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Author: Nosa Adagbasa

Nosa Adagbasa is a Senior Business Analyst at the National Physical Laboratory and has over 14 years’ experience in Business Analysis. He is passionate about helping aspiring business analysts grow and guiding people in discovering their preferred career path within the information technology space. He enjoys leveraging business analysis skills across several disciplines including Education, Finance, Cyber Security, and other areas of IT. He is an IIBA Mentor and particularly enjoys mentoring colleagues to be the best they can be.
BATimes_Jan24_2024

An End and a Beginning: A Practical Application of Business Analysis Techniques

Business analysis is not just an IT-related profession; it is a profession that has expression in every facet of life, and hence one of the reasons why you should take pride in this profession if you are a business analyst or why you should aspire to be one.

The tools and techniques are transferable skills that have applications or expressions in other aspects of life.

I briefly discuss two as the curtains close in 2023.

  1. Lessons learnt
  2. MoSCoW

Have you taken time to reflect on 2023 and list out the lessons learned? Making use of this powerful BA technique is one of the ways you can identify what went well in 2023, what didn’t go well, where you made mistakes, and what you can put in place to avoid those mistakes in 2024.

Note that this does not only apply to the current year or next year; rather, it is a set of business analysis techniques that can be applied to different seasons and phases of life.

  1. Lessons learnt

What went well?

A1: Why did it go well?

B: What didn’t go well?

B1: Why did it not go well?

C: What mistakes did I make?

D: What can I do to rectify or avoid the mistake in the future?

E: What are my achievements?

F: What lessons have I learned?

 

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2. MoSCoW

Based on your analysis above and the lessons learned, you can draw up your plan for the future (the next phase).

A: What must be done?

B: What should be done?

C: What COULD be done

D: What won’t be done

This can also be seen as a positive thing to do in the new year and a negative thing to avoid.

While new year resolutions may be difficult for some, using the above BA skills should help you plan your coming year with hopefully less pressure.

Concluding Remarks

As a phase comes to an end and you look forward to a new beginning, take time to consider these business analysis techniques, take time to reflect on the lessons learned, and plan the MoSCow for the future.

BATimes_Nov29_2023

The Value of Business Analysis Competencies in the Successful Delivery of IT Projects.

Several schools of thought have proffered reasons why projects fail; notable amongst these are studies by Forbes, the British Computer Society, Gartner, and many others. Generally, the causes of IT project failures have been described as ranging from poor business cases, requirements management, project management, talent, and poor processes.

Conversely, certain factors, which are described below, can be identified as factors responsible for successful projects.

BA competencies are a set of knowledge, behaviour, attitudes, and skills that enable a business analyst to perform business analysis successfully and efficiently. These BA competencies can be mapped to the factors that guide the successful delivery of IT projects.

 

 

Accurate problem definition and analysis

This is central to delivering successful projects as it entails proper identification of problems, the scope, and thoughts around solutions. One major reason for IT project failure is that the business is often focused on the consequences or symptoms of an underlying problem and quickly directs technology to resolve these symptoms. At best, the result is an expensive IT solution that is sparsely used by the users, who often find workarounds or, at worst, IT projects that fail.

 

BA Competency: Analytical Thinking and Problem Solving

This competency employs critical thinking, system thinking, and problem-solving techniques, amongst many others, to help carry out root-cause analysis and produce problem statements that help correctly identify a problem.

 

People

People are an organisation’s greatest asset. Several schools of thought, including Herzberg’s, Maslow’s, etc., have carried out studies on employee productivity. Too often, while embarking on IT projects, the focus is on the technical skills of the project team, while knowledge around behavioural attributes, emotional intelligence, and concepts that affect productivity resides with the human resources team, who are seldom part of the IT project team.

 

BA Competency: Behavioural Characteristics and Personal Quality

BAs understand behavioural characteristics and human resources concepts of motivation, productivity, and emotional intelligence and constantly need to keep these in sight as they seek to understand the problem and define relevant requirements for a successful solution.

 

Knowledge of organizational structure and culture

While structure deals with norms, rules, and policies, culture is concerned with organisational values, behaviours, and attitudes, and both can affect the agility of project delivery. Thus, an optimal combination of the two is vital to successful project delivery.

 

BA Competency: Business Knowledge

This involves the application of business acumen, industry, organisation, appropriate methodology, and solution knowledge. Peter Drucker famously declared that culture eats strategy for breakfast, buttressing the importance of a thorough understanding of business to aid organizational success.

 

Effective Communication

This is the process of exchanging ideas, thoughts, opinions, knowledge, and data so that the message is received and understood with clarity and purpose. The challenge for many businesses is that this is not recognised as a skill that goes beyond writing and speaking. It involves non-verbal communications, listening, and analysis. When this is lacking in an IT project, the risk of failure is increased.

 

BA Competency: Communication Skills

Business analysts act as intermediaries between the business and IT and, as such, are trained in effective communication skills. They understand business and IT concepts and help to facilitate and interpret conversations to help all stakeholders deliver successful solutions.

 

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User needs and top management support.

IT solutions are intended to meet user needs; however, a major reason for IT project failures is half-hearted support from top management. Often, top management is concerned with strategy and has a broad view of concurrent projects without knowledge of user needs. There is therefore a disconnect between project delivery and top management, with the resultant effect that projects don’t get the full backing required for success. Support is usually given in principle but lacking in practice as top management is often far removed from the projects.

 

BA Competency: Interaction Skills

Business analysts not only act as the intermediary between IT and the business but can also act as an intermediary between top management and the business. With their interaction skills, they can drive conversations among stakeholders and ensure that difficult questions are asked and resolved to ensure the successful delivery of projects.

 

Business-Led Modular Technology and Data Platform

Organizations that intend to deliver successful IT projects need to have a modern technology architecture driven by business needs, as evidenced by data. Advances in technology mean that businesses no longer have the choice of being either technology-savvy or operating on the fringes of the technology spectrum. Technology drives agility in today’s business environment, and the influx of AI makes it more expedient that businesses that want to thrive will need to invest in sound technology architectures and platforms.

 

BA Competency: Tools and Technology

This BA competency fosters the knowledge and use of tools and technology to drive productivity. From the use of general communication and office productivity tools like ‘Teams, Slack, etc. to business analysis tools like Jira, Azure, Visio, etc. to AI tools like Chat-GPT, Google Bard, Slides AI, etc., business analysts are equipped to be versatile while continuing to broaden their toolset.

 

Clear Process Flows and Business Requirements Management

This covers the end-to-end process of delivering an IT project; it encompasses identifying the right requirements, managing stakeholders, ensuring an accurate depiction of information flow through the organisation, and managing change.

 

BA Competency: Professional Techniques

This deals with delivering excellence by design. It is an aggregation of several BA competencies with a focus on ensuring that excellence is delivered at every point of the customer journey. This implies understanding an organisation in terms of its people, processes, steps, and the data required to make each step as efficient as possible.

 

 

Concluding Remarks

Historically, the rate of IT project failures has been high; however, opportunities now abound to turn the tide. As knowledge and awareness continue to increase and the business analysis skillset becomes more mainstreamed across organisations, there is an opportunity for business analysts to hone their craft, be more visible, and help stem the tide.

BATimes_July06_2023

Information Science, Knowledge Management and the Business Analyst

In today’s fast changing world, information, and technology are changing the way organizations and nations operate. The quality of information available to an organization, its ease of use and systems of dissemination can make the difference between organizations that thrive and those that get left behind in the archives of history. To understand this better, let’s look at the science of information.

Information science is the discipline that deals with managing information, from creation to final archiving or destruction. It is concerned with the generation of data, the associated technologies, and the transformation of data into information and knowledge. What is information? Let’s begin by defining data.

 

Data

Data can be described as independent entities, , numbers, letters etc. that on their own do not convey any useful meaning. Consider the following data set:  ‘A’, ‘John’, ‘boy’ ‘good’ ‘is’ ‘1’, ‘class’ ‘and’ ‘in’  ‘number’ ‘his’ . Each entity on its own does not really convey any useful meaning. However, when this data is put through a transformation process, with a pattern or structure, it conveys a meaning ‘John is a good boy and number 1 in his class – these entities which has been structured or patterned becomes information within the system.

 

Information

Information can therefore be described as data with a meaningful pattern to the system receiving it, such that it can change the state of the system. In other words when information is received by an individual, an organization or a system, it must be meaningful to that system: they have been transformed by this information. In some cases, the information received enables them to take an action or make a decision. This change in state might be from a current (as-is) state to a future (to-be) state, or just a change in position from point a to b, or from a less informed state to a more informed state.

 

Knowledge

Knowledge: When information has been fully understood, digested, and internalized by a system such that the system can reproduce it in various forms and disseminate it easily to others, it has become knowledge to that system. For example, an employee may build up their knowledge of a domain through multiple channels: training, conferences, water cooler conversations etc.  and become an expert with a full understanding of the subject area. They can simplify it into various forms and train others: the information they have absorbed has become their knowledge.

This relationship between data, information and knowledge can be represented as shown below in a knowledge circle.

 

 

The importance of knowledge to an organization can never be overemphasized. Organizations can thrive or fail depending on the quality of knowledge that exists within them. Knowledge in organizations exists in two forms: explicit and tacit knowledge.

Explicit knowledge is the knowledge that exists in the public domain of an organization. It is in their culture, in their SharePoint systems, books, journals… It is documented and widely available to all.

Tacit knowledge is the knowledge that exists within individuals and SMEs, it is unwritten, can be heuristic, is veritable and often lost when such individuals are no longer with the organization.

Seeing the value of knowledge to the continued existence of organizations, how can businesses best elicit the knowledge within their domain? How can they ensure the quality of their information, and extract valuable tacit knowledge from SMEs? Answers to these questions lies in the domain of business analysis.

 

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Business Analysts

Business Analysts are change agents who often sit between the business and technology arms of an organization. They help the communication between the business and technology, ensuring data from both sides is translated into meaningful information which both parties understand, ultimately causing a change in the state of the organization. Business Analysts help organizations move forward from a current state to a future state.

Business Analysts by nature of their training can elicit tacit knowledge from SMEs, document the knowledge and ensure organizations do not increase their technical debt when valuable employees leave. They are also well placed to investigate and scrutinize the volume of information accessible to an organization by verifying and validating it with SMEs before such information is used in business decisions, thus improving the quality of an organization’s information and knowledge.

 

Some of the Business Analysts’ skills include the following:

 

 

Concluding Remarks

The knowledge circle will continue to be at the heart of an organization’s growth. Organizations which harness their knowledge correctly will continue to outperform their counterparts, and Business Analysts who understand their role in this circle will continue to be great assets and instrumental to the success of their organizations.