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The Innovative Business Analyst

Written by Tim Coventry on . Posted in Articles. 1 Comment on The Innovative Business Analyst

Many people talk about the importance of business processes without identifying the true value to an organisation. We hear often about Business Process Management (BPM) however I see that many of these initiatives forget about the business need and get carried away with the mapping of business processes or focus on the notation correctness. Instead I often talk about “service/product and business process driven requirements.” What do I mean? Well this is when a Business Analyst (BA) starts with understanding the business process for a service or product in order to elicit the business requirements. Why is this important you ask? Well correctly structured business process driven requirements focus on the business need, as all organisations, for profit, government or even a “not for profit,” exist to deliver services or products or both to customers. These services and products are inevitably delivered through business processes, people and technology. Therefore it is critical that the BA always considers business process within their analysis to discover the business need, related to the delivery of services/products.

Often it is said that a BA should concentrate on the “why” not the “how,” which is true initially however, at a more detailed stage it is necessary to solve the how to deliver the outcome. Instead of saying a BA should focus on the “why” I prefer to say a BA should focus on what is the “service or product” we are delivering within the scope. Inevitably the discussion will soon include the processes and business functions required to deliver the service or product, which is the why.

I have experienced that stakeholders often have the “how” already in mind, “I went to a conference last week and received a demo of xyz software and I’m sure it will solve all our problems” this probably sounds familiar! I call this the “butterfly syndrome” where stakeholders focus on the pretty butterflies flying around the room rather than the service or product delivery. In this situation I quickly acknowledge that xyz software could be the answer but suggest we perform our due diligence to confirm so we don’t waste time and money. How about we start with the services and products where the problems exist? That way we can solve the problems and identify opportunities for improvements while we look at xyz software. This can be done irrespective of our choice of SDLC methodology (e.g. Waterfall, Agile, Iterative).

The first question I ask is “what is the service or product we are delivering within the scope?” Normally I already know the answer to this question through the usage of the BABOK technique Document Analysis that allows me to determine the answer before I engage the stakeholders. Great sources of this information are company websites and glossy brochures as these hopefully clearly outline the services or products offered by the organisation. Next I like to understand the services and products within the scope of the initiative or project, and determine whether these are supportive activities (necessary but non-value adding) or direct value chain activities (value adding).

 
coventry nov12

Typically I use a value chain similar to the Porter’s generic value chain to focus my understanding of how the scope fits into value adding and non-value adding activities. If the activities are value adding it is easy to link them to the services and product delivery. Non-value adding but necessary supportive activities are more challenging to identify the linkages to the services and products however connecting the dots can be exhilarating.

I learnt the usefulness of this technique when working in a healthcare environment when I was asked to work on a project that had identified the need for a new Human Resource IT system. When I started to analyse further I discovered the organisation had a problem with recruiting enough nurses, as frontline and regional patient services (value-adding service) were under resourced to produce a suitable customer service. Around the world Human Resource business units (non-value adding but necessary supportive business function) perform five business process patterns; Strategic Human Resource Planning, Recruitment, Retention (includes learning and development), Redeployment/Retirement and Employee Management (includes payroll etc) so typically a new Human Resource IT system would cover all of these five processes. However in this instance the problem was only in one area “Recruitment” and so I suggested that we focus our attention (scope) to fixing the problem affecting the value adding service hence reducing delivery time and costs. My initial suggestion of analysing the cost/benefits of employing temporary staff to handle the recruitment peaks using existing processes and technology did not resonate well with the stakeholders. So the project team concentrated on delivering a technology solution to improve the recruitment process. In the end, the recruitment workflow technology solution provided better business value than a “butterfly syndrome” new Human Resource IT system.

Innovation – businessdictionary.com: The process of translating an idea or invention into a good or service that creates value or for which customers will pay. I think the BA role provides the greatest opportunity to lead and influence stakeholders to make more informed business decisions, assisting organisations to become more strategic, flexible, customer focused and innovative in delivering services and products.

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A Brave New World for Business Analysts

Written by Suzanne Burgess on . Posted in Articles.

Change is always with us, in both big and small ways. As business analysts, we should embrace this constant feature in our work by looking for ways to help understand it and use it. All too often we see the change only as a project in which we elicit and document requirements. We need to think further than the project. We need to know the reason for the change – what problem is being addressed and what are the forces behind the reason for change?

Thanks to technology, today’s companies must change constantly or die. Research shows that the average lifespan of a company is much shorter than previously thought. For example, on the Standard & Poors Index the average lifespan of a company is 15 years compared to previous generations. Companies like Kodak, which were once world leaders are now footnotes because they did not see how to use changes in technology. Although Kodak invented the digital camera, they set it aside so it would not impact on their main business of selling film. Kodak did not take advantage of this possible disruption – a digital camera – and is now history.

The disruption change brings to an organisation can be seen as an opportunity for that organisation to innovate and reinvent themselves. The same opportunities apply to BAs. BAs are better positioned than most professions to understand these types of change by analysing the underlying reasons for them and reinvent themselves based on the environment they find around them.

I believe that business analysts must adapt by developing expertise in the following areas:

  • strategic thinking,
  • customer-centred design, and
  • data presentation and communication.

To a lesser extent, all three of these areas are already listed in the IIBA Body of Knowledge Underlying Competencies. Competencies such as learning, communication, and leadership should be expanded to better understand the changing technological environment and provide value to our organisations.

One lesson from Kodak’s mistake with the digital camera is to think strategically and not to try and hide from new innovations. Business analysts have been told time and time again to not “jump to solution”; however, that may not fit with the new environment of organisations using already developed or outsourced IT solutions and applications in the cloud. Mark McDonald said it best in a Gartner Blog on “Amplifying the role of the business analyst” when he stated “Increasingly, enterprises and CIOs do not have the resources or time to continuously create new solutions. This changes the role of business analyst from introducing new solutions to solve issues toward a greater emphasis on redeploying existing solutions to new issues.“ 

While organisations are attempting to understand the technology changes, end users or customers of their products, they are also trying to keep up with these changes. Business analysts have always included the end user in the stakeholder lists and analysis, but now is the time for them to recognise that customers are THE stakeholder. In my opinion, good design and usability of an end product signals the success of a project. Customers today have many platforms to voice their disapproval and affect the organisation. Good design comes from including users in the design process and experimenting with them to see what works. This user-centred approach works well with our requirements elicitation.

The change businesses are experiencing means that they will look for answers everywhere, including all the data available to them through websites and social media and other means. The Harvard Business Review recently declared: “The steady invasion of hard analytics and technology (big data) is a certainty.”  And business analysts should be equipping themselves to understand what this means and more importantly, how to present data. We need to understand what exactly the stakeholders are looking to the data for and how to present it to them so they understand it to make a decision. I disagree with this article in Slashdot stating that big data means the “death” of business analysts. No, I think the change coming from big data provides a great opportunity for BAs.

As organisations face change and decide how to respond, we BAs face the same need to change. How we respond to change and whether we change also and in what ways will determine whether we are successful. I believe our profession needs to start focusing more on strategic thinking, customer-centred design and data presentation and communication. What are your thoughts?

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Rework is Good!

Written by Angela Wick on . Posted in Articles. 2 Comments on Rework is Good!

wick Oct8“Rework is good!”

What?

“But I don’t like mistakes. I take pride in the accuracy and completeness of my requirements.”

“Zero defects, that’s my goal for every product launch.”

“Why would I want rework? As soon as my project goes live, I’m done. I get to focus on a new project. I can’t/don’t want to keep going back to old projects to do rework.”

For most BAs, rework conjures negative thoughts: 

  • Requirements Defects = Rework
  • A low number of defects means we are good at our job and a high number of defects means we aren’t.
  • High defects can cause the project to fail, ruin our credibility with stakeholders, and damage our organization’s reputation.

Our attitude about rework was shaped by our professional upbringing. We are part of the zero defect, Six Sigma, Total Quality Management (TQM), Capability Maturity Model (CMM), ISO, IEEE generation. Quality control has been, and continues to be, a priority in most organizations. 

Does this emphasis on quality and standards limit an organization’s ability to compete and innovate? 

Quality vs. Innovation Paradox

I came across an interesting PhD dissertation from 2008 by a guy named Prem G. Raganath. He wrote: “The challenge of achieving an acceptable balance between the freedom to pursue creative work through experimentation and yet deliver a defect-free product is a growing paradox. The fear of failure slows the process of innovation and sends an indirect message to teams that “status quo” is the assured path to growth and success in the organization.”

So, back to rework. If rework is unacceptable in your environment: 

  • Rework and defects = failure
  • You are afraid to fail
  • You don’t take risks
  • Your company stagnates or dies.

Intelligent Fast Failure

Have you read “Innovate or Die: A personal Perspective on the Art of Innovation” by Dr. Jack V. Matson? In the book, Matson discusses a concept he calls Intelligent Fast Failure. He suggests that failure is required for innovation. Organizations need to quickly apply the knowledge gained from the failure to generate new ideas. He wrote, “Each failure is a knowledge building block in fully understanding how to become successful.”

Obviously, BAs prevent rework if possible, but in some environments, rework is unavoidable and maybe the only way to get feedback about products and services. 

What if your product or service is so bleeding-edge that:

  • Your users don’t even know what they want or need
  • There are no SMEs
  • The consumers are your SMEs, and you are creating a new concept product
  • You don’t know who your customer will be
  • Your customers invent new uses for your products or services
  • Prototypes go directly to the marketplace?

In these cases, rework and defects provide meaningful feedback towards the evolution of the solution or product. Rework is a good thing! 
So, do we call it a defect if it is a learning? A learning of what the market truly desires, would that be a new requirement vs. a defect?

In an innovative environment, rework will be the norm, not the exception: 

  • You can’t do a complete market analysis when you are designing products consumers don’t even know they need, meaningful feedback and rework is necessary.
  • You can’t create a clear business case when you are operating on the hunches and assumptions of invention.
  • Gaps in requirements will be commonplace when your SMEs are your consumers and you are learning in a complex world together
  • Prototypes go directly to the marketplace for user testing and must get meaningful feedback. Without meaningful feedback the prototype has failed.

Innovative vs. Traditional Environment

Here are a few characteristics of innovative vs. traditional environments. Which description best matches your current workplace?

Innovative environment: 

  • Constant pressure to launch new products, new features or new services
  • Time to market is critical for competitive advantage
  • Products or services are experimental, new inventions, new to the market place
  • The consumers may not know they need your product or service
  • Examples: app design and development, smart phones (both hardware and software), pharmaceuticals, cloud computing, robotics, 3D Printing

Traditional environment: 

  • You are developing or enhancing internal systems or products.
  • Time to market is dependent on various factors
  • Standard product/software processes are well-established and routinely followed.
  • Products or systems are fairly stable, primary functions rarely change.
  • Examples: Finance, Insurance, Telecom (land lines, long distance, DSL), Retail, Manufacturing, Education, Transportation

Of course these distinctions are not always clear cut. Most industries and organizations have pockets of both traditional and innovative environments. 

Many big, traditional companies create innovation centers that use practices like design-thinking or painstorming (evaluate known customer pain points and attempt creative, experimental solutions). 

For example, Proctor and Gamble’s Clay Street project (www.theclaystreetproject.com), pulls a diverse group of team members out of their day-to-day work for three months to solve problems, create new products and inspire culture change. 

Obviously, some environments are innovative but defects are unacceptable—think medical devices. Defects that lead to human death are definitely NOT a good thing.

Do you work in an innovative environment? Here are a few questions to ponder:

  • What is your definition of success as a BA?
  • What’s your organization’s definition of success?
  • Does your organization expect perfection?
  • Do you openly discuss failure, rework, defects?
  • Do you systematically apply lessons learned to next steps?
  • Can an organization promote quality and innovation at the same time?
  • Would a more traditional environment build your confidence or stifle your creativity?

Do you work in a traditional environment? Here are a few questions to ponder:

  • What is your definition of success as a BA?
  • What’s your organization’s definition of success?
  • Does your company measure and reward quality/perfection?
  • Is failure covered up or penalized?
  • How would experimentation impact your organization? Any upside?
  • Would a more innovative environment set you free or make you feel like you are failing?

As BAs, we are here to add value to the business. Sometimes that means precision and perfection; sometimes that means rework and failure. For those of us trained in traditional environments, can we accept, learn from and even welcome failure? Are we ready to take risks and embrace a culture of innovation?

Please share your thoughts.  Don’t forget to leave your comments below.

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

Written by Kathleen B. Hass, PMP on . Posted in Articles.

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

Changing the Way We Do Projects

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

Creating and Sustaining the New Vision of Project Work

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

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

Implementing Cultural Change

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

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

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

Fostering Creative Leadership

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

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

Objective Manager Leader Creative Leader
Define what must be done

Planning and budgeting:

  • Short time frame
  • Detail oriented
  • Eliminate risk

Establishing direction:

  • Long time frame
  • Big picture
  • Calculated risk

Establishing breakthrough goals and objectives:

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

Organizing and staffing:

  • Specialization
  • Getting the right people
  • Compliance

Aligning people:

  • Integration
  • Aligning the organization
  • Gaining commitment

Aligning teams and stakeholders to the future vision:

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

  • Containment
  • Control
  • Predictability

Motivating and inspiring:

  • Empowerment
  • Expansion
  • Energizing

Building creative teams:

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

Comparison of Managers, Leaders, and Creative Leaders

Sustaining a Culture of Creativity

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

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

So what does this mean for the Business Analyst?

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

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

So what does this mean for the BA Practice Lead?

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

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

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

Don’t forget to leave your comments below.

References

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

BA Practice Lead Handbook 10 – Business Analyst Practice Sustainability: A Focus on Innovation

Written by Kathleen B. Hass, PMP on . Posted in Articles.

The remaining articles in this series will be about sustainability: building a BA practice to last. This article will focus on the need for BAs to become creative leaders driving innovation.

In this complex global economy, your organizational change initiatives need to result in innovative solutions; incremental changes to ‘business as usual’ are no longer enough for organizations to remain competitive. Yet, many CEOs do not believe they have the creative leadership needed to capitalize on complexity to bring about innovation.

So what does innovation have to do with business analysis? For BAs to reach their full potential and add the most value to their organizations, they must become creative leaders of innovative change.

Traditional BA activities are still important, but a new focus on innovation is the 21st century call to action.

Business Analyst as Creative Leader of Innovative Change

Serving as a key project leader with a perpetual focus on adding value to the business, the business analyst becomes a powerful change agent.

The business analyst comes to the forefront of project management to close the gap in areas that have historically been woefully overlooked in mission-critical business transformation projects. Areas that are the purview of the business analyst and that require much more attention for project success include: 

  • Conducting enterprise analysis with an expert team of diverse background and capturing the details about the most valuable opportunities in a Business Case by:
    • Defining business problems and identifying new business opportunities for achieving innovation and remaining competitive
    • Understanding the business and the effects of the proposed solution across the enterprise
    • Insisting on innovation, fostering creativity, rejecting business as usual, welcoming ambiguity and disruptive change
    • Maintaining a fierce focus on the business benefits the initiative is expected to bring to the enterprise in terms of value to your customers and wealth to your bottom line
    • Validating that the new solution capitalizes on the opportunity and will contribute the expected business benefits. Managing the benefits expected from the new solution during and after project completion.
  • Translating the business objectives into business requirements using powerful modeling visualization tools. Using an integrated set of analysis and modeling tools and techniques to make the as-is and to-be business visible for all to see, understand, and validate. Using disintegrated desktop tools is simply ineffective because BA deliverables cannot be kept current and consistent, and therefore lose their value as reusable organizational assets.

For BAs to become creative leaders of innovative change, they must operate at the enterprise level and delve into strategy execution. BAs need to think of themselves as change agents, visionaries, and credible leaders.

Business Analyst as Change Agent

The prevalence of large-scale organizational change has grown exponentially in the 21st century. All indications are that change is here to stay. John P. Kotter, professor at the Harvard Business School, is regarded as an authority on leadership and change. Kotter’s prediction:

The rate of change is not going to slow down anytime soon. If anything, competition in most industries will probably speed up even more in the next few decades.

Kotter foresees that as the rate of change increases, the willingness and ability of knowledge workers to acquire new knowledge and skills is becoming central to career success for individuals and for the economic success of organizations. BAs that are able to develop the capacity to handle a complex and dynamic business environment are vital to their organizational survival. These BAs will grow to become unusually competent in advancing organizational transformation. They will learn to be creative leaders of innovative change. 

Powerful economic and social forces are at work to force innovation and change, including the rise of the Internet, global economic integration, maturation of markets in developed countries, emerging markets in developing countries, and the turbulent political and financial landscape. Competitive pressures are forcing organizations to reassess their fundamental structures, products, and the way they interact with their customers. The amount of change today is formidable. Some react to this change with anger, confusion, and dismay, and it falls upon the business analyst to lead the transformations most organizations must undergo. In her role as change agent, the business analyst brings a fresh new approach to projects in many ways:

  • Fosters the concept that projects are business problems, solved by teams of people using technology as a strategic tool
  • Works as a strategic implementer of change, focusing on the business benefits expected from the project to execute strategies
  • Changes the way the business interacts with the project team, often significantly increasing the amount of business resources/expertise dedicated to projects
  • Encourages the technical team members to work collaboratively with the business representatives
  • Builds high-performing teams that focus more on the business value of the project than on the “way cool” technology
  • Prepares the organization to accept new business solutions and to operate them efficiently
  • Measures the actual benefits new business solutions bring to the organization.

Creating and Sustaining the Project Vision

A common vision of project objectives and resulting business benefits is essential for a project team to bring about significant change. A clear vision helps to direct, align, and inspire team members. Without a clear vision, a lofty transformation plan can be reduced to a list of inconsequential projects that sap energy and drain valuable resources. Most importantly, a clear vision guides decision-making so that people do not arrive at every decision through unneeded debate and conflict. Yet we continue to underestimate the power of vision. As a BA, insist on a common vision, as stated in the business case, revisit it often, and use it to drive decision making.

Building your Credibility

When acting as a change agent, the business analyst needs to develop and sustain a high level of credibility. Credibility is composed of both trustworthiness and expertise. A credible leader is one that is trusted, one that is capable of being believed. Above all, a business analyst must strive to be a reliable source of information. In addition to these elements, colleagues often judge others’ credibility on subjective factors, such as enthusiasm and even physical appearance, as well as the objective believability of the message. At the end of the day, professional presence, ethics, and integrity are the cornerstone of credibility.

Credible business professionals are sought out by all organizations. People want to be associated with them. They are thought of as being reliable, sincere—and creative. The business analyst can develop her credibility by becoming proficient in these critical skills and competencies, all of which should be part of your professional development plan:

  • Practicing business outcome thinking
  • Conceptualizing and thinking creatively
  • Demonstrating interpersonal skills
  • Valuing ethics and integrity
  • Using robust communication techniques to effectively keep all stakeholders informed
  • Empowering team members and building high-performing teams
  • Setting direction and providing vision
  • Listening effectively and encouraging new ideas
  • Seeking responsibility and accepting accountability
  • Focusing and motivating a group to achieve what is important
  • Capitalizing on and rewarding the contributions of various team members
  • Managing complexity to reduce project risks and to foster creativity
  • Welcoming changes that enhance the value of the solution or product.

Understanding the Real Business Need: Innovation

Business analysts are now being challenged to rethink their approach—to not just record what the business is doing or wants to do, but to operate as a lightning rod to stimulate creativity and innovation. To do so, business analysts are rethinking the role of the customers and users they facilitate, looking at them as creative resources that can contribute imagination and inventiveness, not just operational knowledge. The business analyst who works across and up and down the organization, getting the right people at the right time and in the right place, can fan the flames of creativity.

Transitioning to Creative Leadership – What does it Look Like?

Creative leaders have many distinguishing beliefs and observable behavioral characteristics. According to John McCann, educator, facilitator, and consultant, creative leaders:

  • • Believe in the capability of others, offer them challenging opportunities, and delegate responsibility to them
  • • Know that people feel a commitment to a decision if they believe they have participated in making it
  • • Understand that people strive to meet other people’s expectations
  • • Value individuality
  • • Exemplify creativity in their own behavior and help build an environment that encourages and rewards creativity in others
  • • Are skillful in managing change
  • • Emphasize internal motivators over external motivators
  • • Encourage people to be self-directing.

Constructive Dialogue

A skilled and credible facilitator can set the stage for groups to engage in productive dialogue that incorporates creativity, ambiguity, tension, and decisiveness. The business analyst is perfectly positioned to be that credible leader and facilitator, one who sets conditions that lead to creativity in motion: You will know it when you see it: Participants are willing to have their ideas and beliefs examined and reexamined; participants look upon each other with respect and realize the benefits that come from open, candid, lively discussion.

Expert Facilitation

As a creative leader, the business analyst combines constructive dialogue with expert facilitation as creativity-inducing tools for stimulating the sharing of unique ideas. Not only does the collective “IQ” of the groups the business analyst works with rise, so can the CQ, the creativity quotient. In fact, business analysts who encourage creativity and guide groups at all levels through the innovation process can increase an entire organization’s CQ.

Thinking Outside the Building

The greatest future breakthroughs will come from leaders who encourage thinking outside a whole building full of boxes.
—Rosabeth Moss Kanter, Ernest L. Arbuckle Professor of Business Administration, Harvard Business School

What kind of barriers should business analysts expect to encounter when they try to become the invaluable creative leaders organizations need today? The creative leader must learn to penetrate a formidable set of customs that exist in any organization. In a Harvard Business Review column, Rosabeth Kanter calls these organizational cultural barriers “inside the building thinking.” These may pose the strongest obstruction to creativity and innovation. 

What does this mean for the business analyst in her role as facilitator, charged with helping groups engage in productive dialogue? Business analysts must be cognizant of the fact that their first inclination—and the first tendency of their stakeholders—will be to limit their options by focusing on similar companies doing comparable things. So it is up to the business analyst to be aware of and encourage the group to penetrate the inside-the-building boundaries.

To unleash creativity, business analysts must challenge their stakeholders (users, customers, managers, project managers, developers, and executives) to use not only systems thinking, but also complexity thinking and out-of-the-building thinking to look at the entire ecosystem that surrounds their organizations. It is only then that they can set the stage to bring about lasting innovation.

Becoming a Creative Leader

Leadership is the capacity to mobilize people toward valued goals; that is, to produce sustainable change—sustainable because it’s good for you and for the people who matter most to you.
—Stew Friedman, author, innovator, management professor at the Wharton School

Stew Friedman, professor of management at the Wharton School, former head of Ford Motor’s Leadership Development Center, and author of Total Leadership: Be a Better Leader, Have a Richer Life, posed this question to business leaders across the country: “What kind of leadership do we need now?” The most common response was adaptive, flexible, and innovative. Because of the current sense of turbulence in the business world and in our lives, the leadership attribute that comes to mind most often is a means for dealing with chaos, which Friedman calls playful creativity. 

Every person can have a capacity for leadership, regardless of organizational level or title. Leadership should not be confined to work but extended to one’s personal life, community involvement, and family life. So how do we become creative leaders? We need to actively work at it by experimenting with how things get done at work, as well as in other parts of our lives. It is not the experiment that counts, but what we learn from it. Did we really create something new? What worked well, and what didn’t?

Putting it all Together

So what does this mean for the Business Analyst?

BAs must continually strive to overcome the three great inhibitors to creativity: fear of failure, guilt about appearing to be self-centered, and ignorance of what’s possible. If BAs are not focusing on removing these barriers through experimenting, imagining, and continually trying new things, then they are “missing opportunities to strengthen their capacity to gain control in an increasingly uncertain world.” Hence, Friedman asks: “So, what small wins are you pursuing these days? How will they improve your ability to be creative and to have greater capacity to adapt to the rapidly shifting realities of your life and work?”

Creative leaders produce sustainable change. Strive to become a creative leader—and strive you must, because creative leadership is gravely needed for your organizational survival.

Leaders rely on their credibility and ethics to succeed; never sacrifice your integrity. Create the most sophisticated professional development plan you have ever had. Focus your plan on communications, creativity, innovation, facilitation, and team leadership. Include all types of learning:

  • Formal training and certifications
  • Informal mentoring
  • Experiences that stretch your capabilities
  • Self study
  • Reading, reading, reading.

Finally, don’t take yourself too seriously. People want to work with leaders who are credible and present themselves well, but they also want to have fun. Learn how to balance seriousness with playful creativity. Spend a lot of time planning your meetings, the techniques you will use, the outcomes you need. Then take a step back and make sure the experience will be fruitful, rewarding, and yes, fun for all participants.

So what does this mean for the BA Practice Lead?

If you are a BA Practice Lead, insist that your BAs conduct real enterprise analysis to drive innovation before a Business Case is created and used to propose a new initiative. If your BAs are assigned to a project and these activities have not been adequately performed, help them pull together a small expert team and facilitate them through this important due diligence. And continually ask: “Are we really innovating?”

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

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