Tag: Best Practices

Ten Tips for the Young BA

Written by Kushal Sundhani on June 15, 2023. Posted in Articles.

After ten plus years of working as a business analyst, I wanted to highlight a few things that have tremendously helped me become a better BA and advance my career.

As a young professional, I did not have many special talents, skills, or academic education, but I was not going to let those things hold me back from success. I focused on where I knew I would stand out and organized my thoughts into the ten main points below:

Be on time. For any meetings or working sessions that I was a part of, I made it a habit to be a couple of minutes early. There were life events or uncontrollable circumstances that prevented me from this 100% of the time, but those were one-off occurrences. Generally speaking, I was known to be early and start meetings on time. This showed I was organized and respected the time of others. Additionally, being on time also meant projects and tasks were completed by the time I said they would be. If there were issues that prevented me from hitting a time goal, I would speak up and inform the respective stakeholders in advance so they were aware.

Take ownership. Anytime a project or task was assigned to me, nobody had to worry or consistently follow up on its completion. I communicated statuses and any obstacles or issues that might impact the final result. This was evident no matter how small the task was. Early on in my career, I was responsible for member service requests. Each interaction was a mini-project to ensure the member got the service they required. Taking ownership of all of my projects and tasks helped build trust with my boss and colleagues. It showed I was ready to handle larger projects and more responsibilities because I excelled with the smaller ones.

Be flexible. My ability to be flexible about almost anything shined through. My role in one project may not have been the exact same as another one. Priorities and objectives often changed. My colleagues all had different and unique personalities. In some projects, I was the dominant personality when others did not play that role. In other projects, I was the more analytical one when I realized others were observably dominant. Through it all, I remained flexible. I was known as the go-to person for just about anything.

Nothing underneath me. My first project was a stepping stone to the next one. When I was starting my career, I admittedly was a “yes” person. They could have given me a stamp with “Yes” for my forehead! Before anyone even finished their thought, I said “Yes!”. This helped me get exposure to every single area of my organization and build relationships. Within a short period of time, I could tell you the purpose of each department and why they were necessary for the organization to function properly. I am not saying I could run the department, but I had functional knowledge of their work and what made them tick. I don’t want to give the wrong impression here. As I advanced more in my career, I didn’t have the time to say yes to everything. I learned how to say “no” as my career became more mature. However, when I first started, I wanted exposure to everything and I wanted to show I can handle it.

Recognize and praise others. I don’t remember accomplishing a goal due to my efforts alone. There were always other people involved. Lots of time in discussions was spent with team members to ensure we were doing the right things. I always made it a point to praise publicly and privately where it was legitimately due. I saw first hand all the hard work that my colleagues put into their daily activities and wanted those efforts recognized. Any time I got praise for doing something, it was only because I had a great team of people supporting me.

My first project. I tried my best to stay excited and eager to learn and do more. When I was just a part-time employee trying to make a name for myself, I was hungry for anything that came across my desk. I started to treat everything like my very first project. I would ask lots of questions, show willingness to go above and beyond, seek help where I need it, and work with others. Every project after the first one was treated like my first one. This is much more difficult than it sounds because at times, work did become mundane and repetitive. I had to make a conscious effort to see the bigger picture and maintain my level of excitement.

Open to criticism. I had an open mind if someone gave me constructive criticism. This helped me get better as a professional and build my skills. I actively sought out criticism to ensure I produced things of value to the organization. Long tenured employees, managers, and executives all have different insights into different areas. Their advice helped me see things from a different perspective and ensure I took that into consideration moving forward.

Be courteous. I cannot think of any point where insulting someone, yelling, making sexually suggestive comments, touching inappropriately, or being plain rude was ever welcomed. I paid attention to my tone of voice and ensured my dialogue was objective to the matter at hand. Disagreements are common and objectively addressing them should be the goal, not trying to tear the other person down. Learning about culture, gender, age, race, religion, or any other characteristic that makes us unique, helped me get to the next level of relationship building. Showing common courtesy, being generally kind, and showing basic respect for someone should not require a whole training initiative.

Work life integration. I did not seek work life “balance”; where I strictly worked between certain hours and then I strictly lived my personal life during certain hours. My job was part of an overall healthy life; and in order to continue having a healthy life, I needed my job. Sometimes, my best work came from putting in a few hours on a Sunday with some music in the background. Sometimes, I had to handle a personal emergency at the office that took time away from my work. I didn’t get stressed out about those things because I knew the work would get finished and my personal commitments wouldn’t be sacrificed. If responding to an email on a Saturday helped my colleague move on, I did not hesitate to do it.

Always learning. I was always confident I could learn anything that I needed to help in my career. Today, I see the younger generation spend hours upon hours on social media, video games, and YouTube. I challenge anyone to take any topic in the world you want to learn. Spend one to two hours daily focusing on and researching that topic. The same focus you would give to having fun. Come back in a year and tell me that you are unable to explain the general and functional information of that topic. I dare you! I was amazed at how much I learned by giving it enough focus and time and you will be too.

In conclusion, these ten things made such a positive impact in my career and I know they will do the same for you.

Working Well with your Test Team

Written by Virginie Terry on June 14, 2023. Posted in Articles.

Business Analysts and Testers are the two cornerstones of software projects delivery. The BAs define the business needs, they validate solution options, and they remain present throughout the project delivery to ensure the project’s objectives are met.

The Testers’ role is to ensure that the solution does operate in the way that it has been specified before it is implemented: they verify that there are no defects, and that the users can achieve their outcomes without introducing new risks or issues into the organisation.

Is there anything you could do to enhance the collaboration between these two teams in your organisation?

Clarify your own understanding of the work the Testers do

Does your Business Analysis Team understand the complexity of testing, or is it an amorphous phase they have no real interest in? Do they appreciate that the test plan will vary depending on the nature of the solution? Do your BAs understand the Test Team’s structure, the tools and templates they use, their dependencies, or how they test non-functional requirements (NFRs)?

Awareness of their operational model and what’s important to them is hugely beneficial to understand the types of pressure they face and how the Business Analysis Team fits into it all.

Conversely, make sure that the Testers know how your team operates

The Test Team may not appreciate the challenges that you face on every project to agree the scope – the back and forth with senior stakeholders who can be reluctant to sign off. They may not realise the importance of some of the documentation that you produce, or why it takes so long to get it right.

Taking the time to explain how your team operates will increase the Testers’ appreciation of your skills and avoid misunderstandings or assumptions on the execution of your work, particularly when it feeds into their own deliverables.

Avoid functional silos

Avoid the “them and us” culture, which can be a real barrier to success. Functional silos become particularly problematic when the project team is under pressure, for example if the delivery isn’t on track. They can easily create an unhealthy tension within the project team.

An effective counter to this is to collaborate and involve your Tester(s) early into, and throughout, your analysis work. Make them aware of what you’re working on before the business case is approved. Give them an opportunity to review your requirements and feed into them before they are signed off. Walk them through the business processes so they understand the intentions behind the new system.

Not only will their feedback improve the quality of your analysis work, but it will also deliver a myriad of efficiencies during the project delivery, from the Test Team resource allocation planning to the ability to produce an early strawman of the Test Plan, for example.

Listen to the Test Team’s feedback

Recognise that sometimes the BAs’ work can fall short of quality expectations and address these issues appropriately, whether individually or at team level. Is there an unusually high number of change requests on all projects from a particular BA for example, in which case they may need some coaching on their requirements engineering skills? Or should you consider new standards or templates, or maybe even some team training, if common analysis problems are emerging across multiple projects?

Be very clear about your role on the project

Let the Tester(s) know how you are working through any issues, particularly if they are not of your own making, to avoid any misunderstandings about the quality of your work. In extreme but not uncommon cases, the solution is agreed, and a new system purchased, without a clear definition of the business need or other systems it may need to integrate with.

On these projects, your role as a BA is to retrospectively write the requirements, and unfortunately, you’ll need to battle with business users throughout the analysis and design stages to justify the scope, particularly the elements that the new system doesn’t support but they would like to have. It’s not insurmountable, and you will likely come up with viable manual workarounds.

It’s important for the Testers to be aware of this history so that the Testing phase, and specifically user acceptance testing (UAT) can be managed effectively, as these contentious, out of scope items, may be raised as bugs by users in UAT.

Conclusion

Business Analysts and Testers work together to guarantee that solutions are fit for purpose. With mutual respect and an appreciation of each other’s work, the teams should naturally be able to collaborate effectively and work through the challenges of the project delivery.

This doesn’t mean that the two teams will always agree on the best option to resolve them, but they will understand each other’s perspective and be more inclined to compromise or make concessions where they are necessary and possible.

Use Case or User Story

Written by Steve Farrall on June 1, 2023. Posted in Articles.

An interesting question! Do we stick with use cases or switch to agile user stories as the best way to model, understand and deliver requirements?

The answer is to apply both techniques and together they work well to complement each other. In this approach, I view the use case as a business use case focused on business actions and processes; the user story is focused on the system requirements elaborating what is required of the system to support the business use case and supporting the agile sprint development process.

Use Cases

The objective of the use case in this context is to communicate the understanding of the requirement to the SMEs and stakeholders to ensure that the correct solution will be developed. It won’t be fool proof, but it should help steer the development in the right direction; until the first show and tell session, you can never be absolutely sure the requirement has been fully understood.

I would restrict the use case content to be only that essential to explain how the requirement will be delivered; alternate flows etc should be pushed into the use stories as far as possible. It may well be useful to expose some draft business rules for discussion as part of the use case but keep in mind the rules will need to be included and implemented via the user stories.

The Tool

We had already setup a wiki using the Atlassian Confluence tool, the logical step was to extend the existing wiki and introduce a fairly simple template for our use case pages; different tools could be adopted, even PowerPoint would work. Using Confluence allowed existing content to be linked directly into our use case pages as needed; it also includes a presentation mode allowing page content to be used directly in a presentation and exported to PDF or Word format documents.

The use cases can then be used to present back to the SMEs and stakeholders to confirm the understanding of requirements and the validity of the proposed process.

Tip – Catalogue Use Cases

It is useful to have index of all the use cases that includes a status to show work in progress, which ones have been published and those reviewed with SMEs. We managed our use case catalogue within Confluence using custom decision pages to provide an index view of all the cases.

User Stories

The key differentiator with the story is that it targets a specific system requirement and product feature, explaining a feature to an SME is a valid activity but without the context of the overall process, it might be a hard sell. Typically, you will need to introduce some supporting product features which may not be immediately obvious to SMEs; hence combining the stories together into a coherent business process will help SMEs to understand the overall solution context.

User stories can be identified but not elaborated depending on the level of confidence in understanding for a given requirement and business process. It may be appropriate to propose a change based on the understanding prior to a workshop or it might be better to get feedback from the workshop and then work on the stories with the knowledge gained.

The objective is to gain confidence in the understanding of a requirement so that everything can proceed down the right track with a joined-up set of product features.

Tip – Catalogue User Stories

A template for developing user stories can be adopted, this is useful as a prompt for details which may be appropriate e.g., what’s the existing feature doing currently and what needs to be changed. We managed our use story catalogue within Confluence using custom decision pages to provide and index view.

Joined Up Thinking

Use cases and user stories come together in the steps of a use case i.e., supporting the flow, whether it is worth elaborating main flows and alternate flows within a single business use case is debatable. The key objective is to keep the use case as simple as possible whilst demonstrating how the requirement will be met, so adding exception flows may cause confusion at this stage.

It is also possible that an existing feature will support a requirement without the need for a change story to be introduced; it is valid to include this feature in the use case as a step to demonstrate how this will work. For an existing feature, screen shots can be included and marked up with candidate changes; for a new feature then a wireframe mock-up may be included where a user interface is needed to support a step in the process.

Tip – Catalogue Use Cases

It will be useful to have index of all the use cases that includes a status to show which ones have been published and review with SMEs. We managed our use case catalogue within Confluence using custom decision pages to provide and index view.

Requirements and Use Cases

Now we are starting to build up a comprehensive set of product features that will meet the requirements and these will have been validated with SMEs; so, we are in a good position to elaborate the details of the user stories that will be needed to change existing features and add new features to the product.

Tip – Link Requirements

Linking requirements to use cases is a useful way to file the information, not all requirements will need separate use cases only those where confirmation is needed to better understand the underlying business need which can sometimes be obscured by a badly written requirement.

Conclusion

The use case is the glue that binds the product features and stories together into a comprehensive system that will meet the stated requirements; the user stories allow this requirement to be broken down into manageable features for delivery by agile sprint development teams.

Best of BATimes: 7 Warning Signs that You Are Too Soft

Written by Neal Whitten,PMP on May 17, 2023. Posted in Articles.

Simple question: Do you believe that you tend to be too soft at work?

What I mean by too soft is demonstrating behavior that results in being consistently less effective than what is otherwise possible—and needed—in performing responsibilities.

Whenever I ask this question at conferences, seminars or webinars, most people respond with a “yes.” From experience, I have found most project managers and business analysts, indeed, to be too soft—they are not willing to make the tough and unpopular project- or business analyst-related decisions, even though their instincts warn them that they are not taking the most effective action.

Being too soft harms your effectiveness, your career, the respect from others and your ability to make a difference and make things happen.

Examples of Too-Soft Behavior

Here are seven examples of too-soft behavior. Do you see yourself here? If so, this article may cause you to leave your comfort zone.

1. You behave as if you have the responsibility but without the authority

If you behave as if you have the responsibility but without the authority, then you’re too soft. I do face time with thousands of people each year. I frequently hear project managers and business analysts say that they have the responsibility but not the authority. This just isn’t true. You almost always have the authority; the problem is that you don’t take it.

Here’s an example. When was the last time you were called on the carpet—challenged—for exceeding your authority? Was it within the last week? The last month? The last year? Was it ever? My experience is that less than 15% of people in a large group—a statistically valid size group—have ever experienced being confronted for exceeding their authority. This is sad to me. But what is sadder is that, statistically, most people reading this article will never experience being called out on exceeding their authority across their entire career! My assertion is that you almost always have the authority—you just don’t seize it… you’re too soft.

2. You put off insisting on and driving good project management or business analyst practices

Whether I’m in a public setting or at a private company, it’s common for PMs or BAs to approach me for advice about their project problems. During the discussion, many times it’s relevant for me to ask about the project management or BA practices that they follow. I often hear them say that the practices they follow are weak and insufficient. They will state or imply that management in their organizations isn’t doing enough to provide and continuously improve the practices.

I’ll ask them what their role on the project is and they will tell me that they are the PM or a BA. If you are in either of these roles, then insisting on and driving good practices is your job. Not management’s. Not anybody else’s. It’s your domain of responsibility. You can seek help if you need to but the buck stops with you. If you do not insist on reasonable practices then you’re too soft.

3. You complain rather than constructively work issues to closure

I don’t believe that you should ever complain about anything—ever! Complaining is negative energy and adds no value to solving the issue at hand. People who complain are exhibiting too-soft behavior by averting truly getting the problem fixed. But make sure you understand what I mean by complaining. An example of complaining is when person A complains to person B about something that person C can fix. In this case, person A just wasted his time and person’s B’s time. However, if person A “complains” so-to-speak to person C—the person who can fix the problem—then this is not complaining to me. This is the first step of the solution by informing the person who can do something about it.

4. You evade taking a position on issues

If you evade taking a position on an issue, you’re too soft. A role of leaders is to help resolve conflict among team members. They take appropriate business-based positions on issues even if it doesn’t please all parties. Let’s look at an example.

I was mentoring Sarah who was a project manager of a sizeable project. We were walking through a hallway heading to a room where a meeting was soon to take place. We come upon two team leaders—Laura and Larry—discussing an issue in the hallway. Actually, discussing is too kind of description; they were angry at each other and loudly protesting the other’s views. Upon seeing this, Sarah leaned in to me and asked if I would mind if we join in on their discussion. Sarah said we have a few minutes before we must be in the meeting room. I said that that’s a good idea and we joined the two team leaders. After standing with the two team leaders and listening for a few minutes, Sarah turns to me and said we have to go; she did not want to be late for the meeting.

Once we were out of hearing range of the two team leaders, I asked Sarah why she didn’t say anything back there to help resolve the conflict. Sarah said if she had sided with one team leader then the other team leader would have been upset with her. I said that’s not how it works. Besides you now have both people upset with you because you did not assert your authority and help find an appropriate resolution. I went on to tell her if she sided with Laura and that left Larry upset with her, that’s not her problem—it’s Larry’s problem. I said never avoid taking a position because you fear that someone won’t like you. This is business, it’s not personal. Decisions are made based on what’s in the business’ best interest; not what’s in Larry’s best interest. Here again, Sarah was too soft in dealing with this situation which meant she was not as effective as she could be and should be.

5. You avoid or excessively delay making key decisions

Decision making is a critical action in any team, project or organization. We all have experienced instances where we felt decisions were being made far too slow. Make sure that you aren’t the problem. If you avoid or excessively delay making key decisions then this is another example of demonstrating too-soft behavior.

If you wait to make a decision until all data is known to ensure that you are making the very best decision, then you will lose all competitiveness. Better to make a decision and occasionally be wrong, then make no decision or excessively delay in making the decision.

6. You fail to perform your assignment as if you own the business

When you look around you for the people who you respect the most, they are likely folks who come to work each day with the mindset that they perform their duties as if they owned the business—and the business is defined by their domain of responsibility. If you have ever owned your own company, you will know exactly what I mean. You cannot put food in your belly or pay your bills unless you are successful. It’s this passion that helps people achieve their best. These are people who make things happen.

They believe—and their actions demonstrate—that the buck stops here and that they are fully accountable for the project or their assigned domain. Your boss and your senior management want you to take charge over your domain of responsibility with the passion that comes about when you behave as if you owned the business. If you hesitate or routinely pull back then, again, you are demonstrating too-soft behavior.

7. You require the personal approval of others to function

You are too soft if you personally require the approval of those around you to function from day-to-day—and without it you feel inadequate—then you will likely find their behavior to have an immobilizing effect on you; it can stop you in your tracks. Don’t ever give that kind of power to another person. What other people think of you should never be more important than what you think of yourself.

In Closing…

I have revealed seven examples of too-soft behavior. If you routinely exhibit these too-soft behaviors, then you’re clearly too soft—you tend to take the easy way out rather than do the right thing by demonstrating the most effective behavior. If you only occasionally slip into this behavior, then that may not be a serious cause for alarm.

If you fear that not being too soft will cause you to be “too hard” and therefore you will be seen as being rude, insensitive, abrasive, arrogant or a bully… don’t go there. You are a good and decent person and will not give way to these behaviors.

You might be asking yourself if an upside of demonstrating too-soft behavior is that you might win friends and respect? After all, if you are consistently too soft, those you work with will see you as very easy to get along with and passive—you’re always rolling over and abdicating to others. The problem is that if you’re a leader and are consistently demonstrating too-soft behavior, you will lose respect from those you lead, and from your peers and from your superiors. Being too soft will also have a negative effect on your project’s outcome because the best business decisions are not always made or made in a timely manner. All this can lead to your career becoming stagnant or even shortened.

Now, go become your imagined self!

Published on February 28, 2017.

Back To Basics: Excellent Elicitation

Written by Adrian Reed on May 11, 2023. Posted in Articles.

Elicitation is a core business analysis skill, and one that BAs typically utilize daily. It is easy to fall into the trap of thinking that elicitation is so basic that it doesn’t warrant talking about. Yet, just because it is a core skill doesn’t mean it’s easy, and it certainly doesn’t mean it’s unimportant. Not only this, but elicitation usually involves working with stakeholders, and whenever people are involved there can be inadvertent conflict and contradiction. Achieving clarity is rarely easy! In this article, I’ll address three perspectives of elicitation that you might find useful.

Elicitation As A “Trawling” Activity

In their book Mastering the Requirements Process, James and Suzanne Robertson use the metaphor of trawling to describe elicitation. The idea is, much like a fishing boat with a net trawls for fish, an analyst ‘trawls’ a business area for relevant pieces of information.

Ever since I first heard this metaphor I’ve liked it. Building on the Robertsons’ work and extending the metaphor, we might also say:

Where you trawl matters: If you trawl in an area with no fish, you’ll end up with an empty net. The same is true of requirements—ask the ‘wrong’ people and you’ll get very little.
The type of net matters: I’d imagine that the type and size of fish you are trying to catch will affect the type of net used. There’s a comparison here with elicitation—the techniques need to vary depending on the context and the types of requirements that you’re looking for. Detailed observation might yield very in-depth requirements, so might be considered a ‘small net’. A high-level conversation with an executive might yield high level outcomes and be considered a ‘big net’. Both are important, but it’s important to know which you are looking for.
There will always be stuff to throw back: Sometimes, it’s tempting to plan elicitation activity in a straightforward, linear way. As if you’ll be able to speak to person A, person B, do some observation and then everything is done. Of course, it never works exactly like that, as people will throw in curve-balls, there’ll be discussions which take you in unknown directions and so forth. I suppose this is a bit like trawling for fish: there will always be some fish to throw back if they are too small, too big, or the wrong type. In requirements terms, this shows that elicitation and analysis go hand in hand. As soon as elicitation starts, there will be filtering and prioritization happening.
Ethics should be built in to the process: I gather that fishing boats may throw back fish that are endangered, or are below a certain size. In terms of requirements, there is perhaps a lesson for us as analysts: If we come across a requirement that we believe is unethical, we should question it. This might sound like an odd thing to say, after all, who would raise an unethical requirement? Yet, with proposed technological transformation there might be an underrepresented group that is disproportionately affected, and perhaps this hadn’t been considered. It might be that the requirement owner had never considered the ethical consequences, and is very happy to amend or remove it once they think about the broader unintended consequences.

Elicitation Relies On Stakeholder Analysis

Much as elicitation and analysis are inextricably connected, there is a clear dependency on stakeholder analysis. Sometimes we might be led to believe that stakeholder analysis is a frivolous activity, after all, who has time to sit down and create stakeholder lists and models? Yet, the reality is that it’s one of those activities that will likely save time in the future.

I can still vividly remember a time, very early in my business analysis career, when I was assured that a particular project I was working on didn’t require compliance sign-off. I took this at face value, didn’t do any further stakeholder analysis and went ahead. Cutting a long story short, we got to testing and found that we absolutely did need compliance sign off. That was a scary revelation, but luckily our compliance colleagues were friendly and pragmatic. With some late nights and minor changes we got the project over the line. But for me, it was a lesson learned: Proper stakeholder analysis could have avoided it entirely.

I’m a particular fan of the stakeholder rainbow, and the stakeholder interest intensity index. I discussed a number of stakeholder techniques in a presentation that’s available on YouTube, feel free to check that out if you’d like to know more!

Context And Scope Matter

Finally, it’s worth noting that elicitation which doesn’t consider context and scope is really just a Santa’s wishlist. Imagine asking everyone in an organization “what is it you want?” or “what could save you time?”. You’ll get lots of ideas, many of them actionable, but you won’t get a coherent set of ideas.

This probably sounds so obvious, but it’s an easy trap to fall into. As analysts, it’s easy to be so familiar with the scope and context of a project that we assume everyone knows it. Yet that’s rarely the case, so spending a few moments to outline the core objectives and outcomes can really help.

This also highlights another key point: It’s absolutely crucial to understand the business objectives and outcomes being sought. Trying to elicit and prioritize without knowing the outcomes is virtually impossible. How can anyone say requirement A is in scope (or not), and whether it’s more important than requirement B if there’s no clear agreement over the ultimate outcomes being sought?

Conclusion: Shine The Light On Elicitation

It’s easy, particularly as an experienced practitioner, to let elicitation become second nature. That is completely natural. But perhaps it is worth spending time now and again reflecting on how we elicit and whether it is still effective. Although it might not be a headline-grabbing topic, elicitation is absolutely crucial to what we all do!