Tag: Leadership

Analysis Efficiencies: Turning The Mirror On Ourselves

Written by Adrian Reed on June 23, 2022. Posted in Articles.

As analysts, typically we’ll spend a lot of time examining and critiquing the processes of other departments. We might be looking for ways to make an operational process slicker, quicker and ‘better’, or we might be looking to solve particular problems. There are a whole set of elicitation, problem analysis and process analysis techniques in our toolkit that help us do this. Yet how often do we turn these tools in on ourselves to examine our own practices to see if there are ways that we can improve? As practitioners of change, surely we should be looking to continually improve ourselves too?

I suspect we all intuitively do this, at least to a degree, but I wonder if it’s an area where there’s room for improvement. I’ve included some examples to whet your appetite below:

Deciding How To Decide: Have you ever got to an approval gateway in a predictive (waterfall-type) project and it’s unclear who needs to make the approval? Or the approver shirks responsibility? This can manifest differently on adaptive (agile/evolutionary) initiatives, for example with wrangling over the ‘definition of done’ with different stakeholders having different (and unresolved) perspectives. These things can fester if unresolved, perhaps stakeholders concede in the short term and sign on the dotted line, but resentment builds and bubbles up, only to explode out later at the most inconvenient time.

This creates friction and drama that takes time to resolve, and when it comes to organizational change, time is money. It’s therefore beneficial to spend a little bit of time up front agreeing how these types of decisions will be made. This sounds so obvious doesn’t it? Yet, so often in the blind rush to “just get going” it isn’t discussed… and it is only as the decision emerges is the omission spotted. Practical tools such as the RACI matrix can be extremely useful here.

Planning the Requirements Architecture: When BABOK® v3 was released back in 2015, one of many significant additions was a more explicit recognition of requirements architecture. If you have ever found yourself mid-project with a whole set of useful, but disparate requirements artifacts (“These process models are great. But how on earth do they relate to those user journeys, these scenarios and those wireframes?!) you’ll know what I mean.

Taking time up front to quickly and roughly sketch out how it’s anticipated that the requirements will fit together helps avoid this. Of course, things change, as requirements emerge, new types of artifacts suddenly become relevant (“Ah, so statuses are important… I think I’ll include a state transition model…”), however having a starting point to deviate from when appropriate is better than fumbling around in the fog.

On a legislative project, you might write a quick problem statement to act as a high-level goal/outcome, and define some critical success factors/key performance indicators which will act as desired outcomes. These will all link to the organization being compliant with a piece of legislation, that’s another (external) artifact, but one which some rules can be derived from. Those rules will include internal decisions about how the legislation is interpreted; so those probably need to be captured too. Those rules might be automated or orchestrated via processes, and there might be steps in a process which will be automated via some detailed functional solution requirements. You can see how these different concepts relate to each other here; and of course there will be other types of artifacts too. The point is that creating a quick sketch showing how the concepts map together before creating them will prevent artifacts from being created that don’t clearly relate to each other.

Planning How To Store/Manage Requirements Artefacts: If you’re lucky, you’ll have some form of requirements (or story) management tool. If that’s the case, does everyone actually know how to use it? Is there a common agreement around how things like priorities/statuses and other metadata will be used? If not, will this create noise and friction as the initiative progresses? If so, a short discussion up-front is likely to yield significant benefit.

If you are using documents and a shared document repository (e.g. word processing tools, drawing tools, spreadsheets etc.), decide things like naming conventions and version control conventions up front. It can be very confusing when someone in the team is using a file naming convention that uses “v0.1”, “v0.2” then “v1.0” when it’s signed off, when another person is using “FILENAME v1.0 (Updated) (Second Updates) (Final) (Really Final This Time) (Updated Again).docx”

Plan For The Analyst And Stakeholder Of Tomorrow: Stuff you’re creating today will be useful for the analysts and stakeholders of tomorrow. That process model you’ve created? If it’s detailed enough, I bet the training team would love to use it, and the operations team might too. It might be the catalyst to the creation of a single, unified process repository (if that doesn’t already exist in your organization).

Those performance non-functional requirements for your customer-facing website? You know, the ones that were like pulling teeth to elicit, that required benchmarking and speaking to the technical folk? They might be a useful baseline and starting point for others producing customer-facing web applications within your organization.

As we create artifacts, we ought to be thinking not just about how they can be used today, but how they might be used tomorrow and how we can ensure they will be found. This is a much bigger, organizational, question—however it’s one of the many areas where BAs can nudge the agenda. By creating common pools of knowledge, and by encouraging information sharing we open up channels for these types of artifacts to flow. This has the advantage that information flows in both directions and also that there will be a wider range of documents available at the start of projects too.

Of course, these are only four suggestions, there will be many more. The key is that we shouldn’t rest on our laurels; as BAs we should be looking to hone our craft and improve the efficiency and effectiveness as much as we can. This involves not just “speeding to get the job done”, but also thinking about the stakeholders of tomorrow!

Establish Your BA Practice from Scratch

Written by Lawrence Dong on June 15, 2022. Posted in Articles.

I have had the opportunity to establish BA practice within an organization a few times. After first time doing BA practice establishment, I have summarized a toolkit for myself, which in turn helped me setting up BA practice more consistently and effectively. If you are looking to set up your own BA practice, regardless of the organization that you work at, I believe you can benefit from this industry-agnostic BA Practice framework.

Element 1: Streamlined Onboarding

Well began is half done. Onboarding starts when offer is accepted. Trigger IT equipment and system access provision process as early as practical. Consider including any additional productivity equipment, such an as additional monitor, in the IT equipment provision.

The week before new joiner commencement, give them a call to understand their need, questions or concerns regarding onboarding. A phone call, although old-school, will give the new employee a good human-to-human style start. On or prior to day 1, send out all business unit wide email to announce the new starter.

Schedule one-on-one “causal catch up” at the start time on day 1, and project introduction meetings right after, to make new starter feel welcome and cared into new environment.

Make sure you do everything above in a remote-friendly way. Remote working is here to stay.

Element 2: 90-Days Action Plan

If you fail to plan, you plan to fail. Planning is always the best quality assurance. Set up a 90-day plan with the employee and you both stick to it. Focus on both performance and professional development. Regularly review progress with your new starter.

Element 3: Scheduled Communications

“A manager in need is a manager indeed.” (by Lawrence Dong). To avoid the situation that you are too busy to attend to your employees’ needs, schedule communications in advance so that you will have time for this important matter. Apart from the performance review conversations, the most obvious communications opportunities include:

Manager/Employee 1:1
Regular team meetings

Set them up in an appropriate and recurring way.

Element 4: BA Skill Matrix and Career Levelling

Business Analyst, like most other jobs, can and should be measured at work. For all the right reasons, it is critical to provide a fair and equal path to everyone. In order to give a chance to everyone’s career progression, it is fundamental for the manager to acknowledge the existence of different career levels and skill levels among their employees.

An example of career levelling could be:

Junior BA
Intermediate BA
Senior BA
Lead BA
Etc.

And an example of skill matrix could be:

Requirements gathering (1 out of 3)
Process mapping (2 out of 3)
Stakeholder management (3 out of 3)
Etc.

It is worthwhile to mention that the entry criteria of a particular career level may consist of more than skills and deliverables. Behaviors and collaboration are equally important, if not more.

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Element 5: Templates and Processes

Consistency is key to high quality customer experience. With BA templates and processes put in place, effectively there is less room for confusion in “what should be delivered and how”. Just make them easily accessible to the team.

Element 6: BA Services Catalogue

Business analysis work is sometimes dynamic and self-evolving. From a SDLC perspective, BA’s may benefit more than other from a well-defined BA Services Catalogue, whenever there are questions about the boundary of their roles and responsibilities.

Element 7: Knowledge Sharing

Sharing is caring. A regular knowledge sharing forum is a great addition to the regular team meetings, where team members can have the podium and be empowered. When a team member feels empowered, they will be more creative, and everyone involved will feel the positive chemistry.

Element 8: Coaching and Mentoring

“Coaching” and “mentoring” look similar, but a lot of people understand the obvious difference. Coaching is quite performance driven and short-term based, while mentoring is more development driven and long-term aimed. What’s subtle is that mentoring requires a none conflict of interest communication, which means people managers are least appropriate mentors to their direct reports. However, a great support people managers can to is to encourage and even help their employees find a good mentor.

Element 9: Training and Education

It is somehow a “moral contract” between permanent employees (and the likes) and the employer that training and education will be made available when and if required.

Therefore, it is the manager’s role to identify the required training and education opportunities that will strengthen the skills of individual employees.

I hope you have got some inspirations now to use the industry-agnostic BA Practice framework to guide your future team and capability management. If you demonstrate commitment to your employees by building a mutually beneficial BA Practice, consistency will be created, and employee engagement will be elevated. Win-win.

Just Because It’s “Obvious” to You, Doesn’t Mean It’s “Obvious” To Me…

Written by Adrian Reed on June 8, 2022. Posted in Articles.

I can still remember the elation of passing my driving test here in the UK. As is the case with many skills, I often say that I really learned to drive in the six months after passing my test—these were the times where I found myself in unexpected situations that you just don’t encounter during driving lessons.

I still have a very vivid memory of going to a petrol (gas) station for the first time. This is something that they just don’t teach you how to do when you learn to drive. I’d seen people fill up thousands of times before, how hard could it be? Well, after trying to work out which of the confusing array of variants of ‘unleaded’ would be the best one to pick (Regular? Premium? Performance?), I eventually put the nozzle into the fuel tank and pulled the lever. There was an empty clunking sound. Nothing happened, and certainly no fuel flowed..

I tried again, and again a clunk followed by nothing. I could see the queue of people behind me getting increasingly irate as I tried to operate this baffling pump that just didn’t want to work (while simultaneously trying to look like I knew what I was doing). Eventually, a kind fellow-motorist whispered to me from the opposite pump: “You have to press the button to say whether you’re paying at the pump, or paying at the kiosk”. Right! Got it! This was one of the (then) new-fangled pumps that accepted credit cards. I was back on track.

To this day, I think it’s weird that you can pass a driving test without ever having to have pulled up onto a filling station forecourt, but I suppose there’s an assumption that it’s ‘obvious’ and everyone can do it. If you’ve been driving for a few years, it really is second nature. You probably know which side your car’s fuel tank is on, roughly how much it costs to fill up, and exactly how close you like to pull up to the pump. These things are “obvious” to you, but to a new driver they aren’t “obvious” at all, even if they’ve seen the pump used a million times before.

The “Obviousness” Trap

There’s a similar pattern in business analysis and projects. Stakeholders will often omit to say things, not because they are deliberately trying to hide something, but because it’s just so obvious that they don’t even think of it! This is sometimes referred to as ‘tacit knowledge’ and it can prove a real issue in change initiatives if it is not teased out. Not least because these ‘tacit’ areas can stop entire processes working if they are not addressed (much like the gas pump example above).

As business analysts we are tourists in the processes and situations that our stakeholders live in daily. We ask questions, we elicit information, but rarely do we know the finite detail —for that we rely on the talented Subject Matter Experts (SMEs). However, in our role of process-tourist, we need to remain curious, ask probing questions while observing and listening carefully. We need to watch out for the ‘obviousness’ trap—where stakeholders skip over something that is actually important.

A particularly good way of overcoming this can be to observe and shadow stakeholders, gently interrupting them when necessary to ask what they are doing and why. Observation itself is not enough, as we’re unlikely to understand the nuance, so interjecting when appropriate to ask follow up questions is crucial. Of course, this needs to be done with prior knowledge and agreement of those involved, and it’s important that they are briefed on the nature of the project or initiative (and the role of the BA, else they might worry about why they are being observed!).

Additionally, sitting with relevant stakeholders and creating process models or business use case scenarios can be extremely helpful. These help us to elicit and capture the flow of work, and ask questions about anything that is missing. It can also be helpful to ask what exceptions occur, or whether there are any other alternative flows. When combined with observation, it is a very powerful technique.

Whatever techniques are used, being aware of things that are obvious to one person but not another is key. Tapping into the tacit knowledge is key!

6 Tips to improve your professional worth and advance your BA career

Written by Ananya Pani on March 2, 2022. Posted in Articles.

The job of a business analyst is possibly one of the most diversified and can barely fit into a fixed set of tasks and responsibilities. While most business analysts have been turning around initiatives and solutions in their organization, many work with the sales and marketing team to make the products and solutions a winner in the market by bringing out features based on market needs.

Most business analysts play a key role in facilitating digital transformation projects in their organization by designing systems that align with business goals. They also play a pivotal role in implementing new business processes, removing inefficiencies from the existing processes, and reducing operational costs.

Due to the strategic nature of this role and the earnings involved, more and more professionals are considering joining this profession as well as transitioning to this role as their next career move.

As professionals, most of us aspire to grow in our careers and achieve higher success. As a BA, one is always at an added advantage to move up the career ladder to a leadership role since a BA is already working on strategic initiatives aligned to the business goals.

You can take your business analyst career path as far as you would like, progressing through management levels to a leadership position, inhibited only by your ambition to go up and belief in yourself.

Here are some tips to help you progress in your BA career and nurture some leadership skills that transform the way you work.

Stay ahead in your domain/industry
Develop your own goal and plan to make it a reality
Enhance your credentials and skills
Welcome new ideas and initiatives
Challenge assumptions
Make the goal a collective team mission

Leadership comes from the ability to lead and guide and the vision to stay ahead in the industry. One needs to be well aware of the trends in their industry and things that may be the trend of the future. This helps a leader spot opportunity and thereby get in there early to have an early mover advantage.

Stay ahead in your domain/industry

Apart from opportunities being well aware of the industry trends and norms lets one foresee the risks and challenges coming their way, and they can plan for the mitigation accordingly.

Develop your own goal and plan to make it a reality

As the saying goes, passion and dream can move mountains, the same way your dream and goal drive you to greater heights.

Having a dream alone is never enough until you make plans to make it a reality and start taking steps towards it.

You may be just starting your career or in the mid-career stage, but that shouldn’t stop you from having the dreams of reaching a top echelon in your career.

James Clear quotes in his famous book Atomic Habits:

“You don’t rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems.”

And he clearly describes how all of us are made of our systems, which are made of our habits.

The purpose of setting goals is to win the game, and the purpose of building systems is to continue playing the game.

A leader in making is the one who keeps playing the game instead of winning the game once.

So, it’s essential to keep making small progress towards your goal every day.

Enhance your credentials and skills

As the quote goes, “Education is the passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs to those who prepare for it today.”

The more you are skilled and aware of your domain, the more sought after you are and the quicker you ascend to the top.

An international certification not only gives you the credibility to establish yourself in the global market,

The paper doesn’t make you wiser, but studying the industry practices and techniques makes one more skilled and capable. That enhances confidence dramatically, helping professionals handle complex projects and initiatives. In addition, adding new skills to yourself allows you to transform yourself into a more capable and efficient leader who can assist the team in getting past any roadblocks they face.

If getting ahead in your career and staying ahead of the curve is your goal, you must keep upskilling and making learning a habit.

For a business analyst, gaining expertise in BA skills and techniques with an IIBA certification is undoubtedly a great value add. However, one must also consider skills and certifications applicable to their domain to stay updated in their domain.

IIBA has three levels of certifications depending on the years of BA experience the professional has.

ECBA Certification – For freshers/new grads or people starting their career in the business analysis field
CCBA Certification – Business Analysts or professionals with 2-3 years of BA experience.
CBAP Certification – Senior business analysts or professionals with 5+ years of BA experience.

Grab a copy of our best-selling eBook- 200 IIBA Exam Mock Questions with IIBA Exam Info utilized by 1000s of BA professionals to ace their IIBA exam.

Welcome new ideas and initiatives

To be a sought-after business leader, one needs to develop a growth mindset that welcomes and fosters new ideas. They actively encourage and seek out new ideas, opinions, feedback and analyze them with an open mind and without any bias. Seeking and exploring new ideas make one a creative problem solver and adept out-of-box thinker. That also makes one a popular leader because of the open-mindedness and ability to embrace different thinking and opinions.

Challenge assumptions

Assumptions are usually formed from our past experiences and due to the lack of an open mind.

Effective leadership embraces agility and openness to new thoughts and ideas. Whatever assumption one holds may not always be accurate for various reasons, and assumptions might also be due to the person’s prejudices and biases. Hence, questioning assumptions and hidden biases makes one open to new ways of thinking and, hence, innovative solutions.

Due to assumptions made in the discovery/ideation phase, projects/initiatives run into various roadblocks and undesired outcomes. Hence to avoid such situations, it is better to question each assumption and verify facts before diving into the build phase.

Make the goal a collective team mission

A dream/goal is better accomplished with collective efforts, and it takes a leader to bring together a team with varied skills and expertise to come and work towards one mission. A goal seems a much harder one with the thought of being taken up alone but a fun thing to do and achieve with a motivated team. A team comes with varied skills and ideas, which makes the goal achievable and a significant milestone towards pulling in a great team.

If you desire to ascend to the top-tier of your organization, prepare a road map and follow it meticulously. If you can master the required BA skills by following and honing them and having the business expertise to reach the top, the steps mentioned above will help you climb the corporate ladder and become an invaluable asset to your organization.

Top 7 Skills Your BA Leader Should Have

Written by Ivan Serrano on February 17, 2022. Posted in Articles.

Do You Have What it Takes?

The role of a business analyst is absolutely essential to the success of a company, which can make it an intimidating position. Among other duties, a business analyst’s core responsibility is to understand the goals and operations of a company and use this data to make an informed decision on how to improve its workflow. This typically requires the business analyst to assess several departments within a company and know their key responsibilities as well as how they work together to reach an objective. In this article, we’ll discuss seven of the most important skills for a business analyst to have and explore how they impact their productivity.

Expand Your BA Role

Leadership Skills

It is necessary for your head business analyst to have leadership skills because they will likely be working with a number of people across many departments. They need to be capable of supervising their team while also collaborating with any relevant source outside of that team. Your head business analyst needs to feel confident in their ability to rally a team behind a common goal and give them a clear direction for how they should achieve that goal. It would be wise to invest in a leadership development plan to ensure that your head business analyst has the leadership skills necessary to run such a complex operation.

Communication Skills

As previously mentioned, business analysts will have to work with multiple internal departments as well as their own team to come to the best conclusions. This means your business analyst must be a strong communicator otherwise, they would be incapable of gathering the information they need to do their job properly. If your business analyst cannot consistently speak to a variety of people effectively, then their productivity will be limited. Being a good communicator will also help your business analyst get along with their peers, which will lead to better overall productivity.

Planning Skills

A major aspect of being a business analyst is being able to think ahead and create plans to help a company address future issues. Your business analyst should be detail-oriented and capable of developing a plan that holds up well against scrutiny. This plan should be informed by all of the data they collect from collaborating departments and offer recommendations for how to streamline or improve a company’s operations and increase productivity.

Analytical Skills

As the title suggests, business analysts spend most of their day analyzing business operations. They should be capable of gathering information on workflow across departments, stakeholder inputs, and operation expectations before analyzing this data to make worthwhile recommendations. Your business analyst needs to be capable of tracking many details simultaneously and understand their implications for a business’s productivity. A good business analyst will also be able to shape these implications into an actionable plan that benefits the brand they work for.

Technical Skills

Business analysts use a number of different programs to complete their tasks. For example, they may use a spreadsheet to compile data, another application for wireframing, and a third program for introducing their results to a board of operations. And in our technologically advanced world, business analysts are only going to encounter more programs that they must be able to navigate. This means that business analysts need to have the technical skills to operate different software applications without too much of a struggle.

Critical Thinking Skills

Oftentimes, business analysts will come across problems that do not have a definite solution. New problems arise all the time for brands everywhere and a business analyst needs to be able to understand them quickly and create a solution for them. This is where critical thinking skills become absolutely crucial for a business analyst to have. Without the ability to think critically, a business analyst would not be able to adapt to different scenarios effectively. Your business analyst needs to be confident in their ability to consistently address issues as they arise for your company.

Listening Skills

To be able to gather good data, your business analyst must be a good listener. Good ideas can come from anywhere, but if your business analyst is incapable of properly understanding their peers then it’s unlikely, they’ll find good solutions. This goes hand in hand with the importance of communication skills because your business analyst will likely be working with several people across multiple departments.

Go Above and Beyond

Being a business analyst is a tough role that requires a large skillset to do their job effectively. They are vital to the productivity of a brand but can easily become overwhelmed if they are not equipped with the skills needed to address a company’s issues. Hopefully, by focusing on the skills we’ve covered in this article your business analyst will be better equipped to tackle their daunting role.