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The Deadline Dilemma: Unpacking the Reality of Arbitrary Timelines

Written by Adrian Reed on August 15, 2024. Posted in Articles.

Perhaps I’ve been doing this job so long that I’ve become a little cynical, but I have a theory. I suspect that 80% (or more) of deadlines that are given are completely arbitrary. They are either based on ‘finger in the air’ guesstimates of when something is needed, or (in some cases) they are just plucked out of thin air. What is particularly difficult is when the person setting the deadline has no real idea of what the work is or how long the work will take.

An Example: The Deadline That Creeps Up

In a previous role, a long time ago, I was working on what I believed to be a very time critical deliverable. Once it was complete a senior executive would be using it, and I was told that the deadline was non-negotiable. The project manager was very clear: the work has to be completed, there can be no slippage. Initially, it looked just about achievable, so I set off doing my work.

As is so often the case, the work turned out to be more complex than anyone had realized. I escalated, and explained things were likely to take longer than anyone had assumed, and was told that there’s no chance of extending the deadline. Since I was enjoying the work and the deadline seemed so important I was happy to put in some late nights. Towards the end, I worked some weekends too, and just about got it over the line in time. I was tired, but it felt good as I uploaded the final version and emailed the senior stakeholder.

However, that feel-good factor soon faded when I immediately got a response: an automated ‘out of office’ explaining that the stakeholder was on vacation for a week. Investigating further, I find that yes, this person is on vacation, and this had been planned for a long time (they hadn’t taken emergency leave at short notice).

The deliverable wouldn’t be utilized for a week. There was actually a week of ‘slack’ built into the plan, but nobody told me. I could have slept more and I needn’t have worked the weekend…

My Bad: Not Asking “What Is The Implication Of This…”

It would be easy to blame the project manager or senior stakeholder in this story, but I don’t. In fact, it taught me something really important about deadlines. When a deadline is tight, it’s important to ask questions to understand how ‘hard’ and constrained it is. Ultimately here, we’re testing the constraints. Questions include:

There are many other questions too, and the intention here is to understand what is a real, immovable constraint and what isn’t.

Being Clear on Estimates

Equally, alongside asking questions, it is important to drive analysis deadlines on analysis estimates, rather than accepting arbitrary deadlines. There is often uncertainty, and if it is necessary to have a detailed plan up front, then the schedule ought to be based on a practitioner’s assessment of how long the work will take. If a deadline is found to be arbitrary or malleable, then planning forward and explaining what is possible in a particular timeframe can be a useful approach. Whatever approach is taken, getting regular feedback, updating estimates and pivoting accordingly is important, as is managing expectations.

In summary: understanding what is a real constraint and what isn’t is crucial. This can be achieved by asking provocative but important questions.

Beyond the Buzzword: A New Era of Collaboration or Competition?

Written by Aman Fogat on August 8, 2024. Posted in Articles.

During a recent project, I found myself in the midst of a significant breakthrough. Our team was tasked with producing a comprehensive set of artifacts and documentation—a process typically spanning an entire week. This time, we decided to harness the power of AI to expedite the process. Remarkably, what usually took us seven days was accomplished in a single day.

As we marveled at the efficiency of our AI tools, my Senior Business Analyst turned to me with a thoughtful expression. “Do you think our jobs are at risk?” they asked, a hint of concern in their voice. “AI has done in one day what we usually do in a week. Are we becoming obsolete?”

I was momentarily taken aback. The question lingered in my mind as I pondered the implications of this technological leap. It was clear that AI was reshaping the way we worked, but what did this mean for the future of our roles as business analysts? Would we become redundant, or would AI simply redefine our responsibilities?

Understanding AI and Its Limitations

AI refers to the simulation of human intelligence in machines designed to perform tasks that typically require human cognitive functions. These tasks include reasoning, problem-solving, and learning from data. While AI excels at automating repetitive processes, analyzing large datasets, and generating insights, it has inherent limitations. AI lacks the ability to fully comprehend contextual nuances, emotional subtleties, and complex decision-making scenarios that require human judgment.

The Core Responsibilities of Business Analysts

Business analysts play a vital role in organizations by identifying business needs, proposing solutions, and facilitating communication between stakeholders. Their responsibilities include analyzing and improving business processes, managing stakeholder expectations, and guiding organizational change. These tasks involve a deep understanding of human behavior, organizational dynamics, and ethical considerations—areas where AI currently falls short.

Stakeholder Management and Negotiation: One of the critical aspects of the BA role involves managing relationships with various stakeholders and negotiating between differing interests. These activities require a level of empathy, negotiation skills, and cultural understanding that AI struggles to replicate. AI may analyze data and automate tasks, but it cannot navigate the complexities of human interaction and build consensus among diverse groups.

The Impact of AI on Business Analysis

Ethical Decision-Making: Business analysts often face decisions with significant ethical and practical consequences. AI systems, despite their advanced capabilities, cannot replicate human ethical reasoning or take responsibility for decisions. The ability to navigate complex ethical dilemmas remains a critical aspect of the BA role.

Human Interaction: The role of a business analyst involves extensive human interaction, such as negotiating between stakeholders, translating business needs into technical solutions, and managing change. These interactions require empathy, negotiation skills, and an understanding of organizational culture—skills that are challenging for AI to mimic.

Strategic Decision-Making: Business analysts are tasked with making decisions that impact various aspects of an organization. AI can assist by providing data-driven insights, but the responsibility for interpreting these insights and making strategic decisions will continue to rest with human analysts. The ability to balance data with human judgment is essential for effective decision-making.

AI as an Enhancement Tool

Rather than replacing business analysts, AI is poised to enhance their capabilities. By automating routine tasks and analyzing large volumes of data, AI can support BAs in their work, allowing them to focus on more strategic and value-added activities.

Increased Efficiency: AI can streamline data analysis and automate repetitive tasks, freeing up business analysts to concentrate on high-value activities such as strategy development, problem-solving, and stakeholder engagement. This shift enables BAs to leverage their expertise in areas where human insight is indispensable.

Collaboration with AI: Embracing AI as a collaborative tool will be key for business analysts. By integrating AI technologies into their workflows, BAs can enhance their productivity and effectiveness. Continuous learning and adaptation will be essential for BAs to stay ahead in an evolving landscape.

The Future of Business Analysis

The role of business analysts is not on the brink of extinction; instead, it is evolving in response to technological advancements. AI will not replace business analysts but will transform how they work. The future will see BAs leveraging AI to handle routine tasks, analyze data, and generate insights, while they continue to focus on strategic activities that require human creativity and judgment.

In conclusion, AI is reshaping the business analysis profession by augmenting the role of business analysts rather than rendering it obsolete. As AI tools become more integrated into business processes, BAs will find new opportunities to enhance their impact and contribute to organizational success. Embracing this change and adapting to new technologies will ensure that business analysts remain valuable assets in the evolving business landscape.

The Role of Customer Feedback in Product Development

Written by Divya Joshi on August 7, 2024. Posted in Articles.

In today’s competitive business landscape, understanding your customers needs, preferences, and expectations is the key to the success of any product development strategy. And one of the most effective ways to achieve this is by leveraging customer feedback. This not only helps a company to improve their product and services but plays a pivotal role in developing marketing strategy and driving growth.

In this blog, we’ll delve into the importance of customer feedback and explore ways on how to use customer feedback to improve your products and services.

How does customer feedback improve your Product Development?

Improving Product and Services: Customer feedback is a valuable resource that provides direct insights on what customers think about your products and services. By analyzing the feedback, the organization can get to know what customers are looking for, what are the things they like about the products, anything missing from the products, things to work on to improve your service, and pain points. This information is essential for crafting marketing messages that resonate with your target audiences.

Building Trust and Credibility: Customer feedback helps in product development and improving the services of an organization. When you value customer feedback and use it for the development process, customers feel values, which in turn increase brand loyalty towards the product and positive word-of-mouth marketing. By integrating this with your product development company, you can ensure that their offers align with their market demands.

Improve Marketing Strategy: Customer feedback is like a source of information that highlights what’s working well, what isn’t, and what the company needs to do to increase their marketing efforts. With customer feedback, companies can identify unique selling propositions of their product, point out benefits or features in their product description to make the product more appealing to customers, and real-life endorsements from customers can be particularly persuasive to potential buyers for increasing product adoption and a seamless product launch.

Incorporate Insights into Marketing: Customer feedback helps provide data that can help you segment data into preference, purchase behavior, and purchase history. This allows for improved collaboration between marketing and product teams to create targeted campaigns that are more likely to resonate with each user segment.

Drive Customer-Centric Innovation: Customer feedback is necessary for driving innovation. By continuously gathering feedback, businesses can stay ahead of marketing trends and anticipate customer needs. This feedback brings out innovative ideas, understands the challenges in the market, helps you position your brand apart from your competitors, and makes you a market leader.

Validate Your Value Proposition: Customer feedback helps identify your value proposition, essentially confirming that your product or services provide the unique value you claim that is necessary for capturing market share. It helps you to identify that your product meets customer needs, how unique you are compared to your competitors, and the pricing is aligned with the perceived value and gauges overall satisfaction.

How Do I Gather Customer Feedback?

Customer feedback is necessary for successful marketing; it provides insights on customer demand, preferences, experiences, and current competitors. So here are some methods to collect feedback for marketing purposes:

Survey: Surveys are great tools for collecting feedback from customers. You can use email, social media, a website, or in person to collect feedback from people. This survey addressed specific people to understand their overall motivation for using a product or service. You can collect both qualitative and quantitative feedback through surveys.
Customer Feedback Page: Creating customer feedback is crucial for every product and service company. You can place it on your product or add it to your website. This helps enhance your marketing efforts and develop more targeted strategies. You can collect different types of feedback, such as ideas, feature requests, bug reports, and suggestions from your users.
Customer Interviews: This involves having a direct, one-on-one conversation with customers, allowing the organization to collect detailed feedback directly and without any interferences. Customer interviews help identify unmet demands and needs, validate product features, and discover paint points and areas for improvement.
Feedback Forums: Feedback forums are online platforms where users can share their opinions, experiences, and suggestions about their products, services, or topics with other people. This forum can be very specific to a company, product, or service, or it can be a general platform where multiple topics are discussed.
Focus Groups: these are small interactive groups of customers or potential customers who provide feedback in a discussion setting. They help provide deeper insights into customer perspectives and desires related to a company’s products.
Feedback Widget: It is a tool or feature embedded on a website or within an application that allows users to provide feedback as ratings, suggestions, bug reports, etc.
Customer Support: Companies can train their customer support team to gather feedback during their conversation with the user. During the interaction, they can gain insight on how to improve product offerings and what problems they are facing with the current user.

Conclusion:

Customer feedback is a great tool to help improve overall company performance, from sales to marketing to product development and growth. By successfully understanding what your customer needs, you can focus on product development, building trust, personalizing marketing efforts, and driving customer-centric innovation, and your business can drive more revenue.

Unveiling the True Role of a Business Analyst: Dispelling Common Misconceptions

Written by Aman Fogat on August 1, 2024. Posted in Articles.

From my own journey in the IT industry, I’ve seen the role of a Business Analyst (BA) evolve into a cornerstone of effective project management. Despite their critical role in translating business needs into technical solutions, BAs are often misunderstood and their contributions underappreciated. Let’s delve into these misconceptions and understand the true essence of a Business Analyst’s responsibilities.

Misconception 1: Equating Business Analysis with Business Analytics, Business Intelligence, or Business Development

A prevalent misconception is confusing Business Analysis with roles like Business Analytics, Business Intelligence, and Business Development. Here’s a breakdown:

IT Business Analyst: Primarily focused on individual projects for specific clients, handling artifacts (such as FRDs, RTM, and Test Strategies), defining scope, setting timelines, and gathering requirements. BAs work closely with various stakeholders to ensure project alignment and progress.
Business Analytics: Involves analyzing data to assess and improve business performance, requiring expertise in statistical tools and programming languages like Python and R.
Business Intelligence (BI): Uses data to gain insights into business operations and improve strategies. BIs collaborate with data scientists to interpret data patterns and communicate findings.
Business Development (BD): Focuses on market trends and identifying new business opportunities. BDs work on proposals, sales pitches, and analyzing business leads.

Misconception 2: Assuming Business Analysts Are Only Needed at the Start of a Project

There’s a common belief that BAs are only crucial during the initial requirement-gathering phase. In reality, BAs are essential throughout the entire project lifecycle. Their role extends beyond creating initial documentation to include supporting the technical team, validating test cases, overseeing user acceptance testing (UAT), and managing changes in requirements. Removing a BA after the initial phase can lead to significant project challenges and errors.

Misconception 3: Thinking Business Analysts Are Only Involved in Gathering Requirements

The term ‘requirement gathering’ can be misleading, implying that BAs merely collect pre-defined requirements. However, BAs engage deeply with business users to uncover and understand the underlying needs and complexities that are not immediately obvious. Their role involves detailed analysis, addressing evolving requirements, and managing changes throughout the project.

Misconception 4: Believing Business Analysts’ Role Is Primarily About Communication

While strong communication skills are valuable, the core of a BA’s role is listening and understanding. BAs must attentively listen to business users during discussions and workshops to accurately capture their needs. Effective communication comes after this thorough understanding, enabling BAs to document and present solutions clearly.

Misconception 5: Misunderstanding That Business Analysts Define the Project Scope

It is often assumed that BAs are responsible for defining the project scope. In reality, the Project Manager (PM) is responsible for determining the scope based on timelines, budgets, and resource planning, with input from the BA. Misunderstandings about scope frequently lead to misplaced blame on BAs, but the final scope decisions rest with the PM.

Conclusion

Clearing up these misconceptions about the Business Analyst role highlights their indispensable role in successful IT projects. BAs are much more than just the initial requirement collectors or professional note-takers. They’re the ones who keep projects on track, solve unforeseen problems, and manage shifting requirements with finesse. So next time you encounter a BA, remember: they’re not just handling documents or attending endless meetings—they’re the unsung heroes who turn chaos into order and often prevent projects from turning into epic disasters. Think of them as the IT industry’s equivalent of a Swiss Army knife: versatile, indispensable, and always saving the day.

Decoding Stakeholder Signals: Beyond Formal Feedback in Business Analysis

Written by Adrian Reed on July 31, 2024. Posted in Articles.

If I asked you how often you get feedback from your stakeholders, what would your response be?

I suspect many people reading this will actively solicit feedback quarterly or annually for a formal appraisal process. That is very useful, but consciously created feedback of this type is only one source of valuable insight. Feedback is all around us, but it often requires us to look for it. However, it is well worth being vigilant, as when we spot feedback we can reflect on it and adapt.

Feedback as a Signal

Rather than thinking about feedback as something that has to be formally solicited, let’s imagine stakeholders let us know their thoughts, feelings and intentions through a series of signals, and those signals can be consciously or unconsciously given. Sometimes they’ll say something directly, other times we might need to read between the lines and observe their actions.

This is similar to driving a car. If you’re in the driving seat of a car, you’ll be scanning the road for turn signals (indicator lights). These tend to indicate another driver’s intention to turn or maneuver. However, we all know that not all drivers use these lights! We’ve probably all experienced situations where you notice a small change in another driver’s trajectory, so you hold back a bit… and instinct serves you well as they cut over multiple lanes of traffic. There are many subtle cues that indicate what a driver is about to do, although on the road rarely is it possible to validate our instinct. You can’t ask the driver what they are about to do: it’s necessary to wait and see.

A similar analogy can be drawn with organizational stakeholders, however we have the advantage that we can ask them what their intent is. Let’s examine an example:

Example: The Absent Stakeholder

Imagine you have a stakeholder who is crucial to the success of your project, and they are regularly ditching meetings or arriving very late. They always arrive unprepared, and rarely make decisions as they are too busy. You have sympathy for them, they seem to be spread so thinly.

Arguably there is a wider organizational issue here, as the stakeholder has too much work to do. However, assuming the person is effective at managing their workload, then there’s an unpalatable truth to swallow here. By saying “too busy” they are actually giving a subtle feedback signal which could be interpreted as “this is not a priority for me right now”.

This last sentence might be a difficult one to read, and they might say (and genuinely think) that the project is important. But if they are not prioritizing their time in a way that supports the project, they are unconsciously signaling that it isn’t significantly important for them to spend their limited time on.

This is no criticism, they may well be doing the best they can in difficult circumstances, and we should absolutely do what we can to make sure we support them and respect their schedules. Yet, left unchecked this might lead to a project that limps along, with other stakeholders getting increasingly resentful that progress isn’t being made.

Sadly, there’s no easy solution to this, however it’s important to address the issue head on. Ensuring the stakeholder knows why they are so important and valued, the benefit of the project to them and the implications of their non-participation is crucial. Offering to do what we can to lighten the load for them will often be appreciated, and it is worth asking if they have a delegate who can help. Ultimately, if they are truly crucial and can’t delegate, then perhaps delaying the project is a better option.

Indeed, openly saying “would it be better to delay this project to a time when our crucial stakeholders have enough bandwidth to support it?” could potentially prompt a useful (albeit often difficult and emotion-filled) discussion!

Interpretation Is Hard

Once you start looking for feedback signals, they are all around us. However, interpretation is hard. It’s important to speak to stakeholders to understand what is going on for them, rather than assuming. The key is to start looking, and make any adjustments early. That way we can make things better for our stakeholders and our project teams—and who wouldn’t want to do that?