeful back then.  Because it was time-consuming, and it took effort and time to send, it was completely fine to pause and think.  After all, if you’re sending something in the mail, it really doesn’t matter whether it leaves your desk at 9am or 4pm if the mail isn’t collected until 5pm…  Whilst I wouldn’t want to replicate the inefficiencies of that bygone era, I wonder whether injecting some tactical speed-bumps into our working lives might be a good thing.  This is particularly important for us as BA practitioners, as so much of what we do relies on us thinking—we synthesize ideas from different sources and help understand issues and possible solutions.  If we have no time to think, this becomes really difficult…

Velocity of Communication

Fast forward to the present day and we’re barraged with communication on a whole range of different channels. The sheer velocity in which we can communicate with colleagues over the other side of the globe is amazing.  Yet the relative ease with which we can communicate tends to increase the volume of communication.   That in itself isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it can lead to a somewhat reactionary approach where we are continually reacting to incoming communication.  It can very easily start to feel like our entire day is either spent in meetings or responding to all the communications that have accumulated between the meetings… which begs the question when does the other stuff get done?

Perhaps it’s an unpopular view, but this is an area where I think tactical speed-bumps can be extremely useful.  When we get stuck in reactive mode we are having our agenda dictated by others.  We’re responding to questions that other folks have sent us; which may or may not be ‘urgent’.  We’re like a ship without a sail, responding to each wave of communication as it occurs, and even worse we’ve probably all found ourselves firing off a ‘quick reply’ that actually causes more confusion rather than clarity.… is that really the way we want to live our professional lives?

Speed-Bumps for Creativity

Think about some of the best work that you’ve done as an analyst, the most creative work that has really got results.  I’d anticipate that you needed lots of thinking time to make that happen.  Perhaps you took the results of a workshop and synthesized it into a model that everyone could understand and buy into.  Or perhaps you managed to find a creative approach to get agreement on a particularly thorny issue.  With the velocity and volume of communications we receive, achieving uninterrupted thinking time take conscious effort.

This might be a parallel example of what Tom de Marco called ‘Slack’ in his 2001 book ‘Slack: Getting Past Burnout, Busywork, and the Myth of Total Efficiency’, and it is an effort worth taking—if we want to get to the root of problems and think differently we need this uninterrupted reflective time.   We might conclude that to speed up creativity, we have to take the counterintuitive step of slowing down all the ‘busywork’.

This is where tactical ‘speed-bumps’ can be helpful, ways of reminding us to slow down and to avoid getting caught up in a never-ending doom-loop of communication.   These speed-bumps might include:

• Don’t respond immediately: Communication can become a feedback loop. How many e-mails truly need an instant response? If you’re not blocking someone, if it’s something that can wait, then it’s probably better to let it wait.
• Block time: I used to have a colleague who would ‘book meetings with herself’ to have time spare in her diary. With the current expectation of back-to-back virtual meetings, having some guaranteed free time each day seems like a good idea!
• Stop typing and don’t feel guilty: In our current world of activity it feels odd to suddenly slow down and reflect. Do we measure a painter by the number of brush-strokes they put to canvas per hour? Would we think it unusual if an artist spent 2 minutes staring out of a window whilst ideas percolated in their head? Probably not; yet we’d probably look very worried if a colleague stopped typing and stared out of the window. Maybe we shouldn’t…
• Change formats: If you are adept at typing and drawing on a computer, try sketching in a notebook or on a large sheet of paper. There’s something liberating about changing the format and working differently.  I personally find exploring an idea on paper is a great way of clarifying thinking.

Of course, there are many other ways of injecting ‘speed-bumps’ into our daily lives too.  I’d love to hear yours, please do connect with me on LinkedIn and share your tips. I’d love to hear them!

As a business analyst, it often feels like we spend our lives spinning plates. We have to balance a whole range of tasks, meetings and other stakeholder interactions often in very tight timelines.

It would be very easy to inadvertently neglect a task only to find it was crucial, and at that point the spinning plates would come crashing down. Unfortunately for us, fixing it wouldn’t be as simple as replacing a broken plate–missing a crucial requirement or annoying a key stakeholder might have repercussions that last for months or years.

As our careers progress, it’s important that we become adept at managing our workload. There are many approaches out there, personally I’m a fan of David Allen’s ‘Getting Things Done’ method. I first read David’s book over a decade ago, and I’m still using the core elements of it today (if you haven’t read it, I’d highly recommend getting a copy. However, in this article I wanted to discuss one specific practice that I’ve adapted that has really made a difference. I’m sure this was inspired by the ‘Getting Things Done’ method.

A Busy And Interrupted World

One thing that strikes me about many organizations today is that:

• Important but not urgent tasks often get neglected. They are only picked up when they become ‘urgent’ (by which time the options are often reduced)
• Interruptions and personal schedule changes are pretty normal

Let’s explore the second of these points first. In the last few months, I suspect many of us have spent time working from home and there is a tendency to schedule meeting after meeting after meeting. Whereas, with physical meetings, we need to build in time to travel, get lunch etc, the virtual world gives us the illusion of real back-to-back meetings.

Of course, this is never really the case. A couple of crucial stakeholders are delayed, so an instant message arrives: “Sorry folks, we need to delay the meeting by 20 minutes.”. This means we have an unexpected 20 minutes of productive time, but it presents us with a challenge: what do we do?

So let me put this question to you: If that instant message landed on your device, what would you do?

It’s a tricky question isn’t it. A time slice like 20 minutes is long enough to do something but not long enough to do much. A common response is ‘I’d look at e-mails’. This is understandable, but it’s easy to spend 20 minutes staring at a sea of unanswered e-mails, not really getting any ‘processing’ done. Perhaps you end up reading a few, figuring out they are too complex… so you come back to them later and start again.

Or perhaps you look at your to do list–but everything is too big, so you go back to your e-mail box and the situation repeats. Or perhaps you just grab a tea, coffee or comfort break (frankly, that’s probably the best of all of the options!)

Bring in the IFRAs

One practice I’ve started is compiling an IFRA list. IFRA stands for “If Resources Allow”. It is a list of small chunks of important but not urgent work. This can include ‘work work’ and also personal work. If I look on my IFRA list for today I have:

• Brainstorm titles for upcoming blog articles
• Send a specific e-mail enquiry to a stakeholder (it’s a simple query, but the wording needs some thought)
• Call my insurance company regarding the renewal premium (the telephone number & policy number is written on there, so I don’t have to look that up)
• Get up and stretch (frankly I need to be reminded of this a lot and my back will thank me for it)
• Write up personal notes from a meeting
• Look at my professional development log and plan what I do next
• Etc….

Now, the thing about an IFRA list is that there’s no intention to actually finish it. It’s a bit like a ‘backlog’; all of the things do need to be done, they just don’t need to be done today. But if a 20 minute slot emerges, I’ve already decided how I’ll use it. I’ll pick the top one off the list, and do it. And, of course if some of these things aren’t done then they’ll eventually make it onto a main to-do list.

I find this practice helps avoid ‘procrastination paralysis’. You know the feeling, there so much to do that nothing gets done. I also find it useful for when I feel ‘creatively blocked’. You know when you’re working on something detailed and mentally taxing, 3 hours fly by but then all of a sudden everything grinds to a halt? I grab a coffee (well, tea in my case…) do a quick IFRA and then get back to it. I find the deliberate context switching freshens me up.

I hope you’ve found these ideas interesting. I’d love to hear what works well for you. Drop me a line on social media, and let’s discuss!

Over a decade ago, I was in a workshop with a range of different stakeholders.

Everything seemed to be going well, and people seemed to be agreeing and we were even running ahead of the meeting schedule.  Around halfway through the meeting a particular issue was being discussed, a conclusion was going to be drawn and a stakeholder interjected strongly and firmly with two powerful words.  They simply said:

“I disagree”

 I remember being taken aback by the bluntness.  I live in the UK and our communication style is somewhat indirect most of the time.  It’s far more normal to say “Hmmm, interesting idea, or what about…?” which is code for “That’s a crazy idea”.  Or often the temptation might be to revert to the ultimate British stereotype and apologize “Sorry to be a pain here, but I’m not sure I entirely agree”.   I’m sure British culture is not the only one that has such indirect nuance.

The reason I remember this meeting so vividly, even more than a decade ago is that those two words initially made people visibly uncomfortable.  Someone was breaking the consensus; they were “creating conflict”.  Yet that wasn’t the intention, and of course they didn’t just say that, the stakeholder went on to explain the source of their disagreement, and what they proposed instead.  Thirty seconds later (once the stakeholder had explained themselves) any feeling of discomfort gently dispersed.  What’s more, other attendees of the meeting started to question things, interject and show disagreement.   One stakeholder questioning a decision had the apparent result in creating perceived permission for others to do so.  And you know what? I am convinced that the output of that meeting was better as a result.

Don’t Let Conflict Fester

Many of us have been taught to consider conflict as bad and consensus as good.  I suppose that is true in an ideal case, but if you’re working on any kind of large scale change how realistic is it that every stakeholder is really going to be ‘on the same page’ and in total agreement?  If a government implements a new type of tax and requires businesses to submit more information, there’s unlikely to be a standing ovation from business owners.  Yet that doesn’t mean that their input isn’t valuable—I would go as far as saying it’s essential!

Our fixation with consensus can lead to a situation where we achieve illusory agreement, a veneer of satisfaction.  Dissenting voices get marginalized, as they’ll never agree (so why spend too much time asking them?). We carefully facilitate meetings so that there aren’t big disruptive arguments, as we’re desperate to hit all of the aggressive (sorry ‘ambitious’) project deadlines. Yet this dangerous glossy veneer is very quickly broken when people start to interact with the product or service that we deliver. All we’ve done is defer the conflict to an even less convenient time, often a time when there’s so much political capital riding on the ‘solution’ that’s been designed that there’s no appetite to change it. 

Cultivating Constructive Disagreement

As business analysts, we can help avoid these situations.  We have the opportunity to create space for constructive and respectful conflict, and we should certainly avoid us or others sidelining people just because they have contradictory views. In our analysis activities we should encourage constructive and respectful disagreement.

Taking an example, when setting up a workshop we have the perfect opportunity for creating the opportunity for a robust and respectful discussion.  We can lay down an appropriate set of ground rules that allow for differences of opinions to surface.  I’ve found myself opening workshops saying things such as:

“This is a controversial topic, and there are bound to be some differences of opinion.  That’s to be expected.  With that in mind please do speak up at any time and add your view, but please do be prepared to elaborate on it. Keep in mind I’ll be facilitating fiercely but fairly—and there might be times when I need to ‘park’ your item for later discussion. It absolutely won’t be lost, we will come back to it, but please don’t be offended if I need to do that.”

When we facilitate, we can actively prompt, asking questions such as:

“We seem to have complete agreement here; are there any contradictory thoughts. What have we missed?”

Ensuring that stakeholders have the ‘air time’, and ensuring that the most bombastic attendees don’t steal the limelight is crucial.  Using a range of tools and techniques in the workshop to consider not only what we want but also what could go wrong can be useful too.  Even just asking a question such as “That seemed too simple, might we have missed something?” can help. 

Most of all, cultural nuances aside, we shouldn’t be afraid of the concise clarity of an expression such as “I disagree”.  When someone says it they provide us with a gift, an opportunity to better understand them.

Well, it’s been a strange few months hasn’t it?

I suspect few of us in 2019 anticipated we were entering a year that would see a pandemic causing tragic loss of life and difficult decisions for policymakers.  2020 has been a year that has seen many of us working entirely remotely, for months, for the first time.  It’s led to questions about whether organizations even need the same amount of real-estate.  Everyone’s experiences will have been different: parents balanced home-schooling with work, extraverts will have missed the conversations, those that share a house might have fought to find work space.  Some countries are coping much better than others, and international business travel has all but disappeared.

I suspect the first challenge that many of us had was staying connected with our colleagues and clients.  A whole series of technologies and virtual spaces have emerged or been repurposed for this: greater use of instant messaging, video conferencing as well as the occasional online ‘pub quiz’ or social event.

As time goes on a question that becomes more proximate is how do we stay in touch with the wider BA community? People outside of our organisations?  In retrospect we have been absolutely spoiled in the past, with real-world IIBA chapter events, conferences such as Project World, BBC and many others. These opportunities to meet other practitioners provided us with the ability to share stories, learn from our peers, and acted as a virtual, global ‘community of practice’ that kept us together.  So what happens now? How do we ensure that we keep up the momentum until we can meet each other again in person?  Here are a just a few ideas:

1. Drop in on multiple IIBA Chapter virtual events: 

One positive impact of the various global ‘lockdowns’ are that many IIBA chapters are running an increased program of virtual events, and most will welcome international visitors.  Depending on your timezone, why not drop into a virtual cafe session at IIBA Brussels, and then into the virtual IIBA UK ‘Brown Bag’ session.  These are both discussion and networking sessions and are a great way to meet and stay in touch with other practitioners.  Of course, these are just two examples, check out other IIBA chapters for a range of different events.

2. Run an experimental event (E.g. ‘Open Mic’): 

I’ve been running an experimental ‘BA Open Mic’ session for a few months now, and it has worked really well.  The rules are simple: anyone can come along, and those at the event can opt to take a 3 minute speaking slot about a topic of their choice. There’s also the opportunity for general discussion, allowing people to contribute in a variety of ways.  This was relatively easy to set up—the two main tools were Zoom and social media—the key is to organize it far enough in advance that people can attend.

This isn’t the only possible format.  Perhaps you’d like to run a virtual fishbowl session, or a world cafe, or something else entirely. With the collaboration tools we have at our disposal, it’s achievable.  Get a couple of colleagues to help out, and a few more to agree to attend and you’ve got the basis for an event—and once you share it on social media it’ll grow in recognition.  If ever there was a time that we should all step forward and give back to the community together, it is now.

3. Support Online Conferences: 

You may have been considering attending a real-world conference this year.  If you were, I’d encourage you to consider attending a virtual conference instead.  They are undoubtedly different but retain the same ability to learn and network, plus you don’t even need to leave your home.

4. Reinvigorate forums:

So many LinkedIn forums have become empty or even worse full of irrelevant content.  Yet when someone decides to reinvigorate a forum and act as moderator, it can go from strength to strength.  I’m experimenting with a new forum on LinkedIn, I’ll let you know how it goes!

5. Stay in touch: 

Whether it’s picking up the phone, dropping an e-mail or LinkedIn message to someone from the broader BA community you’ve not spoken to for a while, why not take 5 minutes out to do this today?  It might spark a conversation that is beneficial for both of you.

I hope you find these five ideas useful, and I hope that they provide practical ways of staying in touch with your global BA contacts.  Of course, there are many other possibilities besides these five.  If you have found a way of staying connected to the community that works, please do get in touch via social media, I’d love to hear from you!

If I had a dollar for every time I heard somebody complain about how business analysis just isn’t understood in their organization, I’d probably be very rich indeed.

In fact, I’ve certainly felt this pain first hand in the past, and I suspect you have too. Perhaps you’ve seen situations where stakeholders don’t engage business analysts until far too late in the business change lifecycle (after all the solutioning decisions have been made), or perhaps you’ve come across stakeholders who don’t value business analysis at all. Those classic warning phrases like “we already know what we want, why on earth do we need to do any analysis” are enough to trigger a nervous twitch from even the most experienced of BAs. I nearly boiled over once when a stakeholder turned to me in a meeting and said something along the lines of “Ah, I’m glad we have a BA here, you are the folks that just scribe and take meeting minutes aren’t you?”.

We could have a lengthy philosophical debate around why business analysis is misunderstood, and whilst this would be cathartic it probably wouldn’t be very useful. I sometimes feel like an awkward teenager complaining to his mates about how ‘the world just doesn’t understand me’. Yet like the awkward teenagers that we once were, the sad reality is that the world just doesn’t care about how professionally unappreciated we feel. Most people are too busy going about their own lives and fending off their own issues to worry about ours. And whilst we feel that our injustice is unique, there are many other professions that feel exactly the same. Our problems just aren’t as unique as we think they are, and solving them needs a shift in mindset.

Think Like A Business

It’s time that we faced a harsh reality. People don’t have to engage business analysts. Even if you are an internal BA and your organization’s governance structure says that a BA has to be involved, people can and will find ways around you if they want to. Don’t believe me? Go and look on the desktop of any operational worker. Find all the hidden processes, the unofficial spreadsheets and macros and the ‘cloud based’ packages with individual subscriptions that are being used to fill a functional gap that the organization’s official systems and processes don’t. These stakeholders have navigated around the organizational governance to get stuff done–and there may well be very good reasons for this. But we can conclude one very important thing: If people don’t want business analysis to be conducted, they’ll find ways around it. 

This shifts the proposition entirely, as BAs we are offering a service to a range of internal and external customers. We need to think like we are running a business, an ‘internal consultancy’ that has to continually enable value and prove its worth. A business that builds credibility through delivery and that builds deep relationships with key stakeholders.

We can borrow ideas from the world of external business and external consultancies to help us. Here are just a few ideas:

Know the value proposition: What is your ‘elevator pitch’? What is it that you do that other teams and departments don’t? What services does your team offer and what are the benefits of those services to those who they are aimed at? (If you’re interested in this topic, be sure to check out the fantastic book ‘Delivering Business Analysis: The BA Service Catalogue’ by Debra Paul & Christina Lovelock).

• Features and benefits: Marketers talk about ‘features vs benefits’. We might alter this slightly to differentiate between ‘deliverables and outcomes’. Does anyone really care about our analysis artefacts? Probably not, or not much. We need to link them clearly to the business outcomes that the stakeholders seek. (“We need to spend time creating a prototype so we can ensure we cover all the flows and scenarios. This’ll save time in development, so you’ll get something quicker and more fully functional. It’ll probably save money too”).
• Proposal: We shouldn’t expect work, we should pitch for it. Hear about a big initiative coming up? Great, put together a proposal on how the team can help. Think like a consultancy, then there’s less chance that a consultancy is going to get the work instead of you.
• Networking: How much time do you (or somebody in your team) spend networking with people in your industry and in your organization? If the answer is ‘very little’ then there’s a real danger that initiatives will only emerge onto the team’s radar when they are fully formed. If you get in early, if you can shape and scope then there will be less fire-fighting. It’ll save you time in the long run.

By turning a mirror on our practice, and analyzing our discipline as a business we start to focus on the value that our stakeholders are seeking. We can use our own BA tools internally to ensure that we’re fit, nimble and ready to help. In doing so we build strong ongoing relationships with stakeholders who wouldn’t dream of progressing change without business analysis. It’s a win/win situation.