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Tag: Career

Don’t Be a Victim, Break the Rules

“You are remembered for the rules you break.”
Douglas MacArthur

gallagher Nov26Anyone who has studied the history of medicine will notice that some of our biggest breakthroughs have been the result of a single scientist breaking the rules. History tells us these are the same people who have also effectively changed a conventional paradigm. For example, the world is flat, wash your hands, earth revolves around the sun. Often times, the rule-breaking scientist pays a considerable price for being a change agent. The pain of change forces an outlandish idea to become a piece of conventional wisdom.

Even in the social sciences, we often see rule breaking as a means to progress and enlightenment. Just look at Rosa Parks and others like her during the Civil Rights Movement. Nelson Mandela in the face of Apartheid. Ronald Reagan challenge to Gorbachev to tear the wall down.

We face outlandish ideas (rules) in the work place all the time. One popular one is “this is the way we have always done it.” How many times have we heard that? Breaking this single rule can often yield great rewards in professional wisdom and in productivity. In our often over-stimulated, over-technical workplace environment, we often find ourselves powerless in the face of bureaucratic electronic fences and complexity. It is easy to get overwhelmed, easy to submit to the way we have always done things. I have found in my career that people often follow rules simply because of inertia or because no one is measuring outcomes in a meaningful way.

When we measure our outcomes and keep score during our work it becomes increasingly more difficult to utilize flawed logic or to cling to the way we have always done it. It forces us to break the rules. It forces us to stop being victims to the mindless way in which we often work.

Often when we are executing projects the biggest operating constraints are the rules established by the firm. Many times these rules are really just old habits and typically they have no logical, timely or relevant basis other than “this how we have always done it.” Many firms cannot let go of their stodgy industrial mindsets and cultures (even though most of them have been hard at work in a knowledge economy for quite a long time now). The firms brave enough to break the rules are truly emerging and re-emerging, boosting productivity, increasing effectiveness and accelerating execution speed.

This week examine your daily routine and ask yourself what rules could I break? When running a project, challenge yourself to play the curious anthropologist— ask why you do what you do. The movie Office Space was infamous for outlining the ludicrousness of the TPS reports. My guess is that you have your own TPS reports in your organization. The bottom line is simple: If the rule is not adding value or making life better for someone it probably should be broken.

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Take Your Own Device: Mobile Workers and Mobile Strategies

More and more workers are bringing their own devices to work, often to the chagrin of IT types who will then have to manage numerous devices running often divergent operating systems. However, there is another category of employee that relies on accessibility and simplicity from his work tools: the mobile worker. This is essentially anyone who regularly travels for a job, and has moved beyond the realm of keeping life on a laptop. These days, it is more convenient to compartmentalize aspects of work and distribute that workload to the devices that best handle it. According to a recent article from the Huffington Post, “ninety two percent of workers believe their smartphones should be enabled for both work and personal use”. This is up a 2012 report showing the average American knowledge-worker carrying roughly 3.5 devices at any given time.

This reveals several compelling trends regarding the devices that workers carry with them. Obviously, items like tablets are a staple of the mobile worker’s repertoire, but more interesting is the fact that workers are not consolidating their devices. Rather, they recognize inherent strengths and weaknesses of the various platforms, and instead of sacrificing functionality, they sacrifice the convenience of only carrying one device.

So, what does this mean for businesses? To begin, it is important to recognize this desire for increased functionality from mobile workers. In a way, this segmentation helps to refute the argument that mobile devices are a distraction, because if that was the case it would be unnecessary to carry multiple devices for functionality. It also means that businesses need to recognize the comparative benefits of software, communication, and any internal business tools commonly used by their mobile workers as they relate to specific devices.

For instance, many workers might consider the laptop as a “home base” device that will be set up in a hotel room and left there until the evening after a big tradeshow when it’s time to write a report on the day’s activities. If a company communicates primarily through an instant message platform that is incompatible with a smartphone, the company will have limited ability to collaborate with a worker, or will inconvenience the worker as he fidgets with multiple devices.

It is important to consider what these various devices mean for necessary company data programs that might require updating on the road with a requirement for accuracy and ease of entry. For instance, Microsoft Dynamics AX provides a mobile solution for sales people who may need to update a database after a customer visit or while at a conference meeting with prospects. This can significantly reduce entry errors as users can input data directly to the program rather than metaphorically “jotting it down on a napkin” and updating a database later.

A little foresight when selecting and implementing tools will allow mobile workers to serve the company more effectively. Enabling and encouraging the use of devices that increase productivity, especially in the case of mobile workers, offers numerous benefits for the business as a whole. They have chosen functionality over convenience, and it is time for companies to make the same choice.

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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!

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

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?

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Getting Outside Your Box

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?

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