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Does a Business Analyst have a role to play in innovation?

Written by Shamiem Smail on . Posted in Articles. 1 Comment on Does a Business Analyst have a role to play in innovation?

Can you even imagine Lionel Messi or Cristiano Ronaldo jumping up-and-down on the edge of the soccer fields screaming “pick-me, pick-me”. Absolutely absurd right, people pay big bucks to have them on their team! This is how I feel when the topic of innovation comes up in business. I can see the value a BA can add because it’s as clear as day for me and the team, but no one else seems to see the contribution that a BA can make. We would love to scream from the rooftops that this is what we’ve have been trained to do; we have the toolset to tackle the challenge – we can add value, we are knowledge workers.

This is becoming a common occurrence for BA’s, when faced with the question “How can I take my business from being a commodity (widget) to being an integrator?”

A commodity/widget is produced to serve a specific purpose without any additional value add, and as such is easily replicated. A widget by definition is generic and non-descript.

The integrator not only serves the purpose at hand, but also explores and delivers additional value. Its aim is to continuously understand, adapt and deliver that extra bit, so that the consumer is always amazed and left wanting more. It’s the edge you can give to the business- keeping it a step ahead of everyone else.

As a senior BA, you are trained to identify and quantify the opportunity. You are able to:

  • articulate the opportunity,
  • identify which component it impacts,
  • how it impacts them and
  • list what would be needed to realize the opportunity at hand and its associated benefits.

BA’s can deliver the innovation magic by enabling and empowering the associated thought processes.

It is recommended that there is BA involvement from when the opportunity is in it’s infancy of being crafted and shaped.

Facilitation is an integral part of the BA tool box, how about combining facilitation with Random Word Association and Vision Boarding.

In the words of the innovation guru at my organization: “Remember that an integral part of innovation and the key to its success is fun, positivity and loads of ideas“.

In very simplistic terms, Random Word Association is a creativity technique that allows you stimulate lateral thinking by associating a randomly chosen word to the opportunity at hand. The word selected is an arbitrary word with no obvious connection to the opportunity: the audience is forced to think outside of the box. By no stretch of the imagination do I claim that there is a direct correlation between the first random word chosen and the ultimate solution that is chosen. The value of this technique is in the ability to get the participants to have fun while crafting a potential solution, and, to also get the cobwebs cleaned out in the minds of the participants. Cobwebs in these instances refer to the old way of thinking.

You will not achieve a paradigm shift if the association made is predictable; hence the need to randomly select a word with not intended association with the opportunity. The generation of a plethora of ideas allows for a greater selection of thoughts to be funneled into the actual filtering process.

In order to find a true gem of an idea there needs to be a proliferation of ideas. Make it a fun and inclusive process for both the generation and selection of the idea.

Now that the participants have managed to both articulate and select an idea from the Random Word Association exercise, I would recommend the use of a Vision Board.

How many times were you willing to bet that you had the requirements “down pat”, but there was potentially a difference in your understanding and what the business understood their requirement to be?

This is where you needed to validate the requirement to ensure alignment in understanding i.e. “To ensure that all requirements support the delivery of value to the business, fulfill its goals and objectives, and meet a stakeholder need”.
In keeping with the sprite of validating, Vision boarding allows you to validate the concept that was born from the Random Word Association exercise. It is a graphical representation of what the potential solution to the opportunity should look like. It’s a collage of images, words and sketches of what the participants feel the solution should look like. It’s also a novel and artistic way of visually depicting the elements and “feel” of the potential solution. Ensure that the vision board is a clear, uncluttered representation of how the participants envision the potential solution. This clarity of vision enables all parties to be on the same page. An ambiguity or misunderstanding can potentially be picked up at this point.

A word of caution here so as not to create false expectations or misconceptions, this is not a silver bullet. At no point in this process can you make any promises that this is what the solution will look like. But if you are restricting participants too early in the process, how can you hope to be innovative?

Sometimes innovation means looking at a problem differently and then making a slight adjustment to the existing solution. In other situations, it means a radical departure from the norm, turning the world inside-out.

I would hate to face a “Quartz Revolution”, by allowing our business to continue to believe that the status quo and the way things have been done in the past will allow us to innovate for the future. The Swiss watch makers were very comfortable with the traditional mechanical watches, and did not move to quartz technology. Economic upheaval and near collapse of the industry was caused by the short sightedness of the Swiss in this instance. Let us empower the business to view us as an integral cog of innovation and be part of the process of becoming integrators.

How will you know if it works, if you’ve never tried it!

Let’s get the conversations started!

Don’t forget to leave your comments below.

The BA Role: Has it really changed in the last 15 years?

Written by Angela Wick on . Posted in Articles.

As I tweet my latest BA adventures, I ask Siri to find the best restaurants near my hotel, Skype with friends in Mexico, and order my favorite bottles of Napa Valley wine on Amazon, I can’t help but be amazed by how much technology has saturated my life in the last 15 years.

Internet, email, mobile devices, “the cloud” and social media have transformed the personal and professional lives of a huge portion of our world’s population in such a short amount of time.

Visionaries like Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos, etc. get most of the media credit for the technology explosion, but instead of focusing on their undoubtedly awesome leadership, I often find myself thinking about project teams. I think about the thousands of programmers, project managers, architects, testers, and of course business analysts—that move the vision to reality.

Given this technology explosion, one would expect that the tools, processes and procedures used to deliver technology have evolved dramatically in the past 15 years as well.

What do you think? Has project life changed in the last 15 years? A lot, a little or not at all? When focusing on the BA role, have the primary functions of the BA evolved? Have BA tools and techniques changed? Have the deliverables changed?

Have the mindset and behaviors changed?

Here are a few thoughts about how project life has changed and how those changes impact the BA role:

Higher Stakes

Whether a project delivers solutions to internal or external customers, the stakes are higher in 2014 than they were in the 1990s. In the past, system and process errors often had manual back-up procedures. The people around then still remembered what the business rules and logic are.

Now, we are so dependent on technology, that, in many cases, business shuts down when the system does not work— orders don’t process, inventory does not move, money doesn’t flow, customers/employees jump ship.

These high stakes impact the BA role in the following ways:

  • Accurate requirements become even more important than in the past as customers and operations are impacted more when requirements are missed.
  • Contingency plans for key functions become critical to protect employee/customer relationships.
  • BAs become risk managers and need to effectively communicate risks, dependencies, and constraints so that projects do not move forward with bugs, gaps or inefficiencies that will compromise the value of the solution being implemented.
  • The partnership between BAs and QA (test teams) needs to be stronger. BAs need to help QA prioritize test cases and provide context and expected results for key test cases.
  • The partnership between PM and BA needs to be stronger than ever, both managing key aspects of value, risk, and complexity impacting how both roles work with stakeholders and manage scope and priorities.
  • A competitive environment in most industries that changes quicker than most project can keep up. This means high stakes if teams cannot flex to the changes, BAs need to be able to adapt and work with changing requirements to ensure the most value is delivered.

Increased Complexity

Fifteen years ago, most BAs were probably working on in-house software/process projects that involved 2-3 systems and a multitude of manual paper procedures, supporting a single business unit or product. The entire project team probably shared space on one floor (or even one large room) and many of the stakeholders were just a few floors away. BAs often grew to understand systems and processes so well, they did not need extensive assistance from subject matter experts.

Business and project complexity grows as companies expand and merge, and it’s happening more often and faster than before. In many cases, dozens of systems interact, integrations and interfaces are critical and complex, users expect more form systems, and BAs gather information from people across the country and even across the globe.

Increased complexity pushes BAs to:

  • Strengthen their elicitation techniques to account for the immense amount of information complexity, and cross-functional connections; amounts no single person can possibly keep up with as their own knowledge base.
  • Transform elicitation skills and techniques to discover requirements that are unknown when the project starts. Helping the team discover requirements they did not know they had, but add immense value to the changing landscape.
  • Strengthen analysis techniques to make the critical connections between functions, processes, rules, data and user experience end to end.
  • Increase the use of collaboration techniques. In the past, solutions may have been more obvious. Now defining solutions for complex systems requires meaningful collaboration from a diverse group of stakeholders who are rarely in the same city.
  • Strengthen their facilitation techniques to help stakeholders focus, prioritize, and discover requirements as we learn together.

More vendor package software

Packaged software purchases from third-party vendors also add complexity to projects. Organizations assume packaged software solutions offer reduced costs and efficient implementation and are surprised when project delivery is not seamless.

As organizations expand their use of packaged software, BAs must:

  • Define vendor roles and responsibilities, especially understanding the role the vendor BA and client BA. The vendor BA’s role is to be a functional expert of the vendor application, functions and options. The client BA needs to be the voice of what the user and process goals and business rules are to meet the solution objectives.
  • Quickly build strong and trusting relationships with vendors, yet keeping vendors accountable for bringing options and alternatives to realize requirements.
  • Understand and evaluate vendor requirements strategies, and options to meet requirements. Escalate any related issues that would impact solution value.
  • Quickly map current systems/processes to packaged software process/functions. Understand and communicate gaps and changes to stakeholders. Prototype, pilot and test quickly to understand requirements and designs fully.
  • Understand when to leverage vendor knowledge and when to leverage business knowledge to ensure value from the package.

Less time to do requirements

Time and cost have always been focus of solution delivery. Organizations apply strong pressure on their project teams to deliver solutions faster. Our stakeholders have less time too, which means we need to alter our practices to work more efficiently.

In recent years, this pressure has resulted in tighter timelines for business analysis and requirements. With increased complexity and shorter timelines in 2014, BAs need to:

  • Reevaluate BA practices and techniques to maximize efficiency.
  • Reevaluate how we use meeting time, collaborate more, and in smaller groups to get work done.
  • Reevaluate how we document requirements; watch our level of detail for each audience; document in pieces and context rather than big requirements documents.
  • More alignment to other projects needed to integrate value across solutions.
  • Understand and communicate solution priorities and risks; base the requirements and testing plans accordingly.
  • Ask for more time if needed with a solid plan in place to provide value to the stakeholders, and identified risks in business terms if time is not allocated.

Agile Approach

In the 1990s, most BAs worked in a traditional waterfall environment where templates were the norm and the software development life cycle was clearly defined with a regimented organization-wide or application release schedule.

Many organizations continue to operate in this fashion, but more organizations are trending to using an Agile or hybrid approach to deliver solutions.

The role of the BA in projects using an Agile or hybrid approach can be a bit ambiguous, but in general this Agile or hybrid approach compliments a movement toward more collaboration and flexibility in solution delivery, and less focus on SDLC process.

BAs working on projects using an Agile or hybrid approach need to:

  • Utilize techniques that inspire collaboration and meaningful dialogue to generate effective and innovative solutions.
  • Understand their role and how it adds value to the solution delivery.
  • Understand timing and deliverables may change, but mindset and what we do as a BA does not.
  • Advocate for the value they add to the project.
  • Let go of role definition based on governance processes and focus on the essence, value, and goal of what you do as a BA.

How has your BA role changed over the years? Are you still generating 100+ page BRDs?

Don’t forget to leave your comments below.

Getting Outside Your Box

Written by Dr. Surya M. Ganduri on . Posted in Articles.

If I hear the phrase “think outside the box” one more time, I am going to explode. That old saw has been around for decades and is so hoary the cardboard has all rotted away. We are all familiar with the overused phrase, “thinking outside the box.” For purposes of trying to make a point, I am going to use the analogy one more time as it applies to people rather than ideas, then try to forget the phrase ever existed. For this article, I want to assume us as individuals, and probe ways we can break out of our constraints in order to get more out of life.Ganduri 1 Oct21

The concept I wanted to share is the question, “How can you know when you are operating in a box, and what steps can you take to get out of it?” Perhaps a corollary question might be, “Why would you want to get outside your box?” These questions sound innocent and easy enough to address, but the more you think about them, the more intriguing they become. To begin with, let’s define what being “in a box” means, in the context of this article.

Ganduri 2 Oct21

Just for a moment, think about some of the things you would do if there were no constraints in your life. I believe we accept constraints too readily and need some kind of jolt every once in a while to recognize that we are really steering the ship of our life. You are in a box when you are imposing some kind of walls or barriers that contain you and prevent the freedom to do things that would enrich your life in some way. With that broad definition, I doubt there is a person alive who is not in some kind of a box every day of his or her life.

I will list six methods you can use to create the freedom to do more of those elusive things that are on your bucket list. My question is, what other methods would you add to my list to make it more complete?

  1. Take Personal Responsibility – Your attitudes form a large portion of self constraints
  2. Recognize Your Boxes – Learn to see through your blind spots
  3. Look for Creative Solutions – More than one way to take that trip
  4. Listen to your inner voice – vividly visualize your desire
  5. Document your goals – write down what you want to do
  6. Just Do It! – Be concrete, and plan to do what you dream about

Here are some tips for recognizing the boxes you are creating for yourself and getting out of them.

1. Take Personal Responsibility

It is easy to blame circumstance, luck, situations, other people, low IQ, lack of money, and a host of other external factors for a feeling of helplessness. Blaming external factors is really taking the easy way out. The cold reality is that you almost always have the ability to at least influence external factors, and you always have the opportunity to choose your reaction to them. If you step up to the personal power that is built into every human being, you can find creative ways to eventually burrow through the sides of the boxes that constrain you.

2. Learn to Recognize Your Boxes

If you have a blind spot about the box that contains you, it is impossible to feel the anticipation of what it might be like to get rid of it. I don’t know, who the author is for this quote, but it is one of my favorite top 10 quotations: “Success comes in cans… failures in can’ts.” Whenever we think we cannot do something, that is a signal that we are in some kind of box. That may be a good or bad thing, but at least we need to be conscious of it.

3. Look For Creative Solutions

Looking for alternative solutions to the blockages that hold us back can be a kind of game that really pays off. The logical approach to take may be only one of numerous ways to break out of your box.

Here is an example: Suppose I wanted to know what it is like to be a ballet dancer. If you could look at me, you would immediately giggle, because my build is the opposite of what is required (and I am not a female either). A straightforward approach would be to buy some of those tie-on slippers and sign up for ballet lessons. Just the thought of me trying to do a pirouette in tights causes me to hide under the bed.

Am I blocked from experiencing that aspect of life? Not at all! There are dozens of ways I can become more aware of what it is like to be a ballet dancer. Reading, watching documentaries, corresponding with dancers, going to the ballet, etc., are all alternative ways to have that life experience.

4. Listen To Your Inner Voice

When you feel uneasy about some course of action, don’t be embarrassed to go with your feelings. Do not let logic or group pressure talk you into something that doesn’t feel right. Trust your instincts and listen to your inner voice. We all have levels of knowledge that cannot be explained by logic or science, but that doesn’t mean they don’t exist.

The more you listen to that little inner voice in your head, the clearer it gets. Instead of ignoring this unexplainable sense, develop it by paying attention and acting accordingly.

When we ignore a warning and have to pay a high price for our decision, that’s called regret. On the other hand, the absence of a problem is the same as a blessing.

5. Document Your Goals

If you have not documented what you would like to do, how can you tell what other boxes you might like to sit in for a while? Lou Holtz tells a cute story about how he lost his job one time and was really depressed being out of work. His wife bought him a book on setting goals. Without ambitious goals, the spark of life is missing, so Lou started writing down some goals. He wanted to go to the White House for dinner, he wanted to be on The Tonight Show, he wanted to coach at Notre Dame, he wanted to be Coach of the Year. After he got done writing down all his goals, he was pretty excited. He went to his wife and said, “Look at these goals, I have got 107 of those suckers and we are going to do every one of them.” His wife replied, “Gee, that’s nice. Why don’t you add ‘get a job’?” So they made it 108. He said his whole life changed.

6. Just Do It

Too many people are living on a desert island called “Someday Isle.” Do you know how many people have started a book but never finished it? I know dozens of people in that circumstance. I also know others who say “I have got a book in me, and someday I am going to get to it.” Or someone else might say, “Someday I am going to take a cruise.” I think we need to be careful with the phrase “Someday I’ll,” because it means we are content to sit in our box and perpetually dream about some other experience. What a tragedy to be lying on your death bed and regret not doing things that you always dreamed of doing. If you can no longer climb your mountain, at least you can go to the mountain, see it, and smell the fresh air.

Have the resolve to be some of the things that you have imagined in your dreams. If you are creative, there are ways to rip open the side of your box and perhaps create a bigger box or leave entirely for some period of time. What fun, and isn’t that what life is supposed to be all about?

Don’t forget to leave your comments below.

Business Analyst: The Strategic Implications

Written by Phil Ventresca on . Posted in Articles. 2 Comments on Business Analyst: The Strategic Implications

The new role of the BA is far more strategic in both the organizational sense as well as at the project level. In fact, I would go as far as to say that the BA, when appropriately leveraged, represents a liaison between business, project and customer teams. This shift in responsibilities identifies two areas that need to be addressed by any organization seeking to expand this role:

  • The organizational structure must support the actions of a “strategic” BA position.
  • The BA candidate must have wide skill sets, encompassing many generalmanagement competencies.

As organizations shift to become “projectized,” the roles and responsibilities that have supported projects within a traditional matrix structure must shift as well. Over the years we have seen organizations struggle with the following challenges related to shifts in both structure and culture:

  • Broken or disjointed cross-functional communication channels.
  • Uncertainty around roles and responsibilities within the project structure and beyond.
  • Quality concerns at the point of project delivery.
  • Skewed scope statements and thus implementation plans due to early stage breakdown.
  • Overall loss of productivity on project teams due to lack of continuity and methods

The items noted above are tell-tale signs that several strategic components of a best practice project management environment are missing. In earlier articles, we addressed the discussion around project office and methodology, the topic of BA is an integralcomponent to bring both of those items to life in the “real world.” Forward looking or “best in class” organizations have aggressively embraced the concept of the BA role. What sets them apart from the old school thinking associated with this job title is the escalation and expansion of the roles, definition and responsibilities. Not too many years ago a BA may have been confined to a very technical role within an IT environment working on specifications, functionality and even some quality and testing related to one or more project life cycles.

Today we are seeing BA positions filled from across the organization and expect that this trend will continue, as it should. Let’s address these points built in the context of how they can be leveraged to meet the challenges:

Broken or disjointed cross-functional communication channels

A BA should be in front of any project communication produced from the point of team inception to the close-out phase. This interaction does not mean that the BA takes on the role of project manager (although we have seen organizations combine the two roles), as it is not effective on larger and longer term initiatives. Our experience shows that an independent BA position can help to promote better communication, align protocol and help the project manager to extend
his/her reach into the project teams.

Uncertainty around roles and responsibilities within the project structure and beyond

The BA functions as a tour guide through the project plan ensuring that all of the moving pieces are touching at the right points. We call these critical communication points and they can be built around time, budget or deliverable expectations. The BA will be assigned a protocol map within the project structure to enable them better access to expectations and provide for a proactive way to reach team members.

Quality concerns at the point of project delivery

In reality, the BA is monitoring quality points through the project life cycle thus producing a quality product at the close of the project. Very much like the thinking around proactive quality control, the BA is in front of each deliverable and monitors the progress against the project plan.

This allows for immediate communication between the project manager, customer and associated teams.

Skewed scope statements and thus implementation plans due to early stage breakdown

The planning stages of a project are obviously critical to the implementation plan and ultimate quality. A BA should be assigned early in the process and work hand in hand with the project manager to ensure the highest level of intimacy with the plan. Just as important, they need to have a direct connection to the internal and external customers in order to ensure collaboration and proactive attention to emerging issues.

Overall loss of productivity on project teams
Due to lack of continuity and methods

A strategic BA assists the project manager and PMO with the execution of best practice within an organization’s project management structure. The BA has a unique opportunity to guide the process through an existing methodology and
essentially help the project to operate in better alignment. This is accomplished by having a dedicated individual who is consistently working against the deliverables and is not distracted by the operations management associated with the project manager’s job.

By taking the above steps you have begun the shift toward the organizational structure needed to take advantage of the BA position. With that said, we still have one more change to make in order to secure success.

It is obvious that the BA role as defined in this article will require wider skill sets than the more traditional BA position, still driven from the IT departments of yester-year. To that point we have begun to see a trend where the BA position can spawn from either business or IT. This is an interesting point as it speaks volumes to an organization’s maturity around project management.

Imagine, for just a moment, an organization that has no boundaries within in its functions and everyone on the team collaborates against a common goal. I like to call this organizational desegregation and cultural morphing. As we at AMS begin the next phase of benchmarking the project management industry and clients, we are beginning to see this shift as a representative of the next wave of advancing thought in the project management space. It was not too many
years ago that I published an article on the emerging role of the project manager as the CEO of his/her project. I am confident that the BA role will take a firmly positioned spot in the upper hierarchy of any world class project organization within the next few years.

In order to succeed the BA will need to have a competency profile that meets the following criteria:

  • Excellent understanding of both business and technology within the project environment.
  • Be a leader, communicator and professional.
  • Understand the skills associated with internal consulting techniques.
  • Be proficient in project management skills as well as a complete understanding of the internal process.
  • Epitomize the essence of a collaborator and team player.
  • Understand and be able to navigate your organization’s politics and structure.
  • Be able to manage without having authority via negotiation.
  • Understand true stewardship-based service.

So, the BA role probably looks a little different than a traditional structure may have dictated.

Yet, this is the trend and I believe will become the norm. As organizations look to enhance productivity and quality while reducing cost they are finding this role to be ultimately important.

Additionally, project managers we spoke to during the research for this article all stated that having a BA on the team made their job easier and allowed them to focus on deliverable based activity.

It is important to note that this type of structure is recommended for mid to large size projects, but on the smaller initiatives we found that these attributes were part of the project manager’s role.

Don’t forget to leave your comments below.

Is a Business Analysis Center of Excellence Still Relevant?

Written by Robert Roldan on . Posted in Articles.

As of this writing, it is the middle of 2014. Information technology is exceedingly more and more sophisticated, business is conducted with highly complex and macrotized operating models, information is stored in petabytes, and becoming “lean” and more “agile” is not just a desired operating mode or mantra but it is de rigueur for most companies; especially when these entities engage in mergers and acquisitions in order to maintain or amplify a competitive edge. The back office backdrop is no less significant. The drive for performance and operational output in the analysis, development and marketing of new products and services require increasingly more dependencies on the commoditization of information, domain knowledge, operational subject matter expertise and engagement of consultancy services.

The business of Business Analysis training and certification programs has taken notice of this and is responding to the above influences and pressures as well. Reliance on these consortiums is at an all-time high. The ubiquitous International Institute of Business Analysis (IIBA) remains outstanding with its business analysis certification program and now the Project Management Institute (PMI); an organization more known for its project, program and portfolio management standards, is offering a Business Analysis certification program of their own. Other organizations with an educational template are also experiencing a surge in business with requests for training services for the business analyst neophyte as well as the continuing education choice of the seasoned analyst practice professional.

The message is clear. As enterprises drive to maximize efficiencies and mission execution, business analysis as a service is not only needed but it is an equally critical component in the orchestration and delivery of business. However, if business analysts are still the primary content delivery arm of all project initiatives, they need to not only have a support structure to develop and raise competencies but the structure itself needs to be thoughtfully positioned to serve the organization as a whole in a capacity in par or commensurate with other strategic corporate units. This center of focus is both tactical and strategic. The tactical addresses the management of the practice of business analysis; communication of standards and methodologies, assessment and use of requirements management tools and the management and resource distribution of business analysis as a service. The strategic side is positioned to develop and expand on domain knowledge; analytics, enhancements to business process improvements, and to serve as a valuable research area for embryonic corporate initiatives. This is where a well-structured BA CoE comes into play.

BA CoE’s, in one form or another, have been around for over two decades. This longevity may very well speak for itself as this is a very long time given today’s appreciation and variety of methodologies, and the technological developments to support them. Much of the discussions around BA CoE’s however have remained static. While other disciplines have modified their approach to continue to be of value; allying their tactic to compliment the focal points of a company, the dialogue around business analysis and BA CoE’s has remained limited to the subject of process. So the challenge then is, how to best articulate the very real, quantitative and measurable value and impact of a BA CoE to a company. Given the business complexities faced by many organizations today, the necessities to make every dollar count, and the speed at which decisions need to be made; how to ask for a new cost center or staffing or capital dollars or yet another re-organization to realign an existing BA CoE or accommodate a new BA CoE. How to elevate the discussion above the narrative of a costly BA CoE for the purpose of just developing competency framework and of policing the delivery of “quality” requirements?

With perhaps the exception of those overnight booming “dot com” companies, all businesses struggle with improving the “bottom line”. There is always that delicate dance between capital and operational expenses, allocation of funds and budgets for new initiatives versus business as usual projects, and of course those expenses that are a must in order to keep the lights on and the doors open. Apply portfolio management of projects to any of these areas and at times, management of any of these financial responsibilities becomes an exercise in prestidigitation dexterity just to keep up with the speed and demands of the business enterprise. There are financial benefits projections, P&L and G&A documentation, SVA’s, earnings on project equity, capital utilization…etc. None of these terms and areas are new ways to manage corporate expenses and initiatives. However, the intense focused attention and the inordinate amount of time spent to manage these areas, is. Herein then are the problems / opportunities to move a BA CoE out of the value-neutral areas of process and methodology and into a productive, sustainable cost reduction and service delivery role.

There are at least three domain spaces where a properly realigned BA CoE could deliver cost-saving opportunities and benefits that can be realized in the short and long term. I have introduced some of these concepts already but will provide additional details here. These new added dimensions by the way are in line with and complimentary to the current historical role attributed to BA CoE’s.

Business Analysis as a “Service” – As mentioned at the beginning of this article, the current business climate and competitive atmosphere is such that companies feel compelled to reduce cost whenever possible in order to minimize expenses, appear fiscally responsible to shareholders or to flatten the organizational structure in order to realize a desired financial benefit; a financial benefit that hopefully translates into funding for a host of new initiatives. Many of these cost-reduction strategies are commonly applied to minimizing or replacing the labor force of full time employees with temporary allocation of contractors. This is a very common go-to tactic. However, while this scalability method makes sense in the short term and for those unique projects where the knowledge base may not exist, it is not an effective long term model for all companies, projects and corporate programs. As a result, the presence of contractors at times can account for over 70% of the business analysts and project management in almost any given organization. Apply the cost differential factors between temporary resources and internal full time resources and it will not require an advanced degree in macroeconomics to understand where the financial over-commitments will be. Additionally and in the long run, this not only ends up representing an enormous drain on the company’s operating budgets but a significant domain knowledge loss as well to an organization once these resources move on to other engagements and possibly with competitors.

A BA CoE, in addition to performing its role as a practice leader in a company, can help to mitigate project cost by operating as a resourcing partner. Working collaboratively with business unit leaders, it can help with project readiness and assessment of required analytical skills. It can source projects with the necessary talent from a pool of highly skilled and matured company BA’s.
In this capacity, it can provide BA resources to the enterprise using a scalable consultative service approach, with the benefit of promoting requirements standardization, methodology and retention of domain knowledge. In this form, the BA CoE provides a clear direction for all business analysis work by using accepted best in class and best-practice methods to deliver high quality work in a consistent, predictable and repeatable manner; especially to areas challenged by the lack of these resources. It can also ensure the work will be performed with the critical knowledge of tested processes and methodologies. These resources would be full time associates thereby retaining and leveraging any acquired knowledge for the future benefits of other engagements. When absolutely needed, the BA CoE can provisionally scale up to accommodate any high demand for resources. The BA CoE would recover the cost of resourcing and departmental staffing through each project engagement. The shift in resource allocation exempts business segments of the need to sustain staffing beyond the absolute need thereby affording better operational budget management. How much should a BA CoE staff for, is solely driven by the needs of the organization. The financial benefits of this model, when exercised and extrapolated across the enterprise can be staggering. This is a simple mathematical exercise; the customary costly use of temporary staffing with no long term value and no commitment to the organization versus the effective repurposing of internal, known and skilled resources at considerably less cost with the added amortized value of knowledge retention.

Requirements Management Tools – This is an incredible opportunity area where a BA CoE can demonstrate additional and critical value to any organization. Many companies are still relying on the use of productivity tools that have been around and virtually unchanged since the eighties to manage the thousands of project artifacts across departments, business units and lines of business. Think about this, if Word and Excel are the productivity tools of choice in your company to manually manage and communicate requirements today, you are using tools that were commercialized by Microsoft in the mid-eighties – three decades ago! Aside from the fancy graphical user interfaces they present today, very little in concept has changed since Word 1.0 and VisiCalc – yes, this is the precursor to Excel.

The assessment and valuation of the many tools available in the market today to aid in business analysis and requirements management is no less significant than the commitments companies make to invest in technologies to manage corporate finances, development of new software and new product releases. Millions if not billions of dollars are invested yearly by companies today in new market ideas. Given the complexities of today’s project portfolios and programs, the expected ROIs, the operational expenses to support large and complex proposals and the dependencies on costly consultative assets to make it all happen, is it not about time we enter the twenty first century with twenty first century technology to manage and communicate business requirements in line with the corporate vision?

I am not advocating technology for the sake of “the technology” or any particular requirements management software. I am however, in strong favor of investing in the most robust software that can meet and grow with the demands of the organization. I am encouraging the use of any software that can facilitate collaboration across the enterprise of any given company, provides the full measure of all that can be considered as requirements; Textual, Use Cases, UI Mock-ups, diagrams in native form, data or domain mapping…etc., The creation and cataloging of reusable artifacts…etc. These types of application software will accelerate development, compress timelines, produce better outcomes and ultimately save companies millions of dollars in operational expenses. Yes, the old saying “a fool with a tool is still a fool” is still worth remembering but is it not equally foolish to ignore benefits, savings, the bottom line purpose of what needs to be accomplished, the how and the when? How long can any company continue to expose itself to the inherent risks and expense of managing valuable information with hundreds of thousands of disconnected Word and Excel docs?

The Strategic Management Office for Business Analysis – This is probably too ostentatious or presumptuous a title for a BA CoE but I am trying to make a point. Every now and then; year or as a result of, or in preparation for a reorganization effort or a new president or CEO/COO/CFO, companies will spend millions of dollars in organizational capacity readiness, maturity assessment or project management maturity studies. The monies invested likely support companies specializing in these fields who in turn use supplemental materials likely developed by internal resources within the hosting company; vis-a-vis business analysts and other like resources. To add additional relevant observations, when these organizations search themselves for temporary talent to support these engagement it is not unusual that these companies will use these very same type of resources, with the same skills currently present within the contracting organization. These resources may in fact come from other hosting organizations, who through some disillusionment or lack of recognition seek employment of this type with companies that are appreciative of their talent.

If the above scenario appears too implausible or fancy or un-realistic, consider then the very common occurrence of a new project undertaking. A new product or service is to be advanced. Funding is acquired, staffing is committed and project timelines are developed. It is very likely that due to timing considerations; time-to-market concerns, decentralization of services, lack of or an unavailable documented experience, the project will commence as if it is a brand “new” endeavor. Given the benefits expected of this “new” program or product, the prospects are set high for a quick turnaround and with equally high expectation of realizing the expected ROI; all with an exceptional amount of pressures to deliver the project. The likely course of action for this project is to live with the limited amount of time to “analyze” the effort with the hope of mitigating the issues at engineering and deployment time; a well-known common and expensive approach. Had the organization had the benefit of the strategic management office described above it would have had the benefits of resources, reference libraries, domain knowledge expertise and the support structure to deliver the project within the expected budgets, ROIs and with minimal rework and defect remediation.

It cannot be overstated. A well-defined and structured BA CoE in the twenty-first century will offer significant cost savings benefits and opportunities for any company who chooses to improve productivity. These advantages may be in the form of improvements to estimated project ROIs, better cost control of resources or helping the organization to realize new revenue cycles due to the expanded prospects brought about by the existence of these knowledge domain centers. Meaningful appreciation of project management cannot be realized solely by the manipulation of project timelines, financial projection devices and dependencies on “the technology”. It requires the services of Business Analysts – the content delivery arm for every project. The reliance on external temporary workforce augmentation services comes at a premium, impacting project budget considerations, time spent on training outside resources and the eventual loss of domain knowledge when these resources leave an organization.

The strategic and quantitated value proposition of a BA CoE can be measured. It can be measured by the quality and success of projects, the savings brought about by the smart use and positioning of resources, the consistencies of work enabled by tested standards and methodology and the effective use of technologies to bring it all together. Technologies that will allow for the creation and use of centralized requirements artifact repositories, enterprise-wide views of all analysis artifacts, efforts, the relationships and dependencies of projects to one another as well as the impact to new initiatives. The amount of domain knowledge the BA CoE will accumulate with each successful business engagement is another area; acquired knowledge that can be leveraged again and again, to manage and maximize project speed-to-market. Another area is the direct or indirect correlation and alignment of a BA CoE to key corporate priorities and so on. Is a Business Analysis Center of Excellence (BA CoE) still relevant? You bet; now more than ever.

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