Skip to main content

Tag: Business Analysis

Filling your Toolbox: Factors that Influence BA Skill Development

wick Sept17Everyone has a career toolbox—a collection of tips, tricks, skills and techniques. The tools accumulate over time:

  • Some tools come with the toolbox: innate gifts, talents.
  • We purchase tools: training, degrees, memberships in professional organizations.
  • Other people buy or donate tools: employers offer training, mentors, experience.
  • If we are inventive, we build our own tools.

Most BAs have a few standard tools they use frequently, but many of the tools just lay in the toolbox, unused. We don’t schedule time to check inventory, get rid of old tools, determine what is missing or anticipate future needs. We don’t fill our toolboxes efficiently or effectively.

BAs need to fill their tool boxes, but they shouldn’t fill them passively—just accepting the opportunities presented. Instead, BAs should choose, with intention, which skills they add. 

Three factors influence this purpose-driven approach to BA skill development:

  • Awareness
  • Desire
  • Support

If individuals and organizations cultivate these attributes, BA skill development efforts will be effective, efficient and will provide lasting value. 

Awareness 

BAs can’t develop skills effectively unless they understand the strength and value of their current capabilities. 

So, what’s the current state of your BA toolbox?

  • Do you know your strengths and weaknesses?
  • Which competencies have you mastered?
  • Which competencies are missing?
  • Which skills will future projects require?
  • Which skills will be required for career advancement?
  • Which skills are valued by your organization?
  • What business/technology/cultural trends will influence the value of certain skills?

Essentially, you need to be aware of your own capabilities, but also understand how external entities value your skills. 

Here are a few ways to cultivate awareness:

  1. Complete a BA skill assessment. You can do this informally by creating a comprehensive list of BA skills from sources like the BABOK and then rating your mastery of each skill on a scale of 1-5 or you can use the IIBA’s competency assessment tool
  2. Track stakeholder feedback. Make note of verbal and non-verbal feedback you receive from stakeholders. Find patterns and trends that indicate your strengths and weaknesses.
  3. Maximize your annual evaluation process. For those lucky enough to receive meaningful performance reviews—take advantage of the opportunity—get honest feedback from your manager.
    • Ask about your reputation.
    • Define skill-related goals.
    • Suggest new skills that would benefit the organization.
  4. Evaluate training provided by your organization.
    • Why is the training being offered?
    • How can you apply the skills in your current environment?
    • What are the expectations upon completing training?
  5. Compare yourself to others. Choose a few BAs you admire or consider successful. Identify their strengths. Determine if developing similar skills would help you achieve your goals.
  6. Review industry job descriptions:
    • Which skills appeal to you?
    • Which skills seem to be in highest demand?
    • Do you have all of the skills required for your dream position?

Desire

Since the BA role centers on facilitating change in an organization, BAs need to be willing to change themselves too. BAs can’t develop skills effectively without the desire to learn, grow, experiment or improve. Without desire, BA skills get old and begin to lose value.

A BA with desire:

  • Advocates for training, mentoring or experiences that will bring value to the BA role and the organization.
  • Takes risks by experimenting with new skills and techniques.
  • Practices new skills until they see results—do not just try skills once with ho-hum results and not try again.

An organization wishing to cultivate desire:

  • Establishes a vision for the BA team.
  • Identifies and communicates the skill set needed to achieve the vision.
  • Communicates expected results.
  • Provides answers to: “How will new skills address my pain and challenges in my job?”

Support

Some BAs have awareness and desire, but find skill development limited by the leaders in their organizations. 

Many BAs report to technical or business managers that do not have a clear understanding of the BA role. BAs in this position often struggle to obtain meaningful skill development opportunities.

In organizations where skill development is a priority, this is what you might experience:

  • Leaders encouraging the use of new tools and techniques.
  • Leaders modeling desired behavior by experimenting with new skills.
  • Stakeholders, team members, and peers accepting change and encouraging experimentation.
  • Skill development plans with flexibility to accommodate learning styles.
  • A strong team atmosphere.
  • A healthy respect for the lessons-learned from failure.

Can you think of other factors influence BA skill development? Please leave your comments below.

Don’t forget to leave your comments below.

BA Practice Lead Handbook 10 – Business Analyst Practice Sustainability: Change the Way we do Projects

The remaining articles in this series will be about sustainability: building a BA practice to last. In this piece, we present the BA Practice Lead’s role as critical to changing the way we do projects to focus on business benefits, customer value, creativity, and innovation.

Changing the Way We Do Projects

An organization’s culture is durable because it is “the way we do things around here.” Changing the way it selects projects, develops and manages requirements, and manages projects, while focusing not only on business value but also on innovation, is likely a significant shift for an organization. Even today, many organizational cultures still promote the practice of piling project requests, accompanied by sparse requirements, onto the IT and new-product development groups and then wondering why they cannot seem to deliver.

Creating and Sustaining the New Vision of Project Work

A common vision is essential for an organization to bring about significant change. A clear vision helps to direct, align, and inspire people’s actions.

Whether implementing professional business analysis practices, a new innovative product, or a major new business solution, the business analyst needs to articulate a clear vision and involve the stakeholders in the initiative as early as possible. Executives and middle managers are essential allies in bringing about change of any magnitude. They all must deliver a consistent message about the need for the change. Select the most credible and influential members of your organization, seek their advice and counsel, and have them become the voice of change. The greater the number of influential managers, executives, and technical/business experts articulating the same vision, the better chance you have of being successful.

Implementing Cultural Change

Rita Hadden, specialist in software best practices, process improvement, and corporate culture change, offers some insight into the enormity of the effort to truly change the way we do projects. To achieve culture change, Hadden suggests organizations must have a management plan to deal with the technical complexity of the change and a leadership plan to address the human aspects of the change. According to Hadden, successful culture change requires a mix the following elements:

  • A compelling vision and call to action
  • Credible knowledge and skills to guide the change
  • A reward system aligned with the change
  • Adequate resources to implement the change
  • A detailed plan and schedule.

Make sure you understand the concerns and motivations of the people you hope to influence. Clearly define the desired outcomes for the change and how to measure progress, assess the organization’s readiness for change, and develop plans to minimize the barriers to success. The goal of your BA Practice is to create a critical mass, a situation in which enough people in the organization integrate professional business analysis practices into their projects and maintain them as a standard. To become leaders in their organizations, your business analysts need to learn all about change management—becoming skilled change experts. 

Fostering Creative Leadership

I must follow the people, am I not their leader?
—Benjamin Disraeli, British Prime Minister, parliamentarian, statesman and literary figure

Creativity has always been important in the world of business, but until now it hasn’t been at the top of the management agenda. Perhaps this is because creativity was considered too vague, too hard to pin down. It is even more likely that creativity has not been the focus of management attention because concentrating on it produced a less immediate dividend than improving execution. Although there are similarities in the roles of manager, leader, and creative leader, there are subtle differences as well. The table below shows the distinctions between these roles. 

Objective Manager Leader Creative Leader
Define what must be done

Planning and budgeting:

  • Short time frame
  • Detail oriented
  • Eliminate risk

Establishing direction:

  • Long time frame
  • Big picture
  • Calculated risk

Establishing breakthrough goals and objectives:

  • Envisioning the future direction
  • Aligning with and forging new strategy
Create networks of people and relationships

Organizing and staffing:

  • Specialization
  • Getting the right people
  • Compliance

Aligning people:

  • Integration
  • Aligning the organization
  • Gaining commitment

Aligning teams and stakeholders to the future vision:

  • Innovation
  • Integration
  • Expectations
  • Political mastery
  • Gaining commitment;
Ensure the job gets done Controlling and problem-solving:

  • Containment
  • Control
  • Predictability

Motivating and inspiring:

  • Empowerment
  • Expansion
  • Energizing

Building creative teams:

  • High performance
  • Trust development
  • Empowerment
  • Courageous disruption
  • Innovation

Comparison of Managers, Leaders, and Creative Leaders

Sustaining a Culture of Creativity

Good, and sometimes great, ideas often come from operational levels of organizations when workers are given a large degree of autonomy. To stay competitive in the 21st century, CEOs are attempting to distribute creative responsibility up, down, and across the organization. Success is unsustainable if it depends too much on the ingenuity of a single person or a few people, as is too often seen in start-ups that flourish for a few years and then fall flat; they were not built to last, to continually innovate. Success is no longer about continuous improvement; it is about continuous innovation. Because creativity is, in part, the ability to produce something novel, we have long acknowledged that creativity is essential to the entrepreneurship that starts new businesses. But what sustains the best companies as they try to achieve a global reach? We are now beginning to realize that in the 21st century, sustainability is about creativity, transformation, and innovation.

Although academia has focused on creativity for years (we have decades of research to draw on), the shift to a more innovation-driven economy has been sudden, as evidenced by the fact that CEOs lament the absence of creative leaders. As competitive positioning turns into a contest of who can generate the best and greatest number of innovations, creativity scholars are being asked pointed questions about their research. What guidance is available for leaders in creativity-dependent businesses? How do we creatively manage the complexities of this new global environment? How do we find creative leaders, and how do we nurture and manage them? The conclusion of participants in the Harvard Business School colloquium Creativity, Entrepreneurship, and Organizations of the Future was that “one doesn’t manage creativity; one manages for creativity.” Management’s role is to get the creative people, position them at the right time and place, remove all barriers imposed upon them by the organization, and then get out of their way.
Putting it all Together

So what does this mean for the Business Analyst?

Understand Creativity as an Art and a Discipline. BAs would be prudent to take into account the views of John Kao, author of Jamming: The Art and Discipline of Business Creativity. According to Kao, drawing up a “Creativity Bill of Rights” can help you and your team members feel as if they are truly responsible for their own decisions. The Creativity Bill of Rights proclaims the following beliefs:

  • Everyone has the ability to be creative.
  • All ideas deserve an impartial hearing.
  • Similar to quality, creativity is part of every job description.
  • Shutting down dialogue prematurely and excessive judgment are fundamental transgressions.
  • Creativity is about finding balance between art and discipline.
  • Creativity involves openness to an extensive variety of inputs.
  • Experiments are always encouraged.
  • Dignified failure is respectable, poor implementation or bad choices are not.
  • Creativity involves mastery of change.
  • Creativity involves a balance of intuition and facts.
  • Creativity can and should be managed. The business analyst instinctively knows when to bring the dialogue to a close.
  • Creative work is not an excuse for chaos, disarray, or sloppiness in execution.

So what does this mean for the BA Practice Lead?

Mature organizations devote a significant amount of time and energy to conducting due diligence and encouraging experimentation and creativity before rushing to construction. The due diligence activities include enterprise analysis, competitive analysis, problem analysis, and creative solution alternative analysis, all performed before selecting and prioritizing projects.

This new approach involves a significant cultural shift for most organizations—spending more time up front to make certain the solution is creative, innovative, and even disruptive. If you are a BA Practice Lead, insist on these up front activities before a Business Case is created and used to propose a new initiative. If your BAs are on projects and these activities have not been adequately performed, help them pull together a small expert team and facilitate them through this important due diligence and create/recreate the business cases for their projects.

Portions of this article are adapted with permission from The Enterprise Business Analyst: Developing Creative Solutions to Complex Business Problems by Kathleen B. Hass, PMP. © 2011 by Management Concepts, Inc. All rights reserved. The Enterprise Business Analyst: Developing Creative Solutions to Complex Business Problems

Don’t forget to leave your comments below.

References

  • Rita Chao Hadden, Leading Culture Change in Your Software Organization: Delivering Results Early (Vienna, VA: Management Concepts, 2003), Page 133-226.
  • Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman, “The Creativity Crisis,” Newsweek (July 19, 2010): 44–50,  (accessed April 2011).
  • Teresa M. Amabile and Mukti Khaire, “Creativity and the Role of the Leader,” Harvard Business Review (October 2008),(accessed July 2010).
  • John Kao, Jamming: The Art and Discipline of Business Creativity (New York: Harper Collins, 1996Page 75-93.

How to Use High-Level Requirements to Select the Right Supplier for your Project

If you know ahead of time that your organization will be purchasing rather than building software, how can you use high-level requirements to ensure good outcomes? And how does the requirements process for purchased software differ from that of a standard development project?

The key difference in a supplier selection process: you are buying functionality that already exists. While you will likely customize and configure the software, that customization is not necessarily going to yield exactly the same end result as if you developed the software internally.

Given that difference, it makes sense to gather high-level requirements to short-list vendors, and select the winning supplier using that level of detail. You can then work with the supplier to specify the detailed requirements necessary to configure and implement the supplier solution, integrate it to existing systems and custom build any missing functionality.

Inherently, you will be forced to really focus on the core requirements and leave design out of the picture while you choose the supplier. Once you have selected a supplier, you will find it very challenging to speak about requirements without talking about the design of the solution you selected.

As you compare supplier software, you will probably have to make some tough decisions. For example, let’s say you have four features. One supplier may support features one through three. Another supplier supports features two through four. A decision maker on the project has to weigh all of the factors to make a choice, including (but not limited to) factors like: cost to buy and implement each solution, price to build the missing feature in each case, cost of not having one of the features, and time to implement.

Without scoping high-level requirements, you could be well into evaluation when end users or others decide that feature four wasn’t really a requirement after all!

Step-by-Step Approach to Selecting a Supplier

We use the following process to select our suppliers and minimize throwaway work:

  1. Define the high-level requirements. This may take the form of named use cases or features.
  2. Define the actors that will use the functionality.
  3. Specify more detailed requirements based on the highest risk areas.
  4. Research the marketplace to identify a list of potential suppliers. This can be done by surveying SMEs, doing web research or and/or speaking with peers, colleagues, and trusted advisors.
  5. Narrow the list of suppliers down to the top three to five, based on how closely they match the requirements gathered.
  6. Have the suppliers do high-level demos of the solution. Eliminate any that do not seem to be a fit at this point.
  7. Create test cases using the requirements gathered to sufficiently demonstrate how each supplier measures against the requirements.
  8. Have the suplliers demonstrate how their solution satisfies the detailed requirements, measured by execution of the test cases.
  9. Create a comparison matrix with each test case (and all other measurement criteria you care about) to directly compare the suppliers.
  10. Gather information from the supplier beyond just the functional capabilities.
    1. Gather pricing data – licenses, support, installation, training, etc.
    2. Ensure the supplier’s business operations are acceptable
    3. Determine if their support structure is acceptable
    4. Understand what their development roadmap looks like
    5. Perform reference checks with colleague
  11. Decision maker chooses a supplier.

Once a supplier is selected, the detailed requirements gathering process should continue. Your detailed requirements should be focused on the scope dictated by the supplier you selected. In standard development projects you would expect to go into more detail on most areas of the system, to ensure you understood the requirements to build a complete solution. In supplier selection projects, however, there will likely be pieces of functionality they demonstrate to you, and, based on high-level requirements and risk, you realize their solution is sufficient and do not need to explore it further.

If there is an area in which there is a lot of flexibility in the supplier solution, you should specify that in more detail. Obviously if there is a gap between critical requirements and the solution the supplier provides, you should go into greater depth on those requirements. Points of integration should be explored in detail. It is worth noting that you will typically spend more time updating existing processes to work with the supplier solution, whereas in standard software development you may build software that fits into existing processes.

Don’t forget to leave your comments below.  

Carl’s Top Ten List of Questioning Techniques for New and Not So New Business Analysts

(Courtesy of the School of Hard Knocks)

Numerous studies on the failure of IT projects has indicated that the lack of user involvement as one of the leading contributors. As Business Analysts we realize it is not only the quantity of involvement but also the quality of that involvement. Good questioning techniques allow Business Analysts to constructed the required models from which requirements are elicited.

One of the most frequently asked questions by new (and not so new) Business Analysts is about questioning techniques and what questions to ask. Here, in David Letterman style, is my top ten.

10. Be prepared. 

We ask questions to elicit information that allow us to construct and validate models. So make a list of questions:

  • Where do you sit in the organization (org model)
  • What are your inputs / outputs?
  • Can you give me an example of them?
  • What are the volumes
  • What is the quality of inputs /of outputs? (i.e. what is the metric)
  • What is the flow of work

These are at the information level i.e. getting the facts, figures, information. Being prepared will help completeness. With the information gathered, could you construct the models desired?

9. Ask open ended questions

Open ended questions i.e. what is the toughest part of your job? This allows people to as we say ‘walk in with their stuff’. It allows them to bring up what is important to them. .

  • allow them to walk in with their stuff
  • allow them to identify their issues
  • don’t give them leading questions

Sometimes this unearths significant problems. True sometimes open ended questions lead down rat holes. My view? The user will talk about them or at least have their concern colouring their answers. Better to get them out on the table, deal with them and move on.

8. Follow the lead of the interviewee without giving up control

  • You control the interview
  • You do that by blending your agenda to their style
  • It’s not a battle of styles – reflect the interviewee style
  • Follow the lead of the interviewee but be prepared to re-direct as required
  • The purpose of the interview is for you to get the info you need

7. Draw a picture…in pencil

  • It’s an iterative process …let it be that
  • Build models and let the user alter them
  • Stretch and direct the users thinking

(thinking now of data flow…thinking now about inputs/outputs, thinking now about quality metrics) 

6. Talk to the consumer of your analysis document

  • You are the liaison between the business and IT
  • Are the consumers getting what they need to do their job?
  • How do you know they are?
  • There are standard modeling techniques derived for good reasons – use them
  • Be part of making them even better – we are always in transition

5. Ask probing questions

  • Why is it so important to you?
  • What keeps you up at night?
  • If you could change three things about the process what would they be?
  • Make them think not just give you facts and process flows
  • These are higher level questions than information gathering

4. Use active listening to ensure understanding

  • Make sure you understand in a way the interviewee intends
  • Ask clarifying questions
  • Ask for examples
  • Paraphrase and then ask ‘Did I get that right?’

Make sure you get a confident confirmation before continuing, otherwise try again until you do get it right from the user’s perspective. 

3. Talk to the horse as well as the trainer

  • Everyone has a view of the problem
  • All views are valid from their own point of view
  • One point of contact is efficient but can you get everything you need?
  • Ask questions they know the answer rather than questions they would have to speculate on the answer.

An executive is unlikely to give accurate process flow but may well know the intent. The reverse is true of the front line workers. 

2. Ask questions to validate answers

  • Ask the same question in different ways and to different people
  • look for metrics
  • look for established methods and procedures to validate
  • resolve discrepancies – when issues are in question attempt to resolve
  • at the very least identify the discrepancy

It is a common error to assume we know more than we do, When we ask a question to which we already know the answer very quickly we learn otherwise and begin to validate information.

1. You are a leader in your organization

  • You represent the interests of the business unit
  • You match business needs to requirements
  • You specify the requirements which satisfy a business objectives/achieve business goals and represent the executive level intent.
  • If you do not represent the needs and interests of the project and executive intent who will?

Don’t forget to leave your comments below.

Decision Making: An Underlying Competency or What A Business Analyst Does

kupe Aug27I don’t read the BABOK® all the time, but when I do I focus on the Underlying Competencies. This area is somewhat hidden but needs to be found by all business analysis professionals. The Underlying Competency knowledge area in the BABOK® provides a description of the behaviors, characteristics, knowledge and personal qualities that support the practice of business analysis. However I say they don’t support what you do as a business analysis professional, it is what you do as a business analysis professional. For today’s post I am going to have us take a look at a specific Underlying Competency—decision making—to make my case.

You should view decision making not as something that supports your work, but rather all analysis techniques and processes support decision making. One of your main responsibilities is to help others make better decisions. If decisions are not made during a project nothing can be accomplished. Think about your work. How do you decide on what tasks to do first in your day? We all know that there is not enough time in the day to do everything you want to accomplish. Therefore, you have to make decisions on a daily basis of what activities you should or should not focus on, prioritization. This decision should be based on the work yielding the highest impact on the issues that are most important to your customers. Before you can make good decisions about what to focus on, you need to help your customer decide what is most important to them. To help them do this use supporting techniques and processes, examples include Impact Mapping, Root Cause Analysis, and defining the problem and business outcomes. You see, these tools help to make decisions; decision making does not support them.

Throughout a project there are so many activities that support decision making. One of the key reasons for undertaking stakeholder analysis is to determine who the decision makers are and how they make decisions. Not everyone will agree on the top priorities for the project, so understanding who makes the final decision is critical. If you can’t get a group to decide on the best path, this decision maker has to make the call so the project can move forward. The absence of a decision maker means the risk of project failure increases.

Once you know who the decision makers are you need to know their speed in decision making and what information they’ll need to make a decision. How do you find this out? By asking them. When it comes to the speed of decision making, I split people into two groups: The first is the person that does not want any information until the last responsible moment, and then they want it all. They can take in this information and make a decision fairly quickly. The other wants information over time. Even if the information is changing, they like to get the information so it can whirl around in their head for a longer period of time. Then, when they need to make a decision they feel comfortable making the call. If you approach either one in the opposite way, they will get frustrated. Stakeholder analysis supports decision making!

Elicitation is another activity that completely supports decision making. What? Elicitation is about drawing out information. Yes, this is true, but who cares if you draw out information and don’t use it. You draw out information to help make decisions. Sometimes I think brainstorming is the most misunderstood activity because it gets viewed as a way to quickly come up with ideas. There is so much more to brainstorming. After coming up with great ideas you have to make decisions about how to move forward, like ordering features or stories in terms of importance. The beauty of brainstorming is it allows for the best chance of buy-in. By having everyone share their thoughts and ideas openly they are more likely to buy into a decision on moving forward. Their idea does not have to be chosen, they just need to know their idea was heard by the group. I wrote a blog post about buy-in if you want more information about it.

The last technique I want to hit on today is prototyping. You draw pictures of a part of the system to help your customer make decisions on how they want to interact with a system. You can have multiple pictures and play the eye doctor role, do you like it better like this or like this…one….or two. And it helps the development team decide on the best ways to design the system or features.

Start thinking of all the analysis techniques and processes as tools to facilitate decision making. Having this mindset will allow you to make decisions about what is most important. If the activity you are about to take on helps the team come to a good decision faster: do it.

I have decided I have said enough for now!

Kupe