Tag: Leadership

What is Business Agility

Written by Business Analysis (BAPL) on September 15, 2021. Posted in Articles.

Success today requires the agility and drive to constantly rethink, reinvigorate, react, and reinvent. – Bill Gates

Business agility is not about rolling out New Ways of Working (NWOW) or Agile methods via a ceremony, but it is about business analysis capability to continually assess the market needs & being able to reshape & remodel an organisation to meet these needs.

A generation ago, a “Kodak moment” meant something that was worth saving and savouring. Today, the term increasingly serves as a corporate bogeyman that warns executives of the need to stand up and respond when disruptive developments encroach on their market. – Scott D. Anthony

As we are entering the 5^th Industrial revolution, the age of software, we can see that business agility and software engineering excellence are paramount for organisational success.

Today six of the top organisations in the world are technology companies and four were founded by software engineers. It is not surprising to predict that those organisations that master software engineering in the next decade will survive & thrive, while those that don’t will flounder or dwindle.

Even traditional manufacturing companies such as car manufactures are being disrupted. The electric car now utilise over 1 million lines of code & it is predicted that the autonomous car will require over 1 billion lines of code. Car manufactures will employ more software engineers, business analysts, testers than production line workers in five years time.

How do you improve software initiatives? Are you taking control of your software engineering or are you only using cookie cutter New Ways of Working (NWOW) for Agile transformations?

Connecting software initiatives to business outcomes through value streams is the key. Success can only be driven by the market that drives the reshaping of the business. If you have no connection between your delivery squads and business success, you will inevitably fail.

We trace from market analysis, value streams and delivery backlogs to make sure that business agility is realised fully. Feature driving, compliance driving, user ability, or low defect driven are measured to enable real business agility for a competitive advantage.

Exceptional business analysis is the key to successful business transformation for the future uncertainty. The best way to predict and lead the future is to create it.

“Increased ROI: Business analysis keeps the focus on the value delivery to the customer. Enabling organizations to better define products with business analysis to deliver the right outcome that meets customers needs and eliminate requirements with minimal value.
Increased success rate: 71% of failed software projects can be traced to poor requirements – CIO Magazine, 2006. Mitigate the risk of failed initiatives with business analysis throughout all planning levels and prioritize implementation of requirements with the most potential benefit to the customer.
Reduced costs: Better defining the product and focus on the right requirements eliminates unnecessary changes or rework with logical and orderly decision-making, tailoring and aligning solutions to the business or customer needs.
Gain competitive advantage: Accelerate product delivery and be the first to market to gain market share by creating a clear roadmap from the current to future states and building a consensus among stakeholders”. IIBA

Here’s the thing about exceptional business analysis

Business Analysts help your company to think about the “why” before going ahead with a strategy, which will helps prevent technology initiatives from providing little or no value to your organisation.

Here’s an example of exceptional business analysis. A client sought a solution to manage their approval process and documents. These were associated with their major energy capital projects, having a value of up to $100 million.

We analysed the business process automation, mapped the future state processes, and explored the business and functional requirements through a series of stakeholder workshops. This was achieved by using aspects of our methodology and customising templates from our Business Analysis Centre of Excellence (BACOE)

Based on these documented processes and requirements, we developed an automated workflow solution.

The outcomes of the process automation solution were:

Increased consistency of the approval process
An automated audit trail for the approvals
An increase in document tracking, resulting in a greater efficiency with approvals
Reduced time spent on approvals by eliminating manual approvals
Reduced resource wastage on printing

In the final analysis, we found that by minimising the delays for approvals, this reduced the external contract resources required for approval processes. Within six months, the cost of developing the solution was paid for by the benefits of the automated workflow.

An exceptional Business Analyst requires a unique skillset that many senior executives have never experienced. However, you need to engage in proper business analysis to provide a greater chance of transformation success.

As increasingly competitive organisations look to become more innovative to survive and prosper with technology, business analysis is critical.

If you want to deliver better products & services to customers, and not to become a “Kodak moment” then let us help you to improve your software initiatives!

A Natural Born Manager

Written by Anna Rajander on August 25, 2021. Posted in Articles.

Everyone, it seems, wants to be recognized for their leadership abilities. ‘Leader’, ‘leading’ and ‘leadership’ are in vogue terms for CVs and professional social media profiles. Everywhere you look, there are books, articles, and presentations on the topic, and leadership courses abound. Indeed, being called a ‘natural born leader’ is considered a high compliment. But could this obsession with leadership be at the expense of other, possibly more important qualities?

This article will look at some of the characteristics associated with leadership and management, the role they play in defining and driving organizational change, and what they mean to business analysis.

Leadership vs. Management

The table below lists qualities often attributed to leaders and managers respectively.

You can find similar lists each lauding slightly different traits, but they all share the same sentiment – leadership is about inspiration, innovation, and change, while management is about structure, problem-solving and routine. For some, leadership is something an individual possesses innately – a natural tendency, as opposed to a skillset that can be learned and improved. Management, on the other hand, is usually viewed more as a skill set that is developed over time and with experience. But are they really that different? And can one set of qualities be used to accentuate the other?

Leadership and Management in Times of Change

For an organization undergoing transformational change, there is no denying leadership is important. Having a charismatic leader who can articulate a vision to a wide audience can make the change journey easier. But organizations do not need many leaders. For most organizations, a single, visionary leader may be enough. Indeed, having too many leaders may be detrimental to an organization, particularly if the leadership group is unable to agree on a single, coherent vision.

Now consider how many managers are required to execute change. This question is far more problematic and influenced by many variables, such as the size, scale, and complexity of the change. However, two things are for certain:

Leadership does not guarantee change success. Indeed, leadership in the absence of management capabilities is unlikely to result in successful change.
Measures of change success are likely to draw on management qualities. A change is only successful if it can be embedded and maintained over time… or in other words, whether it results in a level of stability – a quality associated with management.

It is important to remember that leadership and management are not mutually exclusive. Indeed, good managers will often have leadership qualities, and good leaders certainly require management skills. In some instances, the distinction between leaders and managers may not be clear. Individuals may be required to move between roles depending on the situation, particularly in more agile or dynamic contexts.

Business Analysis: Leadership, or Management?

Business analysis is often at the forefront of efforts to translate the vision of leaders into maintainable solutions. As such, the good analysis may be confounded with leadership. Analysis that is produced through wide consultation succinctly describes the situation and context, considers different perspectives, and clearly communicates a solution may be able to achieve more in envisioning and driving change than anyone recognized as a ‘leader’. Yet, it would be wrong to diminish the contribution of an analyst’s management capabilities in the delivery of such analysis. A good analysis involves problem solving, persistence, and structure – all qualities associated with management. And should that analysis lead to the implementation of an innovative, proactive solution – Is that leadership? Or just a by-product of good management?

A range of techniques is available to assist Business Analysts in delivering quality analysis. If we look at the available techniques, many of them epitomize management qualities. Take for example the 15 business analysis techniques in the Business Analysis Book of Knowledge (BABoK)² that are sometimes considered the core techniques. Figure 1 shows these techniques on a Venn diagram based on whether they generally accentuate management or leadership qualities:

Figure 1: Core Techniques of the BABoK

This diagram shows the majority of these techniques on the management side of the Venn diagram as they involve analyzing and structuring information – qualities associated with management. There are some techniques that are more flexible and can be employed to promote innovation and experimentation – more traits associate with leadership, and others that can emphasize different qualities depending on the context. This is good news for Business Analysts who want to improve and expand their capabilities into different areas or contribute to an initiative in a different way – there is usually a technique that can help.

Of course, Business Analysts also require underlying competencies across a number of areas. The BABoK includes a whole set of competencies grouped under the heading Analytical Thinking and Problem Solving, which are qualities (as per Table 1) associated with management. However, the BABoK also lists creative thinking, adaptability, and even leadership and influencing as underlying business analysis competencies – qualities associated with leadership.

At the end of the day, even the most revered business analyst ‘leader’ is likely to extol management qualities over leadership qualities as that is the nature of the analysis. For example, any Business Analyst with a new, innovative, or interesting idea is likely to immediately start asking questions such as:

Is there a business need?
What is the impact of the change?
What does success look like?

…and, thus, immediately start analyzing and creating structure. In the end, we can’t get away from the fact that business analysis is focused on the delivery of viable solutions to problems. Therefore, while leadership qualities may be an asset to a Business Analyst, management capabilities are fundamental to business analysis.

Conclusion

The intention of this article is not to deride leadership qualities or diminish their value. Indeed, leadership skills are important, and I would encourage any Business Analyst to work on developing their leadership capabilities. However, focusing on leadership is not healthy. Over-emphasizing the importance of leadership can be at the expense of other qualities and detract from the core capabilities required to elicit and understand requirements, analyze solution options, drive change, and support sustainable services – things that are fundamental to business analysis.

I, for one, would consider it a compliment to be called a natural-born manager.

Resources:

Capowski G., Anatomy of a leader: Where is the leader of tomorrow?, Management Review Vol. 83 Issue 3, 1994, p. 10-18.
Business Analysis Book of Knowledge v3, Institute of Business Analysis, 2015.

Why Business Analysis as a Service is a CIO’s Best Friend

Written by Business Analysis (BAPL) on August 12, 2021. Posted in Articles.

A CIO needs a trusted partner to facilitate joint ownership between business and IT to deliver business value, reduce risk, and remove project blockages, and deliver on the organization’s strategy.

Business analysis is about improving business performance. It is the foundation for innovation, business agility, cost reduction, cybersecurity, and risk control. The exceptional business analysis allows you to deliver better initiatives, projects, and ultimately products and/or services to your customers, often through leveraging digital technology.

To deliver a successful strategy using technology, exceptional business analysis is a must. By establishing Business Analysis as a Service (BAaaS) within your organization, your projects or initiatives will be created for you to the highest of standards, and you’ll also have a far lower risk of failure, overspend, or unsatisfactory products or services.

You’ll achieve peace of mind knowing your business will have:

greater engagement with IT
excellent results in alignment with your IT strategy
a better chance of making new changes stick
decisive project decision making at a portfolio level
improvement of projects or initiatives and lower chance of failure
effective change in support of improved technology
improved results
and a significantly higher return on investment.

Exceptional business analysis engages and empowers stakeholders, allowing them to find better ways to deliver value to customers.

BAaaS often costs the same as interacting with disparate individual BAs. But the return on investment both for your initiatives, as well as the ability to leverage this to drive more capability in business analysis within your organization, is where the value lies. So why would you settle for less?

Here’s the thing about Business Analysis as a Service

BAaaS is all about helping your company to think about the “why” before going ahead with a strategy, which will prevent technology initiatives from providing little or no value to your organization.

Here’s an example of BAaaS at work. A client sought a solution to manage their approval process and documents. These were associated with their major energy capital projects, having a value of up to $100 million.

Within our BA Practice, we analyzed the business process automation, mapped the future state processes, and explored the business and functional requirements through a series of stakeholder workshops using aspects of our method and Business Analysis Centre of Excellence IP (Frameworks, templates, techniques, etc).

Based on these documented processes and requirements, we developed an automated workflow solution.

The outcomes of the process automation solution were:

increased consistency of the approval process
an automated audit trail for the approvals
an increase in document tracking, resulting in greater efficiency with approvals
a reliable mechanism for staff to determine the status of payment requests and payments
reduced time spent on approvals by eliminating manual approvals
reduced resource wastage on printing
reduced physical file storage.

In the final analysis, we found that minimized delays for approvals reduced the external contract resources required for approval processes. Within six months, the cost of developing the solution was paid for by the benefits of the automated workflow.

An expert business analysis requires a unique skill set that many senior executives have never experienced. However, you need to engage in Business Analysis as a Service to provide a greater chance of project success, across your entire portfolio.

To be successful with technology, businesses must have exceptional business analysis and you achieve this consistently, through business analysis as a service.

We can help your business to stand out from the crowd. We provide expertise and world-leading business analysis, through our Business Analysis as a Service. Take your business to a new level.

Business-analysis.com.au

Building Personal Value in the Workplace

Written by James Schiltz on May 26, 2021. Posted in Articles.

We may all find ourselves one day asking, “How can I advance around here?”.

Breaking Through the Stakeholder Surface

Written by Kristen Gandier on April 21, 2021. Posted in Articles. 2 Comments on Breaking Through the Stakeholder Surface

The Stakeholder Blueprint

Stakeholders are an important component of the business ecosystem, and especially important to initiatives, as they include any individual person or group that has any sort of connection to the business need or change at hand. Stakeholders can have a straight-forward connection to the initiative, or be a more complex and challenging piece. Stakeholders are not always the person or group with the easiest road of access, and overcoming challenges and barriers with stakeholders can build trust and facilitate meaningful business relationships and engagement.

Speaking the language of stakeholders is about understanding not only what is obviously promoted and agreed, but also about listening to what is not said. Within stakeholder silence can be hesitation, but it could also be unspoken agreement and support, or even untapped input. Not all stakeholders speak the same language, and it may depend on the initiative and accompanying environment. Understanding environment is important, as well as having self awareness to ensure no assumptions are made on perception of stakeholders.

Everyone knows the phrase, “watch out for those quiet ones”. In the landscape of stakeholders, it is not always a reliable approach to accept the loud voices of support as loyal, and the quiet ones as adversity. Understanding different communication needs can help to elicit not only requirements, but important business information to help with the initiative. This means not only thinking, but also performing and prioritizing outside of the box.

The Unlikely Mentor

Within stakeholder groups, there could be many different types of business relationships. Mentors can come in all shapes and at all career milestones. You may have spent some time focusing on one particular area of your organizational structure to find a mentor, only to happen upon your best ambassador and catalyst of growth from an unexpected network connection.

Mentoring as a professional input has changed over the years, and no longer is represented by the one-dimensional approach of an employee with seasoned expertise providing wisdom to a junior, within a specific organizational facet. Mentoring can be from one or many blended sources, allowing the optimal blend of experience, perspectives and advice to inspire multi-directionally. It is no longer the formal, stuffy documented professional connection and more modernly exists in a fluid, dynamic environment that fits more to the organic professional environment and multiple avenues of existing career paths.

Cohesion and the Business Need

Mapping stakeholder personas is an important Business Analysis technique in identifying specific sources, decisions and choices for involvement to the initiative. Keeping touchpoints open and approaches objective helps to elicit valuable information for projects and maintain a team’s engagement and value.

When leading teams through initiatives and keeping communication central, there may be times when information is not always easy to unpack. Depending on the initiative, challenging group conversations about outcomes may come up time-to-time, such as the sometimes “unpopular” outcomes of:

Doing Nothing
Accepting sunk cost

These outcomes can divide stakeholders, make some nervous, and may even inspire a reaction to perceived setbacks, even if they are indeed the best options. With the right communication though, these may actually allow for important reconfigurations for stakeholders to find a new perspective. That environment of honesty and trust can directly impact another future initiative, or even exist in understanding business needs, and how something such as “doing nothing” may prevent loss from continuing to pursue an initiative that delivers low-value.

Keeping stakeholders informed and direction honest can:

Enhance elicited information
Build trust
Create better business relationships
Solidify cohesion in the delivery of any outcome

When the team has the same view, the road to travel there is easier.