Tag: Career

Ask the Naked Question: How To Ask the Right Question part 4

Written by Steve Blais on March 2, 2015. Posted in Articles. 1 Comment on Ask the Naked Question: How To Ask the Right Question part 4

In the previous episodes, we established a framework more conducive to asking the Right Question, increasing the probability that you will ask the Right Question, if even inadvertently. We talked about what to ask, and to a degree when to ask it. Now let’s wrap up with talking about how to ask the Right Question.

“How” is as important as “what”

The quality of the response is affected not only by the content of the question, but also by its manner of delivery, especially its pace and timing.
Michael Marquadt [3]

The trick to asking the Right Question may not just be in knowing what to ask, it may be in knowing how to ask it. This requires good questioning skills according to Andrew Griffiths who states that in addition to getting good answers, “good questioning skills will empower you and can transform your confidence, ability and results”. This being the evidence of leadership which “… is all about asking questions: the right questions at the right time in the right way”. [1]

Ask naïvely

Even though we know what information we want, we don’t want to assume we know what the answers are actually going to be. We may have asked the same question of eighteen other responders and gotten the same answer 18 times in a row, but the 19th time we ask, we want to ask it as though we never asked it before.

But, Steve, you might say, if I’ve been rummaging around the call center asking questions of everyone to define a new call center system, won’t the people I’m asking questions of know that I’m asking questions that have been answered by someone else?

Sure, and if you preface your question with “I’m not sure I understand this, which is why I’m asking you” or something similar, the person will tend to answer your questions as though he or she is the very first person you are questioning.

The same holds true for confirmation questions. When you preface the question with “so I understand this is how [fill in the blank] is done, is that correct?” You will get the close-ended response of “Yes”. And this is good for confirmation. However, if you start the confirmation question from the opposite point of view (“I’m having trouble understanding this, perhaps you could clear it up for me…”), you will likely get an answer that confirms your previous information and also adds new information or at least includes the personal perspective of the responder.

Getting Naked

To the degree possible, getting the Right Answer and not just a superficial response requires us to convince the responder that we genuinely want to know the answers to the questions we are asking and we invite all the information they have on the subject. This means approaching the information gathering session with a degree of humility as described by Patrick Lencioni in his book, Getting Naked. Lencioni suggests that we should be “so concerned about helping [our customers] that [we should be] willing to ask questions and make suggestions even if those questions and suggestions could turn out to be laughably wrong…readily admit that we don’t know and be quick to point out – even to celebrate – [our] errors because protecting [our] intellectual ego is not important to them.” [2]

There is one somewhat universal truth when it comes to getting answers to questions: people will not tell you something that they think you already know. When you ask a question and appear to already have knowledge about the subject, the responders will give you very generic and high-level answers. No one likes to give a detailed answer to then hear the other person say, “yes, right, I know all that, but what I really want to know is…” Appearing less knowledgeable gets more information for example using the approach Denzel Washington does in the movie Philadelphia, “tell it to me like I am six years old.”*

The trick here is to curtail your natural inclination to “discuss” the situation or responses by offering your opinion or knowledge gained on the topic. When your goal is to gather information, focus on the flow of information – coming to you and not going from you to the responders. Remind yourself that you will have plenty of time in review sessions and other engagements to exhibit your grasp of the situation and solution.

And Listen Naively

Listening naïvely is the technique in which you appear to be a sponge willing to learn everything that the responder can tell you about the topic.

To get the most information and the Right Answers, the questioner has to listen naively. That is, listen with no preconceived notions, exerting zero judgment, absorbing all information that is proffered without analysis. In other words, the questioner must hear the information as though for the first time. This is difficult because it requires the questioner to be totally in the moment and focused.

When you establish the information gathering session “frame” (as discussed in the previous article), you set the stage in the responder’s mind that you are in need of this information. It also reminds you to sit back and listen as though for the first time.

In other words, just ask the questions, the naked questions, unadorned by preface, explanation, suggestion, direction, assumption, or supposition. Here’s an example: when the responder does not understand the question and asks for an explanation, rather than give an explanation or background, rephrase the question so that you continue to ask questions rather than provide answers. As stated, there will be plenty of time to provide the answers when all the information has been collected.

You will find that people love to tell you what they know and if you are listening naïvely, they will tell you a lot more than your questions ask, perhaps even filling in the gaps between your questions.

Avoid Asking the Wrong Questions

“If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don’t have to worry about answers.”
Thomas Pynchon

The opposite of “right” questions would likely be “wrong” questions. So if there are a few “right” questions, the rest must be wrong, unless there is some middle ground between right and wrong like mediocre.

Therefore, one solution might be to adopt the stance that all questions are “right” with a few exceptions which might be considered “wrong”

Questions which caused the information gathering session to be terminated by the responder: “so, before this new system replaces your job and we lay you off, can you describe some of the things we can do to make the system better?”
Questions which stemmed the flow of information: “yes, we get that. You clearly do not understand what we are looking for here. What happens when…?”
Questions which resulted in the same information you’ve already received (except when you are specifically looking to confirm information obtained from another source).
Questions that result in an abrupt change to the responders’ focus: “so to continue with the Accounts Payable voucher process, what did you think about the best picture award at the Oscars?”

Since cognitive studies have shown that we humans tend to remember the negative things more than the positive things that happen to us, we most likely remember those “inappropriate” questions a lot more and a lot longer than we remember the hundreds of “right” questions asked. And this remembrance of the less than optimum questions might explain why so many of us agonize over the “right question” issue.

So perhaps the best advice on how to ask the “right” question is to simply avoid asking the “wrong” questions. If you don’t ask any “wrong” questions, then clearly all the questions that you ask must be “right”.

Some Good Advice

Marquardt offers some good advice for asking the Right Question to elicit the Right Answer:

“Respond without judging the thoughts, feelings or situations of other people
Consider yourself a beginner, regardless of experience
Avoid focusing on your own role (which can lead to a self-protective approach) and take the role of an outside observer, researcher or reporter
Look at the situation from multiple perspectives, especially your respondents’
Be tolerant of yourself and others
Ask clarifying questions” [3]

Tips for Asking the Right Question(s)

Here are some final thoughts that might help you ask the Right Question.

Review your questions to see if you have the ‘right’ answer in mind, before asking the question. If you do, then either delete the answer, and all other judgment from the question, or don’t ask it.
Continually refer to the responder’s previous answers or comments for subsequent questions. This not only reaffirms what the responder has said previously, but it also reminds the responder that you are listening carefully to what the responder says, thus encouraging even more information to be shared.
Avoid focusing on your role or your deliverable. Focus on their problem or their part in the problem / solution. Be prepared to discover that they may not consider the problem you are striving so vigorously to solve to be important to them or not even a problem at all.
Ask the questions delicately and naïvely, and listen naïvely to the information provided. To paraphrase the X-Files: the Right Answer is in there.
Ask just the questions, naked unadorned questions, and keep asking

In the end, the Right Answer is the result of piecing together a lot of answers generated by a lot of Right Questions. You will be obtaining the Right Answers from people who probably don’t even know that they know the Right Answers. And this is the magic of information gathering and problem-solving. Go forth and ask more questions.

[1] Griffiths, Andrew, Ask a Stupid Question, Lightning Press, UK, 2012
[2] Lencioni, Patrick, Getting Naked, Jossey-Bass, San Francisco, 2010
[3] Marquadt, Michael, Leading with Questions, Jossey-Bass, San Francisco, 2014

* In the movie “Philadelphia” which involved an insurance trial in which Tom Hanks was the plaintiff, Denzel Washington was the lawyer called in specifically because of his knowledge of the complex insurance laws and regulations. Throughout the movie, in depositions and during the trial, Denzel Washington, as the lawyer, said to witnesses and others who were describing aspects of the case, “Tell it to me like I am six years old”. As an expert, he didn’t need for it to be made simpler, but those who were judging the case did, and by requesting the witness to respond in the simplest way possible reduced the ambiguity, vagueness and potential misunderstanding of the response.

Don’t forget to leave your comments below.

The Entrepreneurial BA Practitioner Part 2: Entrepreneurial Traits of Business Analysis Practitioners

Written by Richard Larson on February 23, 2015. Posted in Articles.

In our previous article, What do Business Analysis and Entrepreneurship Have in Common?, we outlined some high-level similarities between business analysis and entrepreneurship. Now let’s explore some detailed parallels between the two.

Assuming that business analysis has much in common with entrepreneurship, what specific traits do entrepreneurs have that are similar to people who do business analysis? While assembling a list we found the common skills and traits were growing and growing. Since there are so many traits in common between business analysis and entrepreneurship a table was the best way to properly summarize them. See Table 1.

What has always fascinated us about business analysis is the ability to change organizations for the better by contributing to new and effective solutions. You might say we love change. Doing BA work fuels both our need to be part of positive change and the same skills are also useful for an entrepreneur. Given that we co-own a training company, it is a good thing!

Entrepreneur Skill/Trait	Business Analysis Skill/Trait
*Ability to analyze and conceptualize*
Innovation	Analyzing, proposing, and detailing new solutions to meet business needs
Operate under uncertainty	Creating order out of chaos (as we’ve said often)
Benchmarking and Reverse Engineering	Same techniques
Problem-solving “One thing I find myself doing a lot is problem solving. And I think entrepreneurs show their mettle with creative solutions to problems.” Warren Brown, owner of Cake Love and host of TV’s “Sugar Rush”, from Creating a Business You’ll Love	Defining business problems, , analyzing the root causes of those problems, and recommending solutions to solve those problems
Observation and experience. “The most salient advice I’ve ever given an entrepreneur totals five words: ‘Get out of the building,’ to go where the customers are.” Steve Blank, serial entrepreneur, from Creating a Business You’ll Love	Taking the time to observe subject matter experts and end-users in their work areas, following their processes and using the software. This requires the ability to ask questions, but remain neutral, as well as the desire to genuinely build trust.
Prototyping of New Products	Creating both low-fidelity and high-fidelity prototypes
*Business Skills*
Planning	Same
Research and Learning	Same
Marketing	Conducting market research, understanding product features (requirements) and benefits, and communicating those to stakeholders
Product testing “…the hard work of discovering what customers really wanted and adjusting our product and strategy to meet those desires.” Eric Ries, The Lean Startup	Ensuring that all requirements and product features are tested.
*Interpersonal Skills*
Negotiation	Ability to facilitate, negotiate, and work to achieve consensus.
Team building (larger enterprises/start-ups)	Skills needed by senior BAs, PMs, or IT managers
Communication skills (especially listening) “…another critical entrepreneurial trait is required for success: enthusiastic, persistent listening skills.” Steve Blank, serial entrepreneur, from Creating a Business You’ll Love	Asking great questions and listening carefully to answers, both the content and affect of them
Influencing skills	Especially needed to be treated as a trusted advisor
Intuition – “Do your homework, but trust your gut” “Somehow I just knew – it was a gut feeling – that today’s modern woman was not being well served when it came to her pregnancy.” Liz Lange from Creating a Business You’ll Love (She went on to say she read all the industry magazines she could in order to find out who or what could help her.)	Based on experience, learning to trust your “gut feelings” and supporting them through research
Audacity “I believe audacity is the most important trait for an entrepreneur.” Rob McGovern, founder of Career Builder from Creating a Business You’ll Love	Having the courage, whether it be for influencing stakeholders or to be entrepreneurs.

Table 1. Portions adapted from The Reluctant Entrepreneur by Michael Masterson

But whether you are a current BA and happy in what you do, an internal entrepreneur within an organization, or are thinking of striking out on your own, the skills and qualities in the right-hand column will serve you well.

Example. Both of us worked at a bank early in our careers and functioned as internal management consultants. Much of our work was similar to a business analyst, but the latter term had not been invented yet. We were change agents for the bank, reviewing department processes, procedures, and organization structures. We recommended improvements, both manual and automated. We learned the power of process modeling and how it contributed to process improvement.

We were both happy as employees, and yet looking back we were expected to be true intrapreneurs in the sense that we helped the bank move to new possibilities. We “disrupted” the status quo (to use the popular term in lean startup circles), and that disruption sometimes came at some organization risk and (to us at least) personal risk. Management thought the organization risk was worth it because it helped the bank achieve better customer service, efficiency, and control. We took on the personal risk because we earnestly believed our recommendations were helping the organization.

Conclusion. If you are a business analysis practitioner, you are in good shape to effect positive and innovative change in your organization. You are also a potential intrapreneur or entrepreneur. Look for more articles on types of entrepreneurs and the three important things entrepreneurs need to be successful.

Don’t forget to leave your comments below.

References
The Reluctant Entrepreneur by Michael Masterson, 2012, John Wiley and Sons
Creating a Business You’ll Love – Top Entrepreneurs Share their Secrets, 2011, edited by Ronnie Sellers, Sellers Publishing, Inc.
The Lean Startup, by Eric Ries, 2011, Random House Inc.

About the Authors

Richard Larson, PMP, CBAP, PMI-PBA, President and Founder of Watermark Learning, is a successful entrepreneur with over 30 years of experience in business analysis, project management, training, and consulting. He has presented workshops and seminars on business analysis and project management topics to over 10,000 participants on five different continents.

Rich loves to combine industry best practices with a practical approach and has contributed to those practices through numerous speaking sessions around the world. He has also worked on the BA Body of Knowledge versions 1.6-3.0, the PMI BA Practice Guide, and the PM Body of Knowledge, 4th edition. He and his wife Elizabeth Larson have co-authored five books on business analysis and certification preparation.

Elizabeth has co-authored five books on business analysis and certification preparation. She has also co-authored chapters published in four separate books. Elizabeth was a lead author on several standards including the PMBOK® Guide, BABOK® Guide, and PMI’s Business Analysis for Practitioners – A Practice Guide.

You Don’t Know Jack

Written by Mike Lenz on February 9, 2015. Posted in Articles. 1 Comment on You Don’t Know Jack

A healthy respect for the magnitude of what we don’t know

Every time I start to believe I’m building an expertise in something or starting to mature into an experienced “adult”, life has a way of smacking me in the head and reminding me that “I don’t know jack.”

In general, the word “expert” has always stuck out to me. What does that word mean? I’ve always thought of it as “you know everything”. So for me, to be an expert on something is an insane achievement. You know everything? That’s crazy.

I have a hard time even imagining the reality of knowing everything about something. Under that definition, I’m not even close to an expert on anything. Often when browsing Twitter I’m exposed to so many new ideas, new topics, new thoughts that the sheer volume of shit I don’t know can be overwhelming. Even a single topic. Pick one thing. Can you know everything about even that single topic? I don’t know.

But we don’t need to know everything to contribute. Each of us as individuals adds our own unique value from the perspective of our own unique set of knowledge. No one else on the planet has the exact same combination of experience and knowledge, and the pursuit of improving that collection is called Life.

In my opinion, more important than the depth of a person’s knowledge is their self-awareness of what they don’t know. Am I an expert on Digital Marketing Platforms, Content Management Systems, or Adobe Experience Manager implementations? I wouldn’t use the word “expert”.

However, I would happily match myself up against anyone else in terms of ability to lead and execute an enterprise digital marketing platform implementation. I have depth of experience and knowledge on the topic, but more importantly I know what I don’t know. I approach each new engagement with a healthy curiosity and eagerness to find new challenging problems to solve.

The reality that there’s so much still to learn is what makes each day so exciting. So yes, I don’t know shit and neither do you, but that’s what makes life worth living.

So let’s learn something today and remain humble to the reality that there’s always so much more left to learn tomorrow.

Don’t forget to leave your comments below.

The Entrepreneurial Business Analysis Practitioner

Written by Richard Larson on January 19, 2015. Posted in Articles.

Part 1: What do Business Analysis and Entrepreneurship Have in Common?

Welcome to the first installment of the Entrepreneurial BA series. Given we are both entrepreneurs and BAs it seems logical for to write about this topic. But, why bother? What possibly could be relevant about entrepreneurialism for a business analyst? Well, for starters, it’s a great career option and more and more viable with each passing year. Even if you are not interested in forming a start-up, the principles of entrepreneurship are becoming increasingly important for organizations to innovate and stay competitive.

In this ongoing series, we’ll explore several aspects of entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs and what it means for business analysis. My firm belief is that by adopting a more entrepreneurial way of working, BAs will be more effective and organizations will benefit. Let’s get started!

Career choices. If you are a BA, you may be wondering about your career options. To be honest, we all do that, but we tend to hear about career concerns from business analysts more than anyone. Should we aspire to be project managers when we grow up? That used to be the most common next step, and more BAs are saying “no way” to that. What about becoming business architects? That would be a logical move for “logical” people since architects tend to be abstract thinkers and focused on the “big picture.”

In March, 2014, Cathy Brunsting wrote an insightful article called “Beyond the Business Analyst Role: What’s Next?” Besides the above options she mentioned Product Owner, Product Manager, and other managerial roles. To me, the product-oriented roles are the most conducive for a BA to use his or her skills to help their organization grow. Both roles take advantage of business knowledge and/or BA-type skills to define, refine, and steer development of new products.

Wait a second. Designing and developing new products is what entrepreneurs do, isn’t it? There is more to being an entrepreneur, which I’ll cover in another article. But, a critical part of starting a business or line of business is creating a new product or service or one that is better than the market currently has. That is often what business analysts do, and to some extent, project managers too.

Entrepreneur. First, let me define entrepreneur; there are many definitions floating around. Translating from the French, entrepreneurs “undertakes a venture” which involves some risk. A longer and more precise definition from Investopedia (a favorite web site of mine) is the following:

“An individual who, rather than working as an employee, runs a small business and assumes all the risk and reward of a given business venture, idea, or good or service offered for sale. The entrepreneur is commonly seen as a business leader and innovator of new ideas and business processes.”1

Entrepreneurs have been around for quite a while, with the first usage of the term in the early 1700s. Classic examples of tech entrepreneurs are Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerburg. Coco Chanel was a fashion and perfume innovator and entrepreneur in the 20th century. Levi Strauss created the Levi’s jeans company in the 1800s. James Watt was an 18th century entrepreneur. He didn’t invent the steam engine but he innovated several improvements on it.

Intrapreneur. If you do entrepreneurial work inside an organization, the common term for you is “intrapreneur.” We don’t like the term because if one doesn’t assume risks then how can they be called a “preneur,” or someone who accepts risks? On the other hand, I very much like the concept of people in organizations starting up ventures to launch new products and services. Here is the Investopedia definition of intrapreneur:

“An inside entrepreneur, or an entrepreneur within a large firm, who uses entrepreneurial skills without incurring the risks associated with those activities. Intrapreneurs are usually employees within a company who are assigned a special idea or project, and are instructed to develop the project like an entrepreneur would.”2

Now that we have some definitions in place, let’s move on to comparing business analysis and entrepreneurship.

Product vs. Project vs. Process. Years ago our company put together something we called the “productivity triangle.” Any organization is productive when they create or provide products or services that customers want and need. Creating them is done through projects, and project management is at the core of that, naturally. Re-creating the new product on an ongoing basis is done through processes, which need to be improved or optimized periodically. Process management is central to that and projects may need launching to do the improvement.

Underlying both of these disciplines is product management. The closest parallels to business analysis are the initial requirements and design. Another huge part of product management is developing business cases, which BAs often do at companies. Over time, additional requirements surface and new features are added and can be anywhere from small pieces to large releases. Product management both drives and supports projects and processes, completing the productivity triangle. See Figure 1.

Figure 1

Business Analysis and Entrepreneurship. So, what does all this have to do with BAs being entrepreneurs you may ask? If we view business analysis work as largely product management, BAs can port those skills to creating new products for a startup. Similarly, new product development within an organization can be done in an entrepreneurial way, and business analysis skills are critical. Speaking from experience, formal project management is helpful but not as crucial for a startup. (Scrum methods are more helpful, but that is a separate topic.) Managing processes is the least important for a startup, since it won’t have processes to manage until it starts to “re-create” the products it has built. The other two legs of the triangle are essential for growing a company. Product management skills – which BAs have developed – are essential for starting a company or product.

What do you think? Are there parallels between business analysis and entrepreneurship? Leave your comments below.

Don’t forget to leave your comments below.

About the Authors:

Richard Larson, PMP, CBAP, PMI-PBA, President and Founder of Watermark Learning, is a successful entrepreneur with over 30 years of experience in business analysis, project management, training, and consulting. He has presented workshops and seminars on business analysis and project management topics to over 10,000 participants on five different continents.
Rich is a frequent speaker at Business Analysis and Project Management national conferences and IIBA® and PMI® chapters around the world. He has contributed to the BA Body of Knowledge version 2.0 and 3.0, the PMI BA Practice Guide, and the PM Body of Knowledge, 4th edition. He and his wife Elizabeth Larson have co-authored three books, The Influencing Formula, CBAP Certification Study Guide, and Practitioners’ Guide to Requirements Management.

Elizabeth Larson, PMP, CBAP, CSM, PMI-PBA is Co-Principal and CEO of Watermark Learning and has over 30 years of experience in project management and business analysis. Elizabeth’s speaking history includes repeat presentations for national and international conferences on five continents.
Elizabeth has co-authored three books: The Practitioner’s Guide to Requirements Management, CBAP Certification Study Guide, and The Influencing Formula. She has also co-authored chapters published in four separate books.
Elizabeth was a lead author on the PMBOK® Guide – Fourth and Fifth Editions, PMI’s Business Analysis for Practitioners – A Practice Guide, and the BABOK® Guide 2.0, as well as an expert reviewer on BABBOK® Guide 3.0.

References:
1. http://www.investopedia.com/terms/e/entrepreneur.asp
2. http://www.investopedia.com/terms/i/intrapreneur.asp

2015 Trends in Business Analysis and Project Management

Written by Elizabeth Larson on January 12, 2015. Posted in Articles.

Each year we like to reflect on what’s happened in the business analysis, project management, and Agile professions and make our predictions for the upcoming year.

To summarize the trends we saw in 2014:

Continued excitement about Agile projects with more informal communications and documentation and use of modeling tools to get from high-level user stories to detail needed to estimate and build them
Focus on Design
Cloud computing
Greater interest in business analysis by project managers.

Below are the seven new trends we see in the Project Management and Business Analysis fields for 2015.

Making Agile work for organizations. As the Agile bandwagon continues to grow, some organizations, previously reluctant to jump aboard, are running to catch up. Sometimes, though, Agile is implemented without much thought to unintended consequences of not having enough organizational commitment when adopting Agile. Although such things as not having dedicated teams, a dedicated business product owner, or extending time boxes to fit more work into an iteration sometimes works, there are often related issues, such as:
1. 1. Team burnout
  2. Less work being implemented
  3. Unmet customer expectations
We predict that organizations will find a way to make Agile work for them by becoming more purposeful in how they choose to adopt it. As a related trend, we think that some of the Agile purists will become more flexible, softening the “my way or the highway” approach in favor of one that is more collaborative. It means that organizations will have to articulate the business problem they are trying to solve by adopting Agile. In addition, those coaches who are accustomed to dictating what must be done will need to seek more organizational input.
Distributed leadership. Leadership will become more distributed and will be increasingly as much about tapping into the leadership of those around us as it is about a single visionary, decision-maker, and communicator. This idea isn’t new, but as organizations and project teams struggle with the adoption of Agile, coming to terms with what it means to be a self-organizing team will highlight the value of everyone stepping up to the role of leader.
In addition, the idea of leading for the purpose of developing relationships is going to be the focus of team building. Leadership is more than getting people to perform for the benefit of the bottom line. It’s about the people and connecting with them. Leaders are selected, recognized, and evaluated for their ability to sincerely tap into the human experiences their people represent. The intrinsic value of understanding others in order to establish meaningful relationships among team members, particularly those who are often physically distant, will be emphasized.
Innovation and entrepreneurship on the rise, and morphing. One can’t help but see books, articles, and blog posts about innovation these days. Not only our own industry outlets, but other media seem to have discovered the innovation “bug.” Many organizations will innovate through process improvement, and in some cases there is not much difference.
To go beyond mere process improvement, organizations will need to become more entrepreneurial. Innovation centers and hubs are on the increase, and companies are investing in their own incubators away from their main operations to help spur the creative process. Smaller, more isolated teams of “intrapreneurs” will provide the kind of “disruptive” break-throughs needed for true innovation and market leadership to take place. Savvy business analysts and project managers will step up to take on these entrepreneurial roles in organizations.
Business analysis as design work. As we mentioned in last year’s trends, the upcoming release of the BABOK Guide version 3.0 will awaken the “inner designer” in people doing business analysis work. There has long existed a gap between requirements and physical design. Organizations who start providing “logical design” outputs as part of building apps and business processes will shrink that gap and create better products faster. They will realize less rework by using standard models such as business process maps, use case models, prototypes and wireframes, state-transition, and sequence diagrams to name a few.
We have been promoting “logical modeling” for years and have been surprised that many organizations have not supported the design capabilities of business analysis. We see hope in the new BABOK and predict that organizations will at least consider changing their development processes to encompass more logical design. Smart companies will actually embrace the new design paradigm.
Struggle between centralized and distributed project governance. Organizations will continue to struggle to find balance between the extremes of project chaos and centralized project governance. We predict that in the near future organizations will continue to adopt an “all or none” approach to project governance. We see the era of centralized project governance, such as PMOs and Centers of Excellence, giving way to a more distributed governance, with some organizations letting individual project teams decide how much governance to employ. However, we know that when organizations move to one extreme to solve their problems, others are created. We predict that in the future organizations will take a more balanced approach and apply more governance for certain types of projects and less for others.
Schizophrenic approach to BA and PM credentials. We predict that both the trend to become certified and the trend to reject certifications will play out in 2015. With the increased popularity in MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses), some from prestigious universities like Harvard and University of Michigan, learning about new topics and acquiring new skills at a low or no cost will appeal to many BAs, PMs and their organizations. To the extent that these new learning channels provide “just-in-time training,” they will reinforce the notion among some BAs and PMs that certifications and professional designations like PMP and CBAP are not an indication of competency and therefore not worth having.
At the same time, however, many PMs, BAs, and their organizations around the globe recognize that these credentials show knowledge gained and are an example of the initiative and hard work needed to get certified. We have seen large numbers of BAs eagerly awaiting the release of IIBA’s BABOK v.3, and many others are racing to be certified under the current release before the exam changes. In the PM space, we have seen a rise in the number of PMs interested in business analysis. PMI’s PBA as well as their ACP certifications are generating lots of interest that we think will continue to grow. Finally, there seems to be no slowing of interest in Agile certifications such as the CSM.
Team-based Agile training. Agile training will be geared toward entire teams rather than individuals. Agile is going to drive organizations to seek more effective ways to generate a change in project practice. The notion of sending an individual to training to become the internal evangelist is too much for a single person to do when it comes to the far-reaching culture changes required to implement A. Plugging into existing processes, tools, and infrastructure after traditional PM training is entirely different than expecting someone to come back from training and single-handedly explain and implement the why, what, and how of Agile. Expect more interest in generating internal momentum for change by sending teams to training who learn the why and how of self-organization. Training for entire intact teams is how organizations will get out of the gate and it’s more likely to be augmented by coaching and a follow-up with on-site presence to help as organizations figure out how to make Agile work for them.

Don’t forget to leave your comments below.

About the Authors:

Andrea Brockmeier, PMP, CSM, PMI-ACP, is the Client Solutions Director for Project Management at Watermark Learning. She has 20+ years of experience in project management practice and training. She writes and teaches courses in project management, including PMP® certification, as well as influencing skills. She has long been involved with the PMI® chapter in Minnesota where she was a member of the certification team for over eight years. She has a master’s degree in cultural anthropology and is particularly interested in the impact of social media and new technologies on organizations and projects.

About the Authors