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Treat Your Career Like Weight Watchers

Written by Kupe Kupersmith on . Posted in Articles.

This week I caught the Joy Behar Show on Headline News. Joy is one funny lady. This segment of her show was about weight loss/maintenance. One of her guests was the CEO of Weight Watchers, David Kirchhoff. The one thing that has always impressed me with Weight Watchers over the years is their philosophy. Mr. Kirchhoff explained it in three words, education, support, and behavior change. As I was watching the show I kept thinking, that philosophy is what needs to be a part of our daily lives as business analysts.

Education

As we have discussed before, many business analysts are moved or hired in from other areas. Many come from the technical side of the house and others come from the business side of the house. Not until recently have you seen universities teaching students some of the skills needed to be a business analyst. Actually I am starting to see elementary schools breeding future analysts. My daughter’s third grade class was learning about process flows. I almost cried when I reviewed my daughter’s homework. Her teacher thought I was a freak when I ran into the classroom the next day and would not stop thanking her for teaching the kids about process flows. But I digress.

What this means is many of us got into a BA career without any kind of formal training. It is critical for newcomers to get foundational training on the techniques available to business analysts. The projects we work on are critical to the success of our companies. How can we expect consistent positive outcomes from those that have not been trained properly? Why is this tolerated in our field?

Education is on-going and not a one-time event. You don’t go to a class and check off a box saying you did the education piece. I hope blogs like mine and others are educational. There are more advanced classes, books, conferences, online forums dedicated to business analysis and, of course, your local IIBA chapter. My advice is never stop learning.

Before we move on, I want to make sure everyone knows my background/bio. I do work for a business analysis training provider, B2T Training.

Support

In the United States, January is National Mentoring Month (NMM). Created by the Harvard School of Public Health and MENTOR, NMM is marking its ninth year in 2010. By focusing national attention on the need for mentors, as well as how each of us-individuals, businesses, government agencies, schools, faith communities and nonprofits-can work together to increase the number of mentors, we assure brighter futures for our young people. I think it is wonderful that these organizations are promoting mentorship for children. Learning at an early age the value of having a mentor or mentors will help these children succeed in life.

Now more than ever it is so important for us as business analysts to find a mentor. At the same time, we should open ourselves up to become mentors for someone else. It is very enriching to be a mentor. Without mentors, BAs will continually be set-up to fail.

A mentor is someone with experience in a field or subject that helps a less experienced person advance in their career. In the past, companies had a layer of management that moved up the ranks. Part of their role as a manager was to guide and mentor the less experienced team members. Although I am seeing a shift in that BAs are growing up to manage BAs, there is still a large gap. Many BAs are managed by people who have never played the role of a business analyst. This presents the situation where many BAs cannot look to their manager for guidance around the BA activities they do day in and day out. We need the support because we can’t do this alone. Even the greatest Jedi to ever live, Luke Skywalker, had a mentor in Obi-wan Kenobi. Find a mentor that can help you grow as a business analyst.

Behavior Change

It is not enough to get the education you need and find a mentor. You have to make the commitment to change. At times, I am just as guilty as the next person when I come out of a training class/seminar. I am fired up and excited just thinking about how I am going to implement all these new things I learned. I wake the next day, bounce out of bed, and I rush to the office. I sit in my chair day-dreaming about all the new skills I have, and then do the same thing as I did prior to training. This is natural. Sometimes it is hard to determine which of the new skills you should try out and when.

My suggestion is start small and keep building. Brad Childress, the Minnesota Vikings head coach, said he starts his rookies off with a small menu, but with deep knowledge. In other words, he gives his rookies a few plays to focus on instead of the entire playbook. As the rookie gets comfortable with the few plays, he adds more to their plate. Use this philosophy as you learn new things. Don’t try to make a complete change all at once.

Take a few minutes to think about where you may need some education and look for avenues to acquire what is necessary. If you don’t have a mentor, please begin your search to find at least one. Lastly, begin changing your behavior now in small chunks. I think we all know Albert Einstein’s definition of Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Together let’s stop the insanity.

All the best,

Kupe

Don’t forget to leave your comments below

Jonathan “Kupe” Kupersmith is Director of Client Solutions, B2T Training and has over 12 years of business analysis experience. He has served as the lead Business Analyst and Project Manager on projects in various industries. He serves as a mentor for business analysis professionals and is a Certified Business Analysis Professional (CBAP) through the IIBA and is BA Certified through B2T Training. Kupe is a connector and has a goal in life to meet everyone! Contact Kupe at [email protected].

The Future of the Business Analyst

Written by Keith Ellis on . Posted in Articles. 1 Comment on The Future of the Business Analyst

Many of us are in that crucial planning point of the year when we’re looking forward to what our key initiatives will be for 2010, and with this forward-looking mindset, I thought it might be fun to look forward 10 years or so and speculate on the future of the Business Analyst. Violently agree or disagree if you will with my thoughts – I think the important issue is to create a dialogue, and get people talking.

In a prior life, I spent almost 10 years as an executive at a technology trend forecasting firm. A few bits and pieces to share with you from that experience:

  • People tend to overestimate change over the short term, but under-estimate the impact of systematic and continuous change over the long term. In 2000, the Internet flurry created an unsustainable bubble founded on short term profit belief. Now, ten years later, the revenue, profitability and transformative effect of the Internet is generally acknowledged.
  • Every few years, a different wave of focus will come along which re-energizes a concept. Time and motion studies became re-engineering which is kind-of-like SOA and enterprise architecture.
  • Modernization never really happens… or more accurately, as soon as you modernize, you’ll need to do it again. Mainframe, Mini, client-server, SAAS, Cloud.
  • Devices gain way more intelligence.
  • The pace of change accelerates.
  • We figure out how to do more with less.
  • People find more ways to communicate, socialize and build community.

Here are my, out-on-a-limb predictions; and I’d encourage you to put your own out there. Let’s look out over the next 10 years. By 2020:

  1. Requirements practices will mature amongst F1000 companies dramatically. This will further fuel the ‘professionalization’ (if I can make up a word) of the analyst function. We’ll see a dramatic rise in performance expectations of individuals and the analyst function. Over the last three years I’ve seen huge strides forward in this area, but I think it will still take a few more years for us to start hearing CEOs talking about business requirements and business analysts in the same sentence as they use the words strategy and competitive advantage.
  2. I think you will see a sub-group of this F1000 that are differentiated in their ability to get more successful, technology-based products and services into the market, faster. With this group, the requirements function will play a big role. We’ll see far more examples of ultra-high requirements maturity organizations and see public stories that showcase the impact of continuous optimization.
  3. Technology for analysts will become much more holistic and cover the spectrum from scoping and elicitation through to QA. The technology will also be more SDLC method independent, so that analysts can accommodate more domains of analysis. Today’s tools tend to be fairly task-specific and limited to one of process flow, or data flow, or managing structure statements of system capability, or modeling, or stakeholder communication, or system visualization – or – they are locked to a specific layer in the requirements life cycle. Task oriented tools are fine, but I think we’ll see an explosion in new players in the market before a rationalization occurs by the time we get to 2020. The winners in this will provide analysts with a well-rounded capability across all those elements above in a well-rounded tool-kit and tight integration into both other layers of the SDLC and other critical change functions. IAG already tracks over 100 tools principally designed for analysts at IAG – in the near future, we’re going to see many more.
  4. Establishing business requirements will take far less time. Dare I say a fifth of what it is today. What you did with stakeholders over half a year, you’ll be accomplishing in a month on average? Why is this important? I think application complexity will continue to rise, I think organizations will continue to remain flat, and analysts will have to respond with far more efficient mechanisms for engaging essential stakeholders, if they are to achieve their objectives.
  5. I think you’re going to see more expansion in the analyst role definition, greater centralization in the organizational specialists that play these roles, and more fusion between business analyst, project manager, portfolio manager, change management and business architecture roles. Business transformation is a strategic function that companies will continue to optimize. We may see this function within the business used as an incubator for developing senior executives.
  6. We’ll see at least two major shifts in SDLC and another two in IT infrastructure/architecture. In five years, will we be talking about Agile – or will we be talking about something else that looks even more promising and scalable. Ten years from now, pundits may be shouting “Scrum is dead” and “cloud computing is the way of the past”. I think organizations may increasingly decouple requirements practices that set need from these other areas which deliver on the need. All analyst methods, project manager practices, SDLC disciplines have techniques that are solid and can be applied within the analyst function regardless of the SDLC is in place. I think you’ll see fewer ‘purist’ shops, and more ‘practitioner’ shops that have a strong framework in place – and adapt new ideas into it, rather than making wholesale changes to the framework.
  7. If I were a betting man, I’d say we’re going to see a massive upswing in the collaborative nature of the BA role. I think Agile is the first of many ‘team-centric accountability’ models for development. If we go into the future and envision an Agile 2.0 somehow harmonized with Plan Driven 9.1 the key to success in that world would be managing controlled and efficient collaboration of business needs on a more massive and virtual scale. Rather than three people in a Scrum, how about 100 in a Scrum 2.0? This would require tremendous skill, automation and collaboration on a scale we’ve not seen yet.
  8. We’ll see greater virtualization, globalization, and automation in mundane analyst activities. As the importance of the activity rises, so too will pressure mount on the function to scale at a lower cost by off-loading non-strategic activities to other delivery channels.
  9. We’ll see ‘twitter 2.0’ and a future generation social media/information sharing technologies integrate themselves into the analyst function.
  10. We’ll see a reemergence in focus on data and how information moves within organizations. From my perspective, this one is getting a little lost in the shuffle and there is lots, and lots of room for improvement.
  11. You’ll have ten more years to gain wrinkles and grey hair… and, by then, someone may have figured out a pill to deal with that.

The BA role has always struggled; it has responsibility without authority. This will never change. As a result, the optimal model for any particular business will continue to swing between centralization and decentralization as businesses wrestle to establish the business analyst role in the value chain. What I think will eventually break this gyration is the economic concept, ‘specialization of labor’. Specialized work-forces are more efficient. What we may see emerge is a more specialized class of very high value BA which the business recognizes has an integral role in the value chain. What happens to the lower value roles, and less specialized team members? These are likely vulnerable to globalization, automation, cost reduction, and the whims of SDLC focus.

Who knows what the future holds – I certainly can’t predict it. I think that in speculating on what this function looks like 10 years from now, there is an opportunity to think about what is strategically valuable in the function today. I also think, while some organizations may be decades away from being able to achieve this vision, some of you are already well along the path.

The future is closer than you think!

Don’t forget to leave your comments below

Keith Ellis is the Vice President, Marketing at IAG Consulting (www.iag.biz) where he leads the marketing and strategic alliances efforts of this global leader in business requirements discovery and management. Keith is a veteran of the technology services business and founder of the business analysis company Digital Mosaic which was sold to IAG in 2007. Keith’s former lives have included leading the consulting and services research efforts of the technology trend watcher International Data Corporation in Canada, and the marketing strategy of the global outsourcer CGI in the financial services sector. Keith is the author of IAG’s Business Analysis Benchmark – the definitive source of data on the impact of business requirements on technology projects.

Six Mistakes to Avoid when You Start a New Job

Written by Rebecca Schalm on . Posted in Articles.

I just wrapped up a year-long research project investigating what happens when leaders take on new roles or responsibilities in their company.

For the last few years ‘onboarding’ – the process of acquiring, accommodating, assimilating and accelerating new team members, whether they come from outside or inside the company – has been a hot topic but it has focused almost exclusively on employees who join from the outside. But there has been a lot more internal movement than external hiring in the past year. Just because someone already knows a company, does it make their transition easy? We didn’t think so, and neither do the statistics.

Surveys by DDI (2006) and The Institute for Executive Development (2008) report 25% of people who move into a new job will fail. You don’t want to be one of those statistics. Paying attention to six common mistakes will help you make a smooth, successful transition.

Mistake #1: Assume you know what is expected of you

One of the biggest complaints we heard from new leaders was a lack of clarity around the role and their boss’s expectations. A key reason for this is that there simply isn’t enough candid conversation, before or after the move. Would you take a job at a different company without thoroughly investigating it and spending time with your new boss discussing her expectations? Put the assumptions aside and start asking questions – even if you think they are dumb. How does your boss see the role? What does he expect you to accomplish? How will that be measured? What do other people expect from you?

Mistake #2: Assume you have relationships with the right people

When people join a new company they invest a lot of energy building relationships with stakeholders. They know that these are critical to getting things done. When you move inside your company, you might assume you already know everyone. The reality is relationships are a lot more complicated than that – you take your history with you. If you have been promoted, people who used to be your superiors are now your peers. People who used to be peers are now subordinates. Not everyone is going to be happy with this arrangement, and not everyone will make it easy. A good strategy is to sit down and map out your stakeholders and realistically assess the history and strength of your relationship. You need to re-contract all of your pre-existing relationships, and you may need to build some bridges.

Mistake #3: Assume the culture is the same

Every function, every team, every level in a company has its own culture. Your job is to understand how it is different from what you are used to, and what you need to do to adjust to it. For people who are promoted, operating at a new level of team dynamics and politics often comes as a shock. The sooner you figure out nuances around group culture and norms, the faster you will be able to fit in.

Mistake #4: Forget to earn the credibility of others

When people come from the outside they spend their first 90 days working on an early win. They know it is critical to demonstrate why they were hired. What internal transfers sometimes forget is that their colleagues are waiting for them to prove themselves, too. People want to know why you got that promotion or were assigned to that high-profile project. It is not enough to rely on your history. You need to prove yourself.

Mistake #5: Take too long to figure out what you don’t know

When you’ve just been picked for a new job it can be tough to admit what you don’t know. After all, you’ve been around. People are expecting you to know, aren’t they? The likelihood that you are going to walk in and not know everything is pretty high. Figure out what that is sooner rather than later and don’t be afraid to ask the dumb questions.

Mistake #6: Ignore your development gaps

Every new job demands new things from you, things you may not have done before. You may need to delegate more, think more strategically, influence more effectively. Leaders often assume they are ready for a new job. We found that in the beginning, 75% believe they are adequately prepared and have the capabilities to be successful. By Month 10, this drops to 40%. It is more popular these days to talk about strengths, and you need to leverage them. But don’t ignore your development gaps. Address them before they become derailers.

Don’t forget to leave your comments below

Dr. Rebecca Schalm, who has a Ph.D in Industrial/Organizational Psychology, is Human Resources columnist with Troy Media Corporation and a practice leader with RHR International Company, a company that offers psychology related services for organizations worldwide.

Have You Dreamt about Being Your Own Boss?

Written by Cynthia Low on . Posted in Articles. 1 Comment on Have You Dreamt about Being Your Own Boss?

An interesting bit of information recently emerged from employment statistics in Canada (and one has to assume a global trend). The majority of new jobs created are in the ‘self employed’ category. This is right across the board, including business analysts, project managers and so many others in related fields. What this means is a large number of those who have been voluntarily or involuntarily displaced have become independent contractors and consultants, at least for the short term.

So, have you ever dreamt of being your own boss? Most of us probably have. We think about the flexibility and freedom it offers. We wonder how much more income we would retain if we simply contracted out our services. We imagine what it would be like to be our own boss. That picture of three-day weeks and extended vacations starts to look pretty compelling. But how realistic is it? And what are the downsides that need to be considered and managed to make you successful?

Keep the Coffers Full

One of the biggest challenges the self-employed face is developing a stream of regular income. Some transitions can be quite smooth. An example is Jeff, who left his employer to contract directly with a former client. He is getting paid to do the same work by the same people, minus the middleman. From his perspective this is a good move in the short term and will allow him to form his own consulting firm in the longer term. He could very well transition from being an employee to being an employer. The risk is that, as an independent contractor, he is easy to write out of a budget. If the project is cancelled, his contract is cancelled. My advice to Jeff would be to start looking for the next source of income now.

A contrasting example is Ruth, who has been working as an independent consultant for the past three years. Her business has been thriving – she was building up her client base and striving to meet needs in a growth economy. She is now finding that as her clients deal with cost constraints, their penny pinching is putting a pinch on her pocketbook. She finds herself in a position of having to learn and use a new skill set – business development. It takes time and endless energy to keep the pipeline of work flowing. My advice to her is, get business development busy and look for alternate channels of work to get her through this rough patch.

If you want to thrive in self-employment you need to be prepared to sell yourself every day. If you are someone who thrives on doing the work, but the thought of having to sell it doesn’t interest or motivate you (and may even terrify you), being self-employed may not be a viable option. When the economy is good it is often easy to pick up contracts based on an existing network. When the economy is in recession, a lot more people are fighting for more limited resources. You need to be up for the challenge.

Stay Focused

When you work for a company, others provide structure and direction. No matter how independent and initiating you are, it always helps to have deadlines looming. As Christine Keeling, a successful serial entrepreneur who runs Blueshoe Rewards, says “no one is kicking your butt to do things.” She has this advice for those starting out:

  • Build a plan.
  • Set priorities and stick to them.
  • Ruthlessly manage your time.
  • Get serious about managing your finances – remember you are tying your family’s livelihood to your good idea.

Develop a Support System

Just because you are working for yourself doesn’t mean you should be an island. Look for help and support everywhere. Christine points to the benefits of joining a support group for entrepreneurs, like Strategic Coach in Toronto. These groups often have speakers or resources to help you in areas that are new to you, whether it is building a business plan or marketing your services. You might want to find a mentor or even start your own networking group. My advice is to get all the support you can, wherever you can.

There is a lot of risk in going solo. There is also plenty of reward, as Christine points out. “When you are starting out, you are operating without a net. You have to like being on a roller coaster. But, at the end of the day, your successes are your own. And that’s the best feeling in the world.”

Dr. Rebecca Schalm, who has a Ph.D in Industrial/Organizational Psychology is Human Resources columnist with Troy Media Corporation and a practice leader with RHR International Company, a company that offers psychology related services for organizations worldwide.

Combining Productivity with Creativity

Written by John Dean on . Posted in Articles.

If I may state the obvious, high productivity is good; low productivity is bad. That applies both to individuals and to projects. A number of factors affect individual productivity. Internal factors such as a person’s basic sense of self worth and the amount of discipline they bring to the workplace directly affect their output. Workplace environment and their supervisor’s management style can directly affect personal productivity.

The perfect business analyst would appear at work, immediately put their head down, and come up for air eight hours later, having generated prodigious amounts of high quality output. The reality is that most people only spend a fraction of their work day actually doing productive work. It is hard to maintain the needed focus, and people find many creative, and often unconscious, ways to avoid it. There are techniques that individuals can apply to significantly reduce this wasted time. The business of bringing systems into existence is by its very nature creative. But most of the time, IT professionals tend to behave like plodders. We all get creative inspirations, but few of us recognize or act on them. Those who do so regularly are seen as creative geniuses.

A manager’s personal style has a direct impact on the productivity of their staff. While I think a supportive style works better that an aggressive one, there are plenty of the latter types around. Unfortunately, we are programmed to respond to fear and intimidation, so it can work. But when an aggressive manager’s behavior turns outright abusive, disaster will result. I once had to rescue a contract where the program manager had driven off every single first and second level manager and senior analyst on the contract within six months of taking control.

The ability of a project manager to effectively utilize the capabilities of the staff assigned to them can have a huge impact on the quantity, quality and timeliness of the work products of the project team as a whole. In some respects this is just Management 101. The key to real success is a combination of deep knowledge of what team members can do, combined with a great deal of flexibility in making and adjusting work assignments, including a willingness to jump outside of normal schedule when roadblocks are encountered. In addition, better results can be achieved if people are used in multiple roles.

My personal favorite is to use the same business analyst(s) who have elicited requirements to do system testing. Who else is better qualified to know whether a system has met its objectives? Quite a few immigrants come to America every year to work in the IT industry. These individuals tend to be hard workers, and can be very productive, but linguistic and cultural differences can be barriers to achieving that productivity. A supportive manager who is sensitive to these differences can work with these individuals to overcome these differences and realize their full potential.

John L. Dean is a seasoned IT professional with many years experience, including systems engineering, systems analysis, requirements analysis, systems architecture and design, programming, quality assurance, testing, IV&V, and system acquisition, equally split between technical and management. He has worked both the contractor and government sides of the fence, has been an employee of large (IBM, CSC, Booz-Allen, MITRE, ACS) as well as very small companies, and is currently an independent consultant. He has a Masters degree in Operations Research from Clemson University. You can reach him at [email protected].