Tag: Leadership

What Should I Do If My Agile Team Can’t Be Co-Located?

Written by Gil Broza on August 28, 2012. Posted in Articles.

One criterion for team selection is member co-location. Whether working in nearby cubicles or in an open space, short distances between members contribute to communication and collaboration. The ease of casual interaction, the ability to observe facial expressions and body language, and the immediate sharing of artifacts facilitate team evolution. When a co-located team experiences conflicts, they are more likely to manage them healthily, rather than to pretend they don’t exist.

Depending on your office layout, you might be able to secure a team open space, also known as a “bullpen.” If your office is all desks or cubicles, and members work in various parts of a single office, see whether they can switch locations to be within walking distance of each other.

A new Agile team was spread all over one huge floor, with no hope of desk switching or dedicated space. When I suggested that they take over the windowless, cramped classroom in which I taught them the Agile fundamentals, they were excited! Their project manager obtained the right approvals, and for several weeks they worked happily and productively in this otherwise-dismal space. In the meantime, other arrangements were made for them.
If team members’ locations are fixed, hopefully they are not too far apart. A 30-foot distance (about ten meters) suffices to deter people from leaving their chairs to engage colleagues in face-to-face conversation.[i] In closer quarters, your team may be more inclined to communicate in person and use phones and chat software the rest of the time.

But what if your team cannot all be in the same place? Industry experience shows that, despite the extra challenges, the increased overhead in time and money, and the loss of productivity, dispersed teams can nevertheless be quite Agile.

The alternative to direct communication tends to be technology. Nowadays, person-to-person video calling costs next to nothing, works reasonably well, and is fairly easy to set up. Group conference calls are still at the shared-screen and conference-call evolutionary stage. More powerful, almost-in-person solutions are becoming more commonplace, but they are not immediately and constantly available at the individual team level.

However, once a team cannot make do with visual and presence-based communication, they must rely on tools to capture and track their plans and artifacts. These tools make some parts of planning and tracking easier, and some harder. They might also have the following negative effect: even when many of a team’s members do inhabit the same space, they may gravitate to the tools, email, and chat to converse among themselves, rather than leveraging the potential of closer in-person communication.

Teams are quite vulnerable to “out of sight, out of mind.” If you see a teammate — on screen or in person — for only two hours a week, you’re less likely to feel the bond of shared purpose and mutual commitment. If most of your communication is on the phone, that’s another discouraging factor. Most team members are likely to process information visually rather than auditorily, [ii] which makes concentrating on a phone conversation difficult for them. And the remote people participating on speakerphone usually have a rather poor experience; for the most part, they struggle to hear and identify speakers. Their temptation to disengage and multitask during a conference call is huge. They might tell you “I can’t hear,” but they won’t tell you “It’s hard for me to focus and be on the phone for so long.”

Geographical team distribution has three common forms:

Most of the members are co-located; one or two are remote (probably at home).
Half the team is in one site; the other half is in another site.
The entire team is distributed (for instance, they all work from home).

If you have the choice, avoid form 2. Such a team naturally devolves into two subteams that work largely independently. The situation is even worse from the perspective of team growth and collaboration when one of the halves is the obvious “home team” and the other one is known as the “offshore team.”

Distribution form 1 is less susceptible to the clique problem. It might work well with highly engaged people who already have a previous working relationship. Since onsite folks can easily make progress and decisions, the constant risk is that they don’t remember or care to pull remote ones in and involve them. It’s an effort they don’t always wish to make.

The best option is form 3, since it puts all team members on an equal footing. They will invest in communicating and coordinating with each other. They will set up their technology effectively and adjust their process and practices to their reality. Many successful open-source projects operate this way.

A company in downtown Boston allowed every employee to work two days of every week at home, to reduce their commute time. One of their teams was a hybrid of the co-located and the distributed. All its members chose to work from home the same two days, and the rest of the time they were co-located.

If your team has even a single remote member, one technique to strengthen the entire team is pair programming. Block off several hours every day during which the entire team is available and pair programming is the norm. Help the team make this an explicit agreement. Make sure technology is not an issue: everyone should have personal headsets, fast computers, and fast screen-sharing software. If the pairs switch around at least once a day, this pair-wise way of growing a team will strengthen team bonds in a matter of weeks.

About the book and the author

The excerpt above is from the book The Human Side of Agile: How to Help Your Team Deliver which will be available September the 12th. With this book, Gil Broza has created a practical, universal guide to navigating the least manageable, understood, and appreciated asset in an Agile environment: its human side. Even if your customers are reasonably happy and your developers seem to be doing okay, you know your team is capable of more: delivering great products and staying ahead of ever-changing demands. You want to feel good about using Agile and to create the conditions for great results, but the skills you honed in traditional environments don’t always apply to the role of Agile team leader. The Human Side of Agile fills this gap, guiding you to:

Establish yourself as a confident and capable leader who adds value
Build and lead an engaged team that can handle almost any challenge
Cultivate collaboration and a continuous improvement mind-set
Reap the full benefits of Agile in the real world with real people

Gil Broza has mentored more than 1,500 professionals in 40 companies within the last 10 years who then delighted their customers, shipped working software on time, and rediscovered passion for their work. Gil offers much-needed services (beyond basic education) to help ScrumMasters and other Agile team leaders grow in their roles. In addition, he provides workshops, consulting, facilitation services, and enablement programs to fix lackluster Agile attempts and support ongoing Agile improvement efforts.

Don’t forget to leave your comments below.

[i] Thomas J. Allen, Managing the Flow of Technology (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1977). The “Allen Curve” shows that the probability of communicating technical information at least once a week drops below 8% when a ten-meter distance separates people, and levels off below 5% at 30 meters and higher.

[ii] Walter Leite, Marilla Svinicki, and Yuying Shi, “Attempted Validation of the Scores of the VARK: Learning Styles Inventory With Multitrait–Multimethod Confirmatory Factor Analysis Models,” Educational and Psychological Measurement (2009): 2.

The Softer Side of Agile: Leading Collaborative Teams to Success

Written by Nancy Y. Nee on July 2, 2012. Posted in Articles.

The Agile Manifesto places customer collaboration over contract negotiation with a keen focus on a highly skilled, motivated team in constant interaction with the product and the customer at every phase of the project. As a result of this collaborative, customer-centric view, Agile requires more than the technical expertise needed to gather requirements, and develop and test new product lines. It requires soft skills, leadership competencies and an understanding of how to apply those skills in a more malleable, people-focused setting. As practitioners know, collaboration brings a set of challenges. With the Agile approach, project managers are called upon to team up with customers in a constant stakeholder dialogue.

Constant customer collaboration provides great opportunities to measure project success by gauging the level of customer satisfaction throughout each life cycle of the project. It creates the framework for faster time-to-market and a more nimble process to deliver successful project outcomes. When it comes to successful agile project delivery, collaboration also is key for the integrated project team.

What Makes Good, Effective Collaboration?

To begin to understand, we should first take a look at the 12 principles behind the Agile Manifesto. These principles, which are the building blocks of Agile, identify three areas that lend themselves to successful collaboration. These principles are as follows:

Business people and developers must work together daily throughout the project.
Projects need to be built around motivated individuals. Give them the environment and support they need, and trust them to get the job done.
The most efficient and effective method of conveying information to and within a development team is face-to-face conversation.

Based on the above three principles, successful collaboration among the team relies heavily on three key factors:

Feedback
Communication
Motivation

Feedback

How does feedback work in a team environment? What is the most successful way to deliver it on an Agile project? Remember that feedback during the iterative development work of an Agile project must increase awareness and insight as well as foster innovation, yielding positive alternatives. Having the business as part of the core Agile project team creates the environment for continuous feedback and an opportunity to take positive risks in doing things differently, which is the very nature of why the project is being done in an Agile setting. Within the iteration work, it is essential to provide feedback that:

Contains a clear purpose
Is specific and descriptive
Offers positive alternatives

For all members of the Agile project team, it is important to identify what to start, stop and continue doing when it comes to iteration work. This is where effective feedback is most often used. You can easily integrate these practices into your daily stand up meetings to prepare for the day’s work.

Communication

What makes effective communication? When it comes to communication, it is important to deliver information in a manner that is understood by the receiver, which means that we need to get past the receiver’s filters and ensure that the individual understood the intended message. To get past those filters, we, as the sender of this message, have a responsibility to understand how our receiver takes in information. Does he communicate in a direct manner? Is she considerate in her messaging? Understanding your receiver’s communication style will help you provide feedback that enables effective dialogue.

Motivation

When you combine productive feedback with effective communication, the foundation for motivation has been established. Motivation is built on encouragement, partnership and compromise without making concessions that damage trust. Working together to ensure that barriers, impediments and unrealistic expectations do not derail the creative impulses of the team brings about team unity. When the Agile PM delegates to team members the authority and responsibility to complete features to which they’ve committed, the Agile PM has created an environment of trust, partnership and self-directedness. By creating this environment, the team can discover their patterns of working,

The soft side of Agile is just as important as the technical side of Agile. Both sets of skills are required and dependent upon each other for success in the Agile environment. Given what you just read, ask yourself, how soft is your Agile team?

Don’t forget to leave your comments below.

The 21st Century BA Series – From Tactical Requirements Manager to Creative Leader of Innovative Change

Written by Kathleen B. Hass, PMP on May 22, 2012. Posted in Articles.

As businesses acknowledge the value of business analysis – the result of the absolute necessity to drive innovation through projects – they are struggling to figure out three things:

What are the characteristics of their current BA workforce, and how capable does their BA team need to be?
What is needed to build a mature BA Practice?
How are we going to get there?

This article focuses on #1: What are the characteristics of our current BA workforce and how capable does our BA team need to be? Also see our March and April Blogs for more information on BA proficiency .

How capable do I need to be?

Your challenge is to close the gaps in your BA capabilities to meet the needs of your organization’s complex 21st century projects. What will it take? Are you up to the task? Reading some of the comments from recent articles, many organizations are still keeping their BAs in very tactical roles. And recent research conducted by Ravenflow confirms we have a lot of work to do to become strategic analysts.

The Challenge: Close the Gap in BA Capabilities

For BAs to elevate themselves into strategic analysts and be seen as valuable corporate assets, they need to start grooming themselves right now to be prepared to meet their organizations’ needs. The trends are promising: “Your future business/technology analysts will be the most valuable business analysts, because they can single-handedly turn business-requested IT-delivered applications into tomorrow’s dynamic business applications,” write Schwaber and Karel of Forrester Research, Inc. [i]

How do I know if I am Capable Enough?

Your organization needs to ensure it has appropriately skilled BA workforce possessing the capabilities needed to successfully deliver innovative products and new business solutions that meet 21st century business needs. So how do we gauge individual and workforce BA capability that is commensurate with project challenges? More and more BA Practice Leads and Managers are conducting an assessment of their entire BA Workforce Capabilities taking into account the complexity of their portfolio of projects. Projects typically fall into four areas, with complexity growing as we move from left to right in the model below, which describes the project levels: (1) operations and support changes delivering enhancement to current business processes and technologies, (2) projects creating new or changed processes and technologies, (3) enterprise change initiatives that implement strategy to transform how the organization does business, and (4) innovation and competitive focused initiations to forge new ground.

Competency vs. Capability

It’s not just about competency (what you think you can do or your score on a multiple-choice knowledge assessment); it’s ALL about capability:

Ensuring your competency level and capability to perform is commensurate with the complexity of your current and future work assignments, andAbility to perform to achieve forecasted project outcomes and resulting business value within your organizational context.

To determine the characteristics of your current projects and your BA capabilities (and those of your BA peers), the BA Individual and Workforce Capability Assessment identifies your capability gaps, and proposed a plan to close the gaps. The knowledge, skills, techniques, and capabilities behind the model are based on the latest industry research about business, leadership, complexity, innovation, and creativity. In addition, it is in alignment with the IIBA® BABOK® Version 2 and the IIBA® BA Competency Model Version 3.

So, how capable do you need to be? The Answer: It Depends…

… on the complexity of your current and future work assignments. So let’s examine the model in a little more detail. The Applied BA Capability Model is four-tiered; each tier requiring different BA competencies based on the project complexity, the innovation required, and the focus of work assignments. As you move across the model from left to right, projects become more complex, and therefore, more sophisticated capabilities are required for success. The four tiers include four levels of business focus:

Operations/Support Focus
Project or New Product Focus
Enterprise/Strategy Execution Focus
Competitive/Future Strategy Focus

Level 1: Operations/Support Focus

These BAs typically spend their time doing BA activities for relatively low complexity projects that are designed to maintain and continually improve current business processes and technology. Many BAs operate at this level, since studies show that IT organizations spend 70% to 80% of their budget and resources just to “keep the lights on” – maintaining business as usual. This only leaves 20% to 30% of resources left for innovation. IT organizations have been trying to flip this ratio for years, and many are succeeding. Hence, fewer BAs will be needed at this level, and more will be needed for more strategic, innovative projects.

BAs working to at this level need to view the effort as a large project looking at the entire system; examining the opportunity to creatively change and improve rather than looking at the task as simply fixing bugs or problems. Prioritize change requests based on business value. Once a systems and business-value approach is used, opportunities for innovation begin to emerge.

As legacy processes and systems age, these business analysts are becoming more and more valuable since they are likely the best (and often, the only) SMEs who fully understand the legacy operational processes and technology. As application modernization efforts emerge, these BAs are invaluable, working closely with Business Architects to document the current state of the business supported by the applications undergoing modernization. The analysts assigned to these tasks are typically Generalists and Business Systems Analysts, positioned from entry-level to senior business analysts.

Level 2: Project / New Product Focus

Project-focused BAs work on moderately complex projects designed to develop new/changed products, services business processes and IT systems. This focus area typically includes senior BAs who are IT-Oriented BAs and Business-Oriented BAs, positioned from entry-level to senior business analysts. It is a little clearer how business analysts can foster innovation when working on a project to develop something new, whether it is a new product, process, or service. However, even with a project focus, it is easy to use “inside the building” thinking (see previous article) and allow the requirements SMEs to simply define requirements to rebuild what we already have with only minor enhancements. Business analysts that allow this to happen will undoubtedly be thought of as “note takers” as opposed to “trail blazers”. Don’t let it happen to you!

To foster creativity at the project level, it is your job to establish an environment where the creativity of your team members can surface and thrive. Once the team of SMEs has a shared vision, target, and objective, the business analyst encourages the team to create something new by imagining what could be, inspiring each other, collaborating, brainstorming, and experimenting. As you encourage team members to view each other as unique individuals with valuable contributions to make, participants will start “getting it” and “getting with it” and the business analyst can then quietly step into the shadows and let the team do its thing. Understand that if your team members are not challenging each other and building on each other’s ideas, they have not yet made it “into the zone”. In this case, they likely need more prodding and encouragement from the BA as expert facilitator, collaborator, and innovator. Caution the participants not to be critical or judgmental, but to use conflict positively to spawn differing perspectives and new combinations of ideas. Hone your innovation-inducing facilitation skills on moderately-complex projects to train yourself for the big leagues.

Level 3: Enterprise / Strategy Execution Business Focus

These BAs are operating at the enterprise level of the organization, ensuring that the business analysis activities are dedicated to the most valuable initiatives, and the business analysis assets (models, documents, matrices, diagrams etc.) are considered corporate property and are therefore reusable. Enterprise analysts focus on the analysis needed to prepare a solid business case to propose new initiatives to execute strategy. They also work on highly-complex, enterprise-wide projects and programs, typically managing a team of senior BAs. This focus area typically includes experienced, high-level BAs who are Enterprise Analysts and Business Architects.

As business analysts demonstrate their skills they are in a position to communicate that innovation is everybody’s job; it is not just up to a few super stars or senior BAs to foster creativity. For business analysts that are working on enterprise transformation initiatives, the need for innovation is even more critical. Here the stakes are higher, the investments bigger, the rewards greater, and the risks larger. It is at this level that business analysts need to be on their game, familiar with and comfortable with innovative work sessions.

It is a delicate balance between instilling a culture of discipline in the team and smothering creativity. The business analysts who have mastered creativity techniques do deliberate things not to be too controlling, such as, not sitting at the head of the table; not getting into prolonged conversations with only one or two people; insisting on full participation, summarizing and sharing your own opinion only after full discussion has taken place. The techniques you select need to be customized to your team composition: mind-mapping for left brain thinkers; brain-writing for right-brain thinkers. Make your team meetings fun, exciting, and yes, you may even need to “perform” a bit. Spend ample time planning how you will facilitate meetings to ensure you have lots of tools in your toolkit, experimenting with them until the team begins to gel.

Level 4: Competitive / Innovation Focus

When you are operating at the corporate level, you are truly at the pinnacle of your career. The stakes are the very future viability of your organization. Business/Technology Analysts are recognized business domain and technology visionaries who serve as innovation experts, organizational change specialist, and cross domain experts. Business/Technology Analysts focus outside of the enterprise on what the industry is doing, formulate the future vision and strategy, and design innovative new approaches to doing business to ensure the enterprise remains competitive, or even leaps ahead of the competition. Business/Technology Analysts convert business opportunities to innovative business solutions and translate strategy into breakthrough process and technology. To focus on heavy duty innovation, very high-level BAs who are Enterprise Analysts, Strategists, and Business/Technology Analysts are needed whose sweet spot is business/technology optimization.

Complexity, Creativity and Innovation– The Major Leagues

When the business analyst is working at the enterprise level or as an innovator focused on competitive advantage, this really is the big leagues. There are many business practices that the business analyst engages in to turn new products or services, and new business processes, into a source of competitive advantage. In fact, most people who perform these practices are not yet thought of as business analysts, often operating at the executive level, carrying the title of strategic planner, product manager or portfolio manager. Indisputably, when individuals and groups are engaged in the activities described below, they are very much carrying out business analysis pursuits. [ii]

Decide What to Build to Seize Competitive Advantage

What we build today determines our place in the market tomorrow. To determine the most valuable products to build, all of the enterprise analysis activities the business analyst leads come into play including: decomposing strategic goals into measureable objectives, conducting competitive and customer analysis to determine the differentiators that will make your organization stand out; defining the business need and assessing capability gaps to meet the need; identifying the most creative and innovative solution, defining the solution scope and approach; determining when to release the new product, and how to manufacture and support it; and finally, capturing the opportunity in the business case to secure investment funds.

Capitalize on Complexity to Breed Creativity

Business Analysts need to learn to capitalize on complexity to bring about creativity. What do creative leaders do? They use their adept facilitation skills to set the stage for a diverse group of experts to traverse through the Continuous Innovation Loop.

Continuous Innovation Loop

Certain behaviors are required to traverse the Continuous Innovation Loop. A new discipline is emerging called, “Complex Leadership.” It was introduced early in the 21st century, and is based on the application of complexity theory to the study of organizational behavior and the practice of leadership. What do complex leaders do? They let the solution emerge as they engage in unique leadership behaviors that foster innovation. This involves four steps:

With so much riding on the results, companies must invest in the most valuable projects, providing value to customers and revenue to the company. However, studies reveal that few companies have effective portfolio management processes. The emerging roles of the enterprise and competitive-focused business analysts, serving as the complex leaders we need, have got to fill this gap in organizational capabilities by being the vital link between opportunity, innovation, investment, and value creation. To do this the business analyst brings together an expert team of individuals who are system thinkers and enjoy working in ambiguity, and leads them to break old rules and paradigms to discover breakthough ideas. Perhaps one of the reasons we don’t have effective portfolio management is because not enough business analysts are leading these important activities.[iii]

The Applied BA Capability Assessment – How does it Work?

Using an Applied BA Capability Assessment provides the information you need to baseline your applied capabilities and prepare your own learning and development plan. For a group of BAs, it can serve as valuable information to develop your organization’s professional develop program. The results provide a basis for BA workforce adjustments and/or realignment, training requirements, professional development activities, and specific mentoring and coaching needs.

Benchmarking: How You Compare with BAs Working on Similar Projects

The BA Applied Capability Assessment provides the opportunity to participate in a multi-dimensional assessment. The assessment collects basic demographic information about you, e.g., years of experience, time spent on BA activities versus project management or more technical tasks, amount of BA education, and capabilities performing BA work. It then compares the state of your BA capabilities to your peers and to BAs in the same industry. The information on how much time you spend on BA activities provides a view as to your actual capacity to deliver new business solutions. In addition to the benchmark report, you receive a customized professional development plan to guide your BA performance improvement and career development efforts.

Not Your Typical Competency Assessment

This is not your ordinary multiple-choice-type self-assessment using a rating scale. This approach provides an interpretive frame of reference to analyze your assessment responses; this assessment process exhibits strong reliability and validity when you respond candidly to each question. The following chart compares the BA Applied Capability Assessment approach to traditional competency assessments.

Sample Results

The reports you receive are customized to your specific work situation and provide you with relevant, prioritized recommendations to help you focus your learning and development efforts. If you use our online assessment, your customized reports arrive via email in PDF format. You may request a telephone coaching consultation or email consultation if you have any questions about your results and professional development recommendations. For organizational BA Workforce Assessments, organizational results and individual BA coaching sessions are performed at your place of work.

Don’t forget to leave your comments below.

[i] Carey Schwaber and Rob Karel, The New Business Analyst, Forrester Research, Inc., April 8, 2008

[ii] IBM Corporation. Turning product development into competitive advantage. Best practices for developing smarter products. IBM Executive Brief: Developing Competitive Products, July 2009, p 5.

[iii] Jim Brown, The Product Portfolio Management Benchmark Report: Achieving Maximum Product Value, Aberdeen Group, August 2006.

The Six Key Characteristics of a Senior Business Analyst

Written by Kupe Kupersmith on May 14, 2012. Posted in Articles.

In our profession there is a lot of discussion about what makes a business analyst a senior business analyst. To help better delineate between the levels of BAs the IIBA® has recently released a business analysis competency model which includes five levels of business analysts.

For today’s post, I wanted to share my thoughts on the key characteristics of a senior business analyst. Before I unveil the list I want to say that number of years as a BA is not an indicator if someone should be classified as a senior BA. I don’t think you can get to the senior level without a number of years of experience, but number of years alone is not an indicator.

1. Business Analysis Techniques: Breadth and Depth of Knowledge and Experience

As BAs we need to have knowledge and experience in the various techniques to elicit, analyze and communicate requirements. We need a large tool box which we can pull from to meet the specific needs of each project. Without this large tool box your ability to perform at a high level for any project type that you are a part of is limited. Take a look through the IIBA’s BABOK® to see how large your toolbox is.

I have been asked by BAs who focus on specific areas, like facilitation or process modeling, if I felt they were senior BAs. My answer is no. They are most definitely senior facilitators or senior process modelers, but senior BAs need a broader, deeper skill set.

2. Project Types and Business Area Experience

Senior level BAs need experience working on multiple project types. At the highest level there are three types of projects I feel are necessary, COTS (commercial off the shelf), new development, and enhancements/support. Each of these project types requires some different techniques and skills. Having worked on different types of projects gives you the knowledge of which techniques work best for each project type. This will aid in planning which is characteristic number three, coming up next.

Working in multiple business areas within a company helps lay the foundation for strategic thinking, characteristic number four. By being involved in multiple business areas you start to see overlapping functions and interdepartmental dependencies. This allows you to start recommending solutions that benefit the whole company, not just the specific business area you are involved in.

3. Business Analysis Planning

How do you answer the following question when you are first assigned to a project? “How long will the analysis effort take?” Senior BAs respond to that question with an intelligent business analysis work plan. They think through the people they will be working with. They identify the stakeholders, get to know them and understand key characteristics to best work with them. They think through critical project characteristics like the size of the project, the business risks involved, and how many interfaces the project will include. They think through the processes that need to be adhered to for the project. They make sure they understand what project methodology is being used for the project, project roles and responsibilities, and what deliverables are required. Thinking through the people, project, and process gives you the ability to outline the tasks and deliverables needed for the project, to estimate their time needed, as well as the time of the stakeholders involved.

4. Strategic Thinking

A senior BA needs to see the big picture and do a deep dive for the project. Senior BAs will try to see the bigger picture before heading into the details trying to understand where this project fits in with the organizational goals. They will also be aware of, or try to determine how the project they are assigned to impacts other projects or business areas. They also take a look at the big picture during the project.

In an earlier post, Get Your Head Out of the Weeds, I highlighted the need for BAs to find ways to pull themselves out of the detail during a project to ensure their project is still meeting the needs of the organization.

5. Advocate and Advisor

Many BAs report into IT departments, but still need to be viewed as part of the business team they support. You work for the business and need to truly be an advocate for the business and their needs. I’m sure many of you can tell stories where there was conflict between the technology team and the business. A senior BA steps up to resolve the conflict to provide the best solution for the business.

A way to know you have this characteristic is if the business calls you for advice before and after a project. Do you have discussions with the business to determine what’s most important for an upcoming project? Do you attend their staff meetings to find out their pains and to understand their values and goals?

6. Ability to Learn a New Domain

The need to have domain experience for BAs is one of the biggest debates in our profession. I do think you need some domain knowledge prior to starting a project, but that does not mean you need to have worked in that domain for years. I believe a senior BA needs to be able to learn a new domain to be effective. Here are three ways that I primarily use to learn new domains prior to an interview or starting a project.

Google: There is so much information out there at your finger tips. Google the subject you need and take an afternoon reading.
My network: I am a big believer that I don’t need to know everything; I just need to know the people that have the answers. I use my network to help answer questions I have to learn about a domain. Continue to build your network.
Personal experience: I may not have worked in banking, but I do interact with banks as a consumer. I draw from my personal experiences to help understand a domain.

Please share your thoughts around the characteristics I’ve outlined and provide one or more of your own.

Kupe

Don’t forget to leave your comments below

Short on Time? Have MORE Meetings!

Written by Bob McGannon on April 23, 2012. Posted in Articles.

OK, before you think we have gone crazy…we recommend more SHORT, FOCUSED meetings. As project managers and business analysts we often find ourselves with pressing deadlines, frantic team members who are juggling many tasks with little time, and senior stakeholders who place increasingly challenging demands upon us. At the same time, we face unchanging statistics showing that communications issues are at the core of project failures. How do you manage these two imposing situations? Have MORE meetings, but make them count, and do them quickly. Let’s examine why we need these frequent, focused meetings, and how to best conduct them.

The type of meetings we are discussing here are usually no more than 15 minutes; on rare occasion they may take half an hour. Often they are run as daily “stand-up” meetings, in conference rooms with the chairs removed or pushed to the side of the room. This is optional, however, for some the “stand up” aspect of these meetings help keep the attendees focused. These quick meetings are usually first thing in the morning to prepare for the upcoming day, or they are the final thing done at the end of the day, to prepare for activities that will take place early the next business day. So, given this, why are more frequent meetings a useful tool?

1. Your team needs as much efficient heads down time as is possible

Rarely do any projects allow team members to operate in a vacuum. Conditions change, problems and unexpected circumstances surface. Communication from the project’s various stakeholders is virtually constant. Team members need to a) know what their mission is on the project and b) have the information they need to get their tasks accomplished in the best way possible. With this constant flow of needed data, the forum to communicate all of this information requires frequency and efficiency. The short, focused, and regularly scheduled meeting can accomplish this. The project manager can also receive information from team members relative to status, risk management and issue information in an efficient fashion as well.

2. Team members need to know about dependent tasks, and required interactions

In our formal project management training, we spend considerable time (appropriately) on risk management. Classical risk management talks about potential events that may affect the project, the completion of project tasks, or the project mission as a whole. In the fast paced, increasingly technical area of product development, it is just as important that we treat information about dependent tasks and other potential interactions with other team members, major stakeholders or vendors, like we do for risks. We need to recognize these interactions, plan what we need to do to address them, and be prepared if the interaction event takes place. These interaction events can cause us to have to review data, review status, alter our approach, or in the most significant instances, re-plan how we are accomplishing our tasks. Only through interaction with our peers and leaders, and obtaining timely information from stakeholders can this be accomplished efficiently and effectively. We don’t need extensive ‘interaction management plans” to do this; however we do need to interact frequently about the potential, so we can be prepared for upcoming project situations.

So, given these meetings are so important, how do we make them effective in both maximizing team members’ “heads down time” and preparing them for these potential “interaction events?”

1. Don’t make them mandatory – make them “conditional” and you control and communicate the attendance conditions.

The legitimate complaint that most people have about meetings is that they are a waste of time. They go too long, and they aren’t useful. We get into the habit of inviting the “standard team set” to every meeting. When your team is crazy-busy, we need to step to the plate as leaders and make the effort to determine WHO needs to be at our short, focused meetings. So, set the conditions for your team members as to who should attend, communicate those expectations, and share the conditions before every meeting so those that don’t need to be there won’t need to attend. When you first start this technique, fail on the side of conservatism and have people attend. As time progresses, and you get feedback on the usefulness of the meeting, you can fine tune your attendance condition setting. The key to this is simple…if YOU can’t identify the critical piece of information they will take away from the meeting, then they do not need to be there. If YOU need a piece of information from a team member – collect that at the very start of the meeting. Carl Pritchard’s “Wall Walk Protocol” is a great approach to doing this for larger project teams.

2. Hold more than one daily meeting – with different attendees

This might not be as efficient for you as the project manager or the lead business analyst, but this isn’t about you. It is about the productivity, effectiveness and efficiency of the team. If you do this well, and your team feels you are conducting effective meetings that are worthwhile and they get the information they need, you will benefit from a) not having to chase people down to get or share information and b) they will work with better data, which will reduce the issues that you will have to deal with. This usually saves you more time than you will spend on setting attendance conditions and holding separate meetings. Holding separate meetings – and doing this well – avoids the biggest time waster in meetings…that of having to listen to someone drone on about something that isn’t meaningful to them. Divide your team into sub-teams of people that work together often, and have separate daily meetings. To maintain “a whole team” consider having the entire team attend one of the daily meetings each week. Set the agenda for that team meeting be things of relevance to the entire team.

3. Take the meetings seriously, but don’t force yourself and your team to be serious

Efficiency not only comes from getting and giving information effectively and in a manner that is valued by team members. Efficiency also comes from team members that know and understand each other in more than a professional capacity. Take time to recognize birthdays, significant accomplishments, not so significant accomplishments, and times when you acted as a team. Bring cookies or breakfast to the weekly whole team meeting – be human yourself as the leader and encourage your team members to do the same.

4. Talk about the “elephant in the room”.

Because the group of people will be small, take advantage of the intimate size. Cut to the chase and bring up topics that might be “taboo” in a larger group situation. The more open and forthright about providing information you are, the more the team will feel comfortable doing the same. Information is key to our success and the earlier people open up to share “bits of vital information” the better positioned the project will be for success.

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