Tag: Best Practices

Business Analysis: How and Why Do I Need To Evolve?

Written by Esther Folorunso on May 15, 2024. Posted in Articles.

Without a doubt, artificial intelligence (AI) is here to stay and is not going anywhere. Still, it would and has even started disrupting the status quo of many industries and organizations. Well, this is an undisputable, crucial innovation. Still, I would gladly refute Elon Musk’s’ claim that “We will have for the first time something smarter than the smartest human. It’s hard to say exactly what that moment is, but there will come a point where no job is needed” (Marr,2023).

The human factor must be considered in every career path or industry; however, professionals in every space and sphere must evolve with the dynamic and changing environment.

Why do we need to evolve?

Regarding my specialization as a Business Analyst, how and why do I need to evolve?

Recently, there has been a surge in the search for business analysts. This is not because this is a new field; instead, it has existed since the Middle of the Old Stone Age, when the ancestors were able to effectively adapt to the changing natural environment, identify their needs, problems, and opportunities, and develop solutions to make their abode livable and habitable.

What is Business Analysis?

According to the BABOK Guide V3, Business analysis enables change in an enterprise by defining needs and recommending solutions that deliver value to stakeholders. Business analysis enables an enterprise to articulate needs and the rationale for change and design and describe solutions that deliver value.

The business analysis field has undergone several nomenclature changes and could be referred to by different names in different industries. Some famous names include Business systems analysis, business process analysis, functional analysis, product ownership, systems architecture, project management, usability analysis, user experience consulting, operations assessment, and technical writing.

Business Analysis Requirements

The BABOK Guide v3 views requirements as a usable representation of a need and a design as the usable requirement of a solution. Still, both concepts can be used interchangeably and primarily depend on the context of being used or adopted. Requirements need to be identified, collected, modeled, analyzed, validated, verified, traced, prioritized, managed, and maintained in the lifecycle of a project (Pre and post-project stages). Still, they are all related to a business problem that requires a solution. It could be in the form of an organizational objective that must be met, a business process that needs to be optimized, and an existing solution that needs to be improved or even retired. The BABOK guide v3 defines a Context as the circumstances that influence or are influenced and provide an understanding of a required change. This explains that requirements are broad and depend on the context, such as industry, regulation, project, weather, attitudes, behaviors, etc.

Unpacking BA requirements for Artificial Intelligence

Business analysts should not view themselves as AI experts but understand that they exist to drive change while still understanding the capabilities that AI provides and its complexities. Business analysts must see themselves as a bridge between business needs and AI capabilities.

Understanding the complexities of AI algorithms may and may not be a hard nut to crack; however, with a fundamental understanding of Natural language processing/ machine learning and knowing that most AI tools have been embedded with the critical technology to understand human language, as well as the ability to sieve through large data sets and establish a pattern or relationships, could serve as helpful information. Business Analysis could also establish broader knowledge of AI capabilities.

Also, the core of business analysis is need identification and solution generation. Both are valuable, but the most critical is correctly and efficiently identifying existing needs or problems, thus providing room for developing requirements and generating solutions.

This brings us to the question: can AI help in need identification or problem assessment? Realistically, with established data and available documentation, AI could help identify a need, but Hey, that need would be missing users’ humanity. Whatever solution is generated should provide or enhance satisfaction. However, can AI understand the complexity of the human emotion? With AI, we could develop the goals, desired outcomes, and key performance indicators (KPIs) and define roles and responsibilities, but how can usability be assessed?

With AI in business analysis requirements comes data quality, security, and privacy requirements. Every requirement generated for BA activities must answer these 3 data prongs. How reliable is the requirement gathered? If a requirement is trustworthy, it could speak to its quality. Was the requirement confirmed, verified by necessary stakeholders, and validated to align with identified needs?

To achieve these three tasks, the requirements must be specified and modeled to fit the organization’s environment with due consideration of the stakeholders involved. The modeling can be in the form of matrices or even diagrams, for which AI could be beneficial. Still, the prompts must be correct, which reflects the data quality and reliability. Using AI to generate, specify, or even model requirements (inexhaustive) would lead to data security and privacy prongs.

Privacy and security are critical issues in the professional world, not just business analysis. Before every BA task, how AI should be adopted and what data should be provided as AI prompts need to be addressed. There is a need to protect user privacy and define adequate security measures, as IT systems are susceptible to attacks. Privately owned AI tools can still be attacked; strict security and privacy rules must be strictly followed.

This is also very important as some requirements can serve as Unique selling points for a specific business or even a trade secret. In this situation, the use of AI might be optional.

Conclusion

Knowing that the Business analysis role will continue to evolve as a context evolves or dictates or even as a business dictates while putting Artificial intelligence as an addition in a context, it is recommended that the requirements generated in previous contexts be adequately managed and maintained for reuse. When done correctly, this would enhance knowledge sharing as AI could help create a central repository for past project requirements, thus making it easier for business analysts to learn from past experiences and build on existing knowledge, which could lead to overall project success.

Beyond The Happy Path: One Size Does Not Fit All

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

Up until a few years ago, I used to spend a lot of time working ‘on the road’. I’d spend time traveling between different client-sites, and this would inevitably mean spending far too much time in airports. Business travel is one of those things that sounds really glamorous until you do it, but believe me it soon gets really boring.

When you are a regular traveler, you tend to become very familiar with certain airports and you know exactly how to transition through them quickly. If you’re ever at an airport, you can usually spot regular travelers as they tend to know exactly where they are going, and tend to move at pace. This is completely different to the family who are checking in with three kids, who are having to refer to the signs, and might have even initially arrived at the wrong terminal. Quite understandably, they often need a little bit more help.

I used to joke that it would be good to have an entrance especially for regular travelers, as their needs are so different (I certainly wouldn’t be buying anything from the duty free store, not even one of those giant airport Toblerones that seem ubiquitous in Europe, but a family may well do). This wouldn’t be practical in airports, but it does highlight a point that has direct relevance for business and business analysis: sometimes you need two (metaphorical) entrances…

Understanding Different Usage Patterns

When defining a process, journey or set of features for an IT system, it’s common to think about one path or scenario through which users will navigate. This main success scenario or ‘happy path’ is then often supplemented by exceptions and alternative paths which are essentially ‘branches’ from the main scenario.

Yet it is worth considering that different types of stakeholders might have different needs as they navigate through. There might even be benefit in having two entry points. Building on the airport analogy, an experienced traveler probably doesn’t need to be told about the security rules (unless they have changed recently). A new or less frequent traveler may well need to be informed in detail.

This translates to wider contexts too. An experienced user of an IT system probably won’t want lots of dialogue boxes popping up with hints and tips. A new user might need virtual hand-holding as they learn how the application works. Someone who calls a call center once might need to hear that three minute Interactive Voice Response (IVR) message explaining all about the services they can access via phone, and letting them know which number to press. Someone who calls every day as part of their job probably doesn’t need to listen to the whole three minute spiel every time they call… Understanding these usage patterns is key.

One Size Rarely Fits All

There is often a desire to standardize processes, journeys and customer experiences. There is benefit in doing this, but the benefit really surfaces when the different users and stakeholders are understood. Understanding whether users will be casual/occasional or regular is important, as is understanding what they are ultimately trying to achieve.

This relies on elicitation and customer research. This is an area where business analysts can add value by advocating for the customer’s perspective. Too often definition and design decisions are made by people in comfortable conference rooms who are detached from what the experience will actually be like. Sometimes those decisions are made by people who haven’t spoken to a real customer in a decade (or ever!).

In these situations we can ask important but difficult questions such as “what evidence do we have that customers want that?”, “which types of customers does that appeal to most?” or “how do we know this will be a priority for our customers?”. Using a technique such as personas, when coupled with proper insight and research, can make a real difference here.

As in so many cases, asking these questions can sometimes be uncomfortable. But if we don’t ask them, who will?

Overcoming 3 Common Challenges of Business Process Modelling

Written by Giorgos Sioutzos on May 8, 2024. Posted in Articles.

Identifying and depicting business processes is the first step towards understanding the current state and developing a plan for the future. Business analysis activities are often oriented towards enabling and supporting change. The most important aspect of having a process model is that it enables a business to quickly see how well all the different aspects of the business are aligned to achieve common goals. When there is misalignment, it becomes evident very quickly in the model, and the business can plan how it will deal with getting properly aligned again.

Business analysts, using primarily elicitation and modelling techniques, try to find out the means by which an organization carries out its internal operations and delivers its products and services to its customers.

However, process modelling and analysis can be tricky. Below are some challenges:

Figuring out the tasks

It’s difficult to obtain information about the complete process when there are many engaged departments. Usually every part of the process is aware of the specific tasks and activities in which they’re involved, but they miss the whole picture. Frequently, after the process modelling has been finalized, the engaged actors can holistically understand the end-to-end process.

Trying to figure out first who is involved and the starting and ending points of the process is crucial in order to drill down and find the details for each step. It may be a good idea to begin with the most experienced actors or those who have a helicopter view. It is more than important, however, to validate your insights against other sources of information to be sure that you have captured accurate information.
Having information about the industry context may be helpful, as the basic business processes among organizations in the same industry have things in common. This, of course, does not mean that the specific organization’s parameters should not be taken into consideration.

Systems Thinking

Consistency, It’s a necessary verification criteria in process identification and modeling. The steps and tasks involved in the process should make sense as parts that form wholeness, not as independent elements. In order to meet deadlines and get immediate results, business analysts frequently reduce the amount of time spent understanding the context. Delivery of value through a process modelling initiative will be limited, as long as we think analysis is about figuring out just specific characteristics of a solution that are already predefined in their minds. Systems thinking is a vital mindset that allows a business analyst to understand the as-is state and communicate it in a way that will be commonly understood by all stakeholders. This is an essential step in defining the future state.

Understand how the process fits into its environment.

If a model doesn’t define how it fits into its environment, it will struggle, and its likelihood of resounding success is greatly diminished. Understanding the fit of a process within its internal and external environment is a complex, multi-faceted exercise. A business analyst needs to understand who the actors are, what their needs are, and how they can be reached. The business also needs to know who its suppliers are. Only when all relationships between the internal and external environment are understood can the business analyst ensure it is shaping an effective process model.

Identifying misalignment issues and understanding problems and opportunities for the business can be triggered by process analysis via modeling. Through effective process modelling, the following questions can be answered:

What processes does the business currently maintain?
How do the processes fit within their environment?
How do the processes create and maintain value in the external and internal environments?
What is the gap between the as-is and to-be states?

The Pitfalls Of Efficiency: Process Improvement Is A Balancing Act

Written by Adrian Reed on April 24, 2024. Posted in Articles.

Business analysis work often involves improving processes. This might include simplification of a process, reengineering or automation. When used well, IT can be used to enhance (or even completely rethink) a process. The ideal outcome is to design a process that is quicker, more convenient and more cost-effective than what it replaces.

When aiming for efficiency, it’s important to ask “for whom are we optimizing this process?”. This might sound like an odd question to ask, but often there’s a fine balancing act. A process that appears very efficient for a company might actually be very inefficient and inconvenient for its customers. Standardizing a procurement process might create internal efficiencies for the company involved, but might place additional work on the company’s suppliers.

An Example: “No Reply” Secure Email

I was recently a customer of a company that would send correspondence via secure email. I’d receive a notification via regular email, and I’d then need to log in to the company’s secure email portal to read what they had sent me. This was fine, except the emails they sent were all from a ‘no reply’ address. While the secure email system they had implemented literally had a ‘reply’ button, there was a disclaimer on every email they sent which said “don’t reply, as we won’t read what you send us” (OK, it wasn’t that blunt, but you get the idea!).

This led to the crazy situation where the only way of replying to their secure emails was to either call via phone (and queue for 45 minutes), or put a reply in the mail.

This is an example of a situation where convenience and savings are predominantly biased towards the company, with some minor benefit for the customer. Prior to sending secure email, they would put correspondence in the regular mail. Moving this to an electronic platform presumably saves in printing, postage and stamps. It’s of marginal benefit to customers too, as they receive correspondence quicker (providing they look at their email regularly).

But the real customer benefit would have been to be able to correspond and reply with the company via secure email. Ironically, by implementing the solution the way that they did I suspect their ‘no reply’ mailbox is actually full of replies from customers who didn’t read their disclaimer!

There is no “right”, it’s a balance

As a customer, I found the situation frustrating, but there is no inherent or universal ‘right’ answer here. It might be that the company in question had deliberately chosen not to accept incoming secure email for compliance reasons, or perhaps they feared they’d be flooded with lots of customer inquiries as they are now ‘too easy’ to contact (although I’d argue that if this is the case then there’s probably a bigger root cause they ought to be contending with!).

The point here is that it should be a conscious balancing act. It is all too easy to create a situation that is more efficient for one group of stakeholders, but actually worse for another. An employer who decides to streamline their process for employees who need to claim travel expenses might decide that they can save time if they ask their employees to input more data at the time they submit their claim. If they get the employee to select where the expense was incurred, the amount of sales tax that was included in the expense, the category of cost and so forth, then this saves time later. Yet an employee who isn’t a tax expert might find this frustrating (“Is train travel exempt, or zero-rated for sales tax?”). Of course, in reality this will likely affect the quality of data too, as people try their best (but don’t know which of the different tax code options to choose).

This is a specific example, but it highlights a wider point: it’s important to consider process improvements from the perspectives of the stakeholders impacted. This involves considering what efficiency as well as effectiveness looks like for each key group.

As with so much in business analysis, stakeholder identification, engagement and empathy is key!

Don’t Let Your Software Requirements Die

Written by Chris Rickard on April 11, 2024. Posted in Articles.

In the realm of software development, the clarity and accuracy of software requirements are pivotal for project success. Traditionally viewed as static documents to be archived post-project, this perspective neglects their ongoing potential.

Living software requirements is a paradigm where these documents evolve continually with the software, serving as an enduring source of truth. This approach not only maintains relevance but also actively shapes the software’s lifecycle, promoting adaptability and precision in development processes.

They ensure that as software grows and changes, the documentation is not left behind, thus avoiding the pitfalls of outdated or irrelevant information – because often zero documentation is worse than out of date documentation!

How requirements slowly die.

Picture this: a new software project kicks off with energy and optimism. The business analyst dives deep, engaging with stakeholders to gather an amazing set of requirements. They craft an impressive functional specification that serves as the project’s North Star, and as the project kicks off, hundreds of tasks get populated into a project management tool like Jira, mapping out the journey ahead.

The software delivery team starts strong.

As expected, questions and clarifications emerge, evolving the requirements a little. Some tasks need tweaks; others have missing components, and there are even some sew requirements that surface. This is fine (we are agile after all!) – and these changes and additions are all added into the project management tool, as that’s now the source of truth keeping the project on track.

As the tasks are ticked off, a sense of accomplishment fills the air. Finally, the project crosses the finish line, the board clears, and it’s a wrap. Success!

Or is it? Software, particularly the large, mission-critical kind, is never truly ‘done.’

The project may have ended, but the software lives on, continuous adaptation and enhancement are normal these days. But scoping new tasks becomes a little harder, as the detailed system knowledge from that original functional specification, has now changed. The source of truth is now fragmented across completed Jira tasks and buried in comment threads.

In this scenario, the requirements didn’t just become obsolete; they died a slow death, leaving the team navigating a labyrinth of past decisions and discussions to grasp the full scope of their own software.

How to keep my requirements alive?

Keeping software requirements alive is pivotal for the long-term health and adaptability of your system. Rather than relegating these crucial insights to a static document, consider embedding them within a collaborative platform accessible to the entire organization. This living, breathing approach ensures that requirements can evolve alongside your software, reflecting real-time changes and decisions. Here’s how you can make it happen:

1. Centralize requirements and allow collaboration: Choose a platform where stakeholders across the business can access, review, and iterate on the requirements. This system should be the go-to source for everything related to what your software does and why, and platforms such as Userdoc are specifically tailored to this task.

2. Project management integration: While the main body of requirements should live outside, ensure there’s a seamless flow of information into your project management tools like Jira. This helps in translating the high-level requirements into actionable tasks and ensures day-to-day activities align with the broader goals.

3. Continuous updates and iterations: Encourage a culture where updating the requirements is part of the process, not an afterthought. This keeps the requirements current and relevant throughout the software lifecycle.

4. Embrace AI – AI can be an amazing tool for helping determine what changes could affect other parts of your system, and understanding that when writing requirements for New Feature X, you will also need to update Existing Feature Y’s requirements.

5. Requirements versioning: Just like with code, software requirements need versions and branches. Ensure you clearly denote what features are live, what features are in development, and what features are still being scoped.

6. Living reference for all teams: From development to QA, from business analysts to project managers, ensure that everyone references and contributes to the same set of requirements. This alignment prevents information silos and fosters a unified understanding of the system.

7. Long-term business asset: Beyond project completion, maintain these requirements as a living record of what’s in place. This becomes invaluable for training, onboarding, and new developers understanding the system’s capabilities and limitations. It also ensures the source code isn’t the only source of truth for the system’s functionality.

Transforming your software requirements into living documentation is a strategic move that pays dividends throughout the lifecycle of your software.

And the thing is, it’s not actually doing any extra work – it’s just simply unifying the place where that work is done, and fostering a culture of continuous collaboration and documentation.

Embrace the concept of living software requirements and watch your software, and team, move faster with more confidence.