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Author: Rebecca Burgess

Bad-Ass BA Lessons. Part 3.

Co-Authored by Cecilie Hoffman

This article is a continuation of the 10 Steps to Becoming a Bad-Ass Business Analyst. These steps will help you take your professional capabilities beyond most people’s expectations and help you to stand out as a leader. In the first two installments we covered:

Step 1. Exploit the hidden power in “menial” tasks
Step 2. Delegate!
Step 3. Compose in real time
Step 4. Define gonzo success criteria
Step 5. Ask the crazy-as-a-fox stupid questions
Step 6. Get their attention
Step 7. Schmooze those stakeholders
Step 8. Rat out those underachievers

Now let’s discuss the last two steps to becoming a Bad-Ass Business Analyst. Buckle up, here we go.

Step 9. Speak truth to power

Here are three ways that business analysts can use their verbal acumen to demonstrate leadership.

#1. Someone has to say what needs to be said
Rarely is it worthwhile embarrassing a person in public, but sometimes it needs to be done.

For example, in a group workshop, staff members are engaged in a productive discussion. Ground rules banning in-room cell phone conversations were agreed to. A manager who is there to lend credence to the proceedings and answer any management type questions that may come up receives a call on his cell phone. Instead of excusing himself, he proceeds to take the call, hunching his back and focusing his gaze on the floor as if averting his eyes from the people around him makes him invisible and inaudible.

Our BA-Meeting Facilitator turns to the manager and politely requests that he turn off the &#@$ing phone. As the manager leaves the room with phone glued to his ear applause erupts in the room.

#2. Children whine. Bad-Ass BAs do not whine.
If a BA wants to be taken seriously, whining is the kiss of death. Bad-Ass BAs present the facts, just the facts, and nothing but the facts, followed by a constructive suggestion for moving forward.

#3. Ask for “Guidance” instead of blaming
When asked by a senior manager what the cause of the delay is, a junior team member gets defensive and starts to whine that the team can’t be held accountable for delays caused by other groups.

“Madam Manager, you are right. Our draft of the BRD is late because all sections should be ready for preliminary review today, and section four is not yet completed. We are collaborating with the infrastructure team, and they needed to get information from the data center operations team, and that team is in a time zone 12 hours ahead of us. We are having difficulty conveying to them the importance of their cooperation. We would appreciate your guidance in how to handle this situation.”

In this context, a request for guidance is an encoded request escalation, e.g., that strong motivation be applied to provide the information. Of course you could say, “Would you please arrange for a fire to be lit under that laggard’s butt?” but that might not reflect well on your powers of self-control.

Step 10. Put on Your “Facilitator Flak Jacket”

Rules of the Road

  • Start on time, end on time
  • Be present – turn off or silence cell phones, PDAs, computers
  • Participate in open, honest dialog without aggression
  • Only one conversation at a time
  • Avoid rat holes and rabbit holes
  • Document decisions and don’t reopen the discussion
  • Be succinct – anyone can invoke the 10 second rule (requesting the speaker to wrap up in 10 seconds or so)
  • Silence = consent
  • New rules can be added at any time (any suggestions?)

Slang: a flak jacket is a form of protective clothing designed to provide protection from shrapnel and other indirect low velocity projectiles.

The BA role is a communications hub, as we said before. We spend a lot of time helping people discuss their needs and concerns while trying to move the effort forward towards a goal. Facilitating a meeting with a group of contentious stakeholders is no fun, but it can be interesting. Ideally your company would provide training in facilitation, negotiation, and conflict management. If that is not available to you, think about a high school coach or a teacher who, while you may not have liked that person, you respected because they were able to keep control of an obnoxious group of teenagers. Channel that person. Remember that you are wearing an invisible flak jacket – take criticism in a constructive manner and adjust your conduct if doing so will yield a better result. The flak jacket will protect you from bleeding out when a particularly unkind criticism is hurled at you.

#1: Set the Agenda
Normally the facilitator sets the meeting agenda. If you realize that the meeting agenda isn’t going to meet your needs, offer the list of items you would like to see on the agenda.

“For our meeting on Thursday, I’d like to see us address the following topics. We have been talking about these issues in several other meetings this week and I think we are ready to make some decisions. Could we have these three topics on the agenda? I think if we put them in this order we’ll be able to make the decisions quickly.”

#2: Good Housekeeping
Start with getting people to agree on how the group meeting will be run.

  • Verify the “Rules of the Road”
    For example, if you are running a brain storming session, you will remind people that all input is good, and comments like “that’s a ridiculous idea” are out of bounds.
  • Identify and agree upon the decision-making method
    Decision-making methods range from unanimity, through consensus, to authoritarian. Should the team choose consensus, make sure there is a common understanding of what this means (usually, “it’s not my first choice, but I’ll support it” or “disagree but commit”) and how ties or stalemates will be broken (possibly by delegating the final decision in this situation to a project or team leader, with the “disagree but commit” agreement in that case).
  • Explicitly call out the expected results/deliverables/goals of the meeting
    At the beginning of the meeting, review the deliverables for that meeting, get agreement that they are complete, and then drive the agenda to complete those deliverables. At the end of the meeting, review the deliverables to make sure they have been met.

#3: Keep people to the schedule
“Mr. Senior Architect, I’m sorry to interrupt your story, which I must say is quite interesting. To keep us on schedule, could I ask you to wrap it up in the next two minutes? Thank you.”

There can be a fine line between managing the schedule and permitting the attendees to dig down to unrecognized underlying information. Spread this power around by identifying a rule in the “Rules of the Road” permitting anyone to call a “rat hole” or “rabbit hole” when attendees are either pontificating on something that has already been agreed upon, or are going off topic. Provide a culturally appropriate phrase to use when doing this. Sometimes this can be a nonsense phrase – for example, in a steering committee, one attendee brought a little cut-out human figure his child had made and explained it was named Flat Stanley. Flat Stanley was adopted as the team mascot, and “given” the power to make recommendations to keep the team on schedule. From that point on, the phrase “calling Flat Stanley” meant the speaker should wrap it up and move on.

#4: Manage the conflict
Some of us would rather sink into the floor than be in a room when two people are speaking to each other in a challenging, contentious manner. There’s a certain amount of conflict that is constructive, and even necessary. Shutting constructive conflict down too early is like the game whack-a-mole; it merely means that the conflict will erupt elsewhere. Sometimes we have to bite our tongue and be patient, giving time for the individuals to work it out in a professional manner.

Conflict is not constructive when the argument has been repeated more than twice or when the comments have become personal insults, or people are yelling in anger. At this point the facilitator must shut down the conflict.

“Gentlemen… Gentlemen! Please. Sam, would you record in the minutes that this topic needs to be addressed in a different meeting. Gentlemen, why don’t you two take a five minute break. We’ll move on to item #5 on the agenda.”

This is the third and final installment in this three-part series. Using any of these techniques will make you stand out as an exceptionally motivated and capable Business Analyst. These techniques will develop your sense of intelligent disobedience and increase your ability to act with judicious audacity so use them with care and flare.

You might pick one technique, try it, and be pleasantly surprised at the result. Work your way through the list – all of the techniques take practice to sink in and become automatic. The goal is simply to add techniques to your business analysis toolkit, so experiment and enjoy!

Installment 1 Business Analyst Times
June 16/09
Step 1. Exploit the hidden power in “menial” tasks
Step 2. Delegate!
Step 3. Compose in real time
Step 4. Define gonzo success criteria
Installment 2 Business Analyst Times
July 14/09
Step 5. Ask the crazy-as-a-fox stupid questions
Step 6. Get Their Attention
Step 7. Schmooze those stakeholders
Step 8. Rat out those underachievers
Installment 3 Business Analyst Times
Aug 11/09
Step 9. Speak truth to power
Step 10. Put on your “Facilitator Flak Jacket”

Don’t forget to post your comments below


Rebecca Burgess is the Business Process Methodology Analyst in the Commerce Lifecycle Transformation Office at Symantec and a Certified Six Sigma Black Belt. After many years of uncovering problems and determining root causes, she is now applying her BA skills to strategic process design and improvement. She can be reached at [email protected].

Cecilie Hoffman is a Senior Principal IT Business Analyst in the Business Analysis Center of Excellence, Symantec Services Group, Symantec Corporation. Cecilie’s professional passion is to educate technical and business teams about the role of the business analyst, and to empower the business analysts themselves with tools, methods, strategies and confidence. Cecilie is a founding member of the Silicon Valley chapter of the IIBA. She writes a blog on her personal passion motorcycle riding at www.balsamfir.com. She can be reached at [email protected].

For more information on the art and power of facilitation, take a look at “The Art and Power of Facilitation” by Alice Zavala and Kathleen Haas. This book is one of a series in the Business Analysis Essential Library published in 2008 by Management Concepts.

Bad-Ass BA Lessons. Part 2

Co-Authored by Cecilie Hoffman

This article is a continuation of the 10 Steps to Becoming a Bad Ass Business Analyst. These steps will help you take your professional capabilities beyond most people’s expectations and help you to stand out as a leader. In the first installment we covered:

Step 1. Exploit the hidden power in “menial” tasks
Step 2. Delegate!
Step 3. Compose in real time
Step 4. Define gonzo success criteria

Let’s move on to activities that establish you even more into a leadership role.

Step 5. Ask the Crazy-as-a-fox Stupid Questions

Slang: “crazy as a fox” – the fox is considered a cunning creature who may choose to act in a manner that appears to be foolish or stupid, but actually advances its underlying plans, or, in the case of fox hunting, outwits its pursuers and saves its life.

All business analyst job descriptions should have these four expected duties:

  • Asks the questions that no one else dares to ask, and that everyone wishes somebody would ask.

“I’m not sure I’m following, it sounds like we have made an assumption that magic happens at this point in the process, and all the customer record duplications are cleaned up and removed. Could you tell me again how this is going to happen?”

  • Asks the questions that, once answered, will bring everyone to the same level of understanding.

It may be the case that some people in a meeting know what a particular TLA (three letter acronym) means, but others have no clue, and are having a hard time following the conversation. The “stupid” question, “sorry to interrupt, but could you tell me again, what SRM stands for?” isn’t stupid, it is a kindness.

  • Crystallizes the issue for people to understand what the sticking points are.

You may need to go out on a limb and take the risk of oversimplifying, but it is a risk worth taking. For example, it is not unusual for two team members to be arguing vociferously when they are actually in violent agreement. It’s your job to remove their blinders and show them how their opinions can actually dovetail. Try paraphrasing their positions, and then suggest how they can be combined.

“Let me tell you what I’m hearing. Lakshmi, you feel that A is the most important issue. Jorge, you’ve been saying that B has to be addressed first. I don’t think this is a win-lose situation. Your recommendations are not mutually exclusive if we do C, which essentially combines A and B. As for D, can we forgo it? Doing so would remove the risks we are concerned about. What would the ramifications of that approach be?”

  • Ask the questions that lead to out-of-the-box thinking.

One interesting “stupid’ question involves asking for the anti-solution and using the resulting suggestions to generate discussion on how to resolve those problems.

“Let’s spend a few minutes thinking out-of-the-box with the anti-solution. If we really wanted to mess this situation up, what would we do? [much laughter and crazy suggestions which you capture as discussion points] And how can we avoid point A? What about point B – aren’t we actually making that worse with this requirement we just defined? Does this raise the possibility of an entirely new solution/policy/process?

Step 6. Get Their Attention

Slang: A “clue-by-four” is a broad hint, firmly delivered. Also a metaphor for enlightenment. This term derives from a western American folk saying about training a mule: “First, you got to hit him with a two-by-four. That’s to get his attention.” A two-by-four is a standardized size for boards used when building – roughly 2 inches thick by 4 inches wide by multiple feet long.

People, unfortunately, don’t always pay attention to potential risk. Risk as seen through our BA eyes frequently has to do with the consequences of missing information. This kind of risk can be overlooked or underestimated by people who usually focus on delivery risks. The clever BA needs to not only identify the risk, but also assess the severity of the risk, and frame and communicate the risk in a way that makes the consequences clear and unappetizing.

The fact that Risk Management is usually considered a project management activity does not preclude a BA from putting this methodology into her own toolkit:

  1. Identify, characterize, and assess threats
  2. Assess the vulnerability of critical assets to specific threats
  3. Determine and quantify the risk severity and likelihood of occurrence
  4. Identify ways to reduce or avoid those risks
  5. Prioritize risk reduction measures based on a strategy

Capturing this information in a tool like the Failure Mode and Effects Analysis (FMEA) permits you to share it with the stakeholders and get their agreement on the existence of the risk and buy-in to the risk avoidance and diminution methods. Then, when the stakeholder isn’t paying attention to a promise or deliverable, you get the joy of saying, “Madam Stakeholder? I just wanted to gently remind you that three weeks ago you promised to provide me with headcount of your developer teams so that we can estimate the number of licenses that will need to be negotiated for this third party application. According to the agreed upon risk management plan, if we don’t have the information by tomorrow at 5 pm your local time, we will have to defer all the requirements from your organization until the next phase of the project.”

Risk Management is traditionally the responsibility of the project manager. However, identifying risk is an activity that falls squarely in the lap of the savvy business analyst. Take some time to become familiar with it and the tools to support it.

Step 7. Schmooze Those Stakeholders

Slang: “schmooze” means to chat in a friendly and persuasive manner, especially so as to gain favor, business, or connections. Derivation: “schmooze” came into the English language from the Yiddish language shmues, meaning talk.

Stakeholders have the power to help you or hurt you, and if you surprise them with something, they will almost always hurt you. Make sure that they know when something is happening in your project that will touch their sphere of influence and that they buy into the change.

When you identify your stakeholders, those with the most power to help or hurt your project are the High Priority stakeholders, and should be regularly schmoozed by you and/or one of your key team members. At a minimum, meet with them regularly to keep them apprised of the project’s progress and potential impacts on their area of influence. Make sure they know who is supposed to be representing their interests, and make sure you understand what those interests are. Ask them what their success criteria are for the project, and if their idea of success is not in line with the project’s goal, perform proactive change management. Build bridges and help them understand that you are looking out for them. You will undoubtedly have to deal with them again in the future.

Step 8. Rat Out Those Underachievers

Slang: to “rat out” is to inform on, or tattle.

You’ve presented your requirements gathering plan; you believe that there is a shared understanding of the strategic direction and everybody has signed up to do their share of the work. A couple of weeks go by and everyone has completed their commitments but one team, Team Slowpoke. You did everything to ensure that all the work would come in on time. You called them a couple of days before the deliverable was due and asked how they were doing. You got a non-committal answer and they said they didn’t need help. The day of deliverable came and went. You called the next day and said that you must have missed their email with the deliverable and would they resend it. By noon. Today, Thursday. Noon came and went. It’s Friday 10 am. The entire team meets at 8 o’clock Monday morning. What’s a bad ass BA to do?

You can talk to the laggards’ peers, expressing your concern, and encouraging them to put pressure on the laggards. In parallel, you can talk to your manager and express your concern. No whining, just concern.

“Mr. Manager, I just wanted to let you know that all the teams have provided the information that they agreed to provide, except for the Slowpoke team. They have said they don’t need help. They aren’t responding to email, or voicemail, and no one is in their office. I’m concerned about what we can accomplish in our Monday meeting given their lack of participation.”

Finally, in the 8 a.m. Monday meeting, you can review all the deliverables and their status, thanking all the other teams for delivering on time, and calling attention to Team Slowpoke’s failure to deliver. You can ask Team Slowpoke’s leader, in the nicest possible way, to explain why this failure occurred so the rest of the group can help resolve the problem. You remain silent, maintain eye contact, and listen. Then you can ask how they intend to resolve the problem and what the new due date will be. In fact, you might even offer to talk with their manager, in case this is a resourcing problem and the team needs to have something taken off their plate. Use your sense of judicious audacity here, to determine how far this needs to be pushed.

The worst thing you can do is do nothing.

This is the second installment in this three-part series. In the next installment we’ll talk about speaking truth to power and that all important BA accessory, the Facilitator’s Flak Jacket.

Installment 1

 

Step 1. Exploit the hidden power in “menial” tasks

Step 2. Delegate!

Step 3. Compose in real time

Step 4. Define gonzo success criteria

Installment 2

BA Times

July 14/09

Step 5. Ask the crazy-as-a-fox stupid questions

Step 6. Get Their Attention

Step 7. Schmooze those stakeholders

Step 8. Rat out those underachievers

Installment 3

BA Times

August 11/09

Step 9. Speak truth to power

Step 10. Put on your “Facilitator Flak Jacket


Rebecca Burgess is the Business Process Methodology Analyst in the Commerce Lifecycle Transformation Office at Symantec and a Certified Six Sigma Black Belt. After many years of uncovering problems and determining root causes, she is now applying her BA skills to strategic process design and improvement. She can be reached at [email protected].

Cecilie Hoffman is a Senior Principal IT Business Analyst in the Business Analysis Center of Excellence, Symantec Services Group, Symantec Corporation. Cecilie’s professional passion is to educate technical and business teams about the role of the business analyst, and to empower the business analysts themselves with tools, methods, strategies and confidence. Cecilie is a founding member of the Silicon Valley chapter of the IIBA. She writes a blog on her personal passion motorcycle riding at balsamfir.com. She can be reached at [email protected]