Tag: Learning

Your Next Business Analyst Will Be a Robot

Written by Kupe Kupersmith on July 27, 2016. Posted in Articles.

The advancement in artificial intelligence is mind blowing. So much so that teaching robots problem-solving skills is kicking into high gear.

I recently went to a science museum with my family, and one of the exhibits showed that robots are learning problem-solving skills. If you know about and/or believe in Singularity, this is no surprise. You can learn more about singularity here. For a quick reference, I want to share this definition. “The technological singularity is the hypothesis that accelerating progress in technologies will cause a runaway effect wherein artificial intelligence will exceed human intellectual capacity and control, thus radically changing or even ending civilization in an event called the singularity.” In Time magazine about 5 years ago, there was an article that predicted singularity would hit in 2045.

Related Article: Stop Calling Yourself the Bridge

When I read the sign at the museum stating robots are learning problem-solving skills it made me think about the impact to the business analysis profession. Problem-solving is what business analysis professionals do. They are problem solvers. Which led me to think the next generation BA will be a robot. I know most people reading this article will most likely be retired by 2045, so you don’t have to worry about your business analysis role. You may have to worry about how this impacts retirement, but you’ll have to talk to your financial advisor about that one. This took me down a path thinking about how technology is disrupting the BA profession. I landed on the thought that if robots can be BAs in 30 years, then humans half way around the world can be your next BA hire right now. Technology may not be sophisticated enough for a robot to take your job, but it is sophisticated enough to give companies the ability to hire a BA anywhere in the world.

Before I get into what you can do what this means to you and what you can do about it, I want to blow away some myths about having remote BAs.

Distance: I keep hearing people say in the US that the BA role won’t be moved offshore. Well, too late, it already is. The companies I work with have BAs everywhere. I predict the number will grow. And I am not just talking about India or China. Why can’t your next BA peer be from the UK, New Zealand, or Ukraine? Why can’t the next BA on your team be from Los Angeles even though your company is in Des Moines?
Time Zones: How can you possibly have a BA work in New Zealand if the business stakeholders are in the US? The time difference is too great, right? Not too worry. My father worked nights for as long as I can remember. People will work non-9 to 5 jobs if it suits their lifestyle.
Language Barriers: Language barriers will become less and less of an issue every year. When I was in primary school, we started learning a second language in middle school. Now my kids are learning Spanish when they are 5. Younger generations are being brought up in a global world and are being prepared.

Now that I took care of that, you can look at this new reality in two ways. You can see it as a challenge and the fact that you will be vying for a job not only from people in your city but from around the world. Or, you can look at it as an opportunity. No matter where you are, you can apply for jobs around the world. Regardless of the way you look at it, there are things you can do to prove your value to any company.

I have written about valuable skills or characteristics before so I won’t repeat those here. If you have not read my blog post, The Four Chords of Great Business Analysts, please check it out.

For other characteristics to focus on, take a look at an article my buddy Hans Eckman shared from Fast Company, 4 Habits of Employees You Shouldn’t Wait to Promote. Get in the habit.

Oh, but there’s more. Robots may be able to be better problem solvers in the near future. Though, being a good problem solver does not help if you first don’t know what problem you are trying to solve. What good is it if you solve a problem that no one cares about? You need to start or continue to be laser focused on ensuring there is clarity and shared understanding of the problem or opportunity your team is working towards.

Next, you need to focus on remote communication and collaboration. Get really good at this. A recent survey by Meeting Professionals International shows that virtual meetings are expected to grow at twice the rate as live meetings. This is everything from large company meetings to one on one meetings. A large part of your role is to facilitate decisions. The people you are helping make decisions are not always sitting next to you.

Let’s face it; the barriers are broken. Technology has caught up to people’s desire to connect with others around the world. Organizations have options. I can easily connect with friends and colleagues in the UK, Spain, New Zealand, Australia, South Africa, Argentina, and so on. Organizations no longer need to hire someone that lives a commutable distance from an office. There are 2 key things you should focus on as it relates to remote communication and collaboration. One, you have to learn how to connect on a personal level with people in a remote world. This takes some work. In an office, you do this without even thinking. You see someone getting a drink, and small talk ensues. You see them at lunch, on the way to a meeting, or walking into the office and you can connect with little effort. You usually don’t have to make time to connect with them. In a virtual world, you need to schedule it. Work in time during your day to call someone, text someone, chat with someone just to say hello.

Next, you need to improve your virtual etiquette. When you are face to face with someone, you can eat and drink. When you do this on the phone, the noises that are heard on the other end of the phone are not pleasant. If you are eating while you are on a phone call, it’s like someone having their ear to your mouth as you are chewing. It’s rude and sounds gross! If you are a “slurper” when you drink, don’t drink while on the phone. And have you ever filled up a water glass from a water cooler or refrigerator while on the phone? Have someone try it and tell me what that sounds like. I’d rather you eat on the phone!

Technology will continue to change how you live and work. Will robots be the next generation BAs? Maybe. Until then, work on adding value to your organization regardless of where you live or where your team is located.

Virtually yours,

Kupe

Strategy Spotlight: Catapult the Organization Forward: Discover a CEO’s Thinking

Written by Richard Lannon on July 6, 2016. Posted in Articles. 2 Comments on Strategy Spotlight: Catapult the Organization Forward: Discover a CEO’s Thinking

I was interviewing a CEO of a successful technology product and service company. We were discussing what made the company successful and also their challenges. He openly spoke of the way they approach business growth and their culture with an emphasis on people – both internal and external stakeholder relationships.

Here are the things that were on the CEO’s mind and the commitments they made. I suspect some of these are on your leaders’ minds and you should know them if you want to participate in your company’s success.

Business Growth

When we started talking about business growth I asked the CEO to define what this meant to his company. It was clearly stated that they measured business growth two ways; by top line sales and bottom line results. From an SBA’s (strategic business analyst) perspective this helps tell you where you can have an impact. For example, if your focus is on cost reduction then you get to impact the bottom line through process improvements or other cost reduction measures.

Acquisition

One part of the approach to business growth for this CEO was through acquisition. The acquisition strategy was about finding complementary products and services that were within the business’s ability to acquire that fit with the culture of the organization. There was a huge emphasis placed on people and culture because acquiring another business that did not fit made no sense to this CEO. The reason was simple; wrong culture and wrong fit mean conflict and negative business impact.

So for this company, if the BA is part of a team evaluating acquisition. they would need to know the parameters of analysis using a combination for financial, human resource and risk management approaches to help determine if a move forward is a good idea. This could apply internally as well as when looking at department adjustments. Not to mention if the company succeeded in acquiring another organization, the BA would need to document all the cultural changes, process shifts and adjustments that need to be made. The BA should be part of the success of this approach.

Organic Growth

The organic growth is a portion of growth that applies to increased output, customer base expansion, new product development, innovation, or the geographic placement of your company to serve a clientele. This CEO explained that this is something they can do at a relative consistent annual rate given the nature of their business. For example, a 5 percent annual growth rate per year would be consistent.

But with a little creative development, they could create a revenue pop in their business. The example provided was when a group of business analysts had the idea of recycling metal from old equipment and selling to recycling companies. It turned out to be a small but doable branch of their business done by a couple of people who cared about the environment, took the time to identify the requirements, recommend solutions and help make it happen.

Three-Legged Stool Analogy

This analogy has been around for a long time and is sometimes referred to as the Three-Legged Strategy. When this CEO and I started to discuss this business approach we had a good laugh as we both understood that the Three-Legged Strategy applies to a lot of things. But our focus is the CEO’s perspective. In this case, we talked about customer service, product sales, and maintenance agreements.

They placed a lot of emphasis on training their people to do three things. First, making sure they are solving the customer’s problem no matter what. Second, asking their customers who else should they be speaking to in their company that could also use their services? Third, the simple question, how can we help? All three of these things helped build the business through relationship building and can be part of the external and internal culture of the business.

Their product line was twofold, soft consumables and hard products. Their business growth starts first with customer consumable products. This particular technology company sold customer products that customers would consume on a regular basis, creating a regular cash flow. The consumable products helped the company create a wedge in their customer’s business, opening the door to other opportunities. Think an inch wide and a mile deep. Once they opened the door, they could sell other products.

Their hard products, he felt, were things they could sell once due to the cost. Generally, it would be a capital purchase by a client. They are always looking to sell their hard products, but the real cash flow is in the maintenance agreements to service the equipment. So the emphasis was placed on ways to maintain these contracts and to find additional offerings related to this service. This way they were focused on value services. Their BAs helped define the service and maintenance programs through analysis of the business intelligence data.

There are many lessons learned here relating to the Three-Legged Stool approach. You can see that their culture is a customer focused environment where making sure that the needs of the customer are completely understood and solutions were forthcoming. The culture also reflected that they thought out where their revenue streams were and they emphasized actions towards supporting that area. From an internal perspective, I could see services of an IT department (or any department) following a similar approach for their internal clients. It just needs to be defined.

People and Culture

This was the final piece of the puzzle for this CEO. Not necessarily the last. It just happened we agreed at the start of our discussion to follow a certain flow.

Their culture, he felt, was one of the most important parts of the business success. They were always having discussions on how to improve that part of the business. He was proud to tell me of the $250 annually that each employee gets to give to charity and the company match on top of that and the weekly call out sessions where employees complimented their peers on the work they did. Basically creating a culture where people are engaged and work together to solve problems. But the big word was FIT. People they hired needed to fit with the organization and live the business values. As we reviewed the values, I had the CEO provide examples of what living the values looked liked. Given the nature of the project we were about to embark on this was important to know. Overall this company wanted a culture of trust. Something a BA can learn to do when working with people using the formula; like you, know you, and trust you and I will work with you. But maybe that is another blog on how to build a culture of trust.

Final Thought

As I share this blog and the interview that I did with this CEO I can’t but help think about what I found out. This was a reconnaissance mission to understand the business, the issues, the driving forces and risks. I did get what I needed. This important conversation provided me insight into what was on the CEO’s mind, the leadership commitments of the organization and the lessons learned. I got to ask all sorts of questions related to the business to gain perspective and thinking. This provided valuable information to help define the future, analyze commitments and implement solutions.
As a strategic business analyst, I believe that information and business intelligence data can be used to help business’ achieve its goals and objectives, to analyze aspects of the business to solve problems and provide solutions that fundamentally will help catapult the organization forward. It is important to discover what is on the minds of the CEO. Hopefully, you do too.

Remember to:

Do your best,

Invest in the success of others,

Make your journey count,

Richard

21st Century BA: How to Become a Business Technologist

Written by Kathleen B. Hass, PMP on June 30, 2016. Posted in Articles. 1 Comment on 21st Century BA: How to Become a Business Technologist

In the 21st century, all businesses are technology companies. To survive in the global economy, indeed to thrive, world-class, agile and flexible technology is a necessity.

Without it, organizations cannot cope with the ever-changing competitive environment. Competition is fierce, and an organization’s competitive advantage is always at risk. In addition, the business environment is stunningly complex. Innovation is a precondition to survival. Technology advances are coming fast and furiously. Organizations are struggling to find the talent needed to drive changes to the business and the technology to achieve and sustain competitive advantage.

WE NEED TO CHANGE OUR PERSPECTIVE

The business analysis discipline needs to elevate its thinking, discarding the notion that requirements management is the most important task at hand. That is a very narrow, and frankly doomed view of the scope of business analysis. As enterprise BAs, striving to fill the role of Business Technologists, we are adopting a core enterprise perspective that is driven by the need for business/technology investments to create optimal business benefits in terms of value to customers and wealth to the bottom line.

WE NEED A HOLISTIC VIEW OF THE BUSINESS AND THE TECHNOLOGY

The effective Enterprise BA/Business Technologist thinks big. Thinks strategically. Thinks holistically. Thinks about the customer. Understands that the business and technology components of the organization are part of an ecosystem that is always changing and adapting to variations in the competitive environment and transformations in technology, resulting in requisite changes to business processes, technology, products, and services. While there is no technology that is the silver bullet, we continue to seek out technical products and technical managers to solve all of our problems.

There is no single silver bullet. It’s about being able to identify technologies, understand their implications, combine them in an effective way, and make intelligent decisions in employing them, creating a set of operational processes and organizational structures to surround them, which is a much harder thing than simply investing in one technology versus another.

… We need technologists who understand more in the way of the economic analysis and business strategy. I would also suggest we need technologists who are more integrative problem solvers, which is to say we need technologists who can solve problems across multiple technology domains, and across business and technology domains.

James Kaplan, Principal at McKinsey&Companyⁱ

WE NEED TO GROW UP FAST

An IBM CEO study as long ago as 2010 identified complexity as the biggest challenge, and creativity as the most important skill that is needed to understand and manage complexityⁱⁱ. They went on to say, they have not groomed creative leaders from within, and they can’t find the talent they need through traditional staffing activities. Conventional project roles are changing. The EBA focus is now on strategy, innovation, and value vs. requirements management. The PM focus is now on complexity management vs. project management. However, companies can’t find these types of BAs/PMs – critical thinkers with the ability to:

Adapt, invent, and re-invent
Collaborate, create, and innovate
Leverage complexity to compete.

The business analysis discipline, and therefore the effective business technologist, needs to quickly attain breakthrough skills and competencies – en masse. The need is urgent. Realizing that there is so much innovation in technology today, no organization can know all about the different technology domains that are emerging. Therefore, creativity, problem solving and integration skills become much more important that any specific knowledge about a technical domain such as cyber cybersecurity, cloud computing, or big data. To fill the void, organizations that rely heavily on technology such as banks, insurance companies, and healthcare companies are starting to recruit from within and from outside in the high-tech industry. They are seeking out individuals with a broad set of skills, individuals who have the ability to span business and technology domains, who have experience in integrative problem solving.

Staffing and career development operatives are responding to the need. Companies are seeking out internal and external managers and high performers who are willing to move between different parts of an IT organization as they progress. Some business managers are also moving from the business into selected roles in technology organizations in order to infuse more business acumen into the IT management staff. We need innovation in the world of training for business and IT professionals. Instead of focusing on technical disciplines, Kaplan urges us to foster what he calls first-principles technology problem solving or cross-domain integrative-technology problem solvingⁱⁱⁱ.

ELEVATE YOUR PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT APPROACH

For the individual BA who is looking to elevate their career and status in their organizations, it’s time to modernize your career development approach. Get your hands around a new attitude about your professional development. Build strategy-focused, value-based thinking into your advancement plans.

SEEK OUT NEW ROLES

21st Century EBAs/BTs are bold and courageous. They search for new roles and new challenges to broaden and deepen their experience, knowledge, and expertise. They put themselves in positions with high visibility where the action is. They thrive when working collaboratively with other experts in uncertainty and ambiguity. People in the business and in IT seek them out, asking for them to be on their teams.

LEAD THROUGH CONNECTIONS

The 21st Century is all about connections. In the global world of business complexity, it takes a high functioning team of experts to negotiate the business and technical complexities. So, perhaps your most critical capability is to bring together a group of experts (first get the right people in the room!), and then create an environment where it is safe to experiment, suggest off-the-wall ideas, challenge and build on each other’s ideas; then rapidly test ideas to determine viability^iv.

WHAT DOES ALL THIS MEAN TO THOSE AT THE TOP OF THE BA FOOD CHAIN?

There are many things you can do to accelerate your transition to an enterprise, strategically focused business technologist. Review the suggestions in this article. Get yourself out there. Promote yourself and your project successes.

The next few articles will explore other roles for the enterprise BA, as well as business and technical domains that are undergoing significant transformations.

i Becoming a Better Business Technologist, May 2016. McKinsey and Company. Online at http://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/business-technology/our-insights/becoming-a-better-business-technologist.
ii Capitalizing on Complexity, Insights from the 2010 IBM Global CEO Study. Online at: http://www-935.ibm.com/services/us/ceo/ceostudy2010/multimedia.html
iii Becoming a Better Business Technologist, May 2016. McKinsey and Company. Online at http://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/business-technology/our-insights/becoming-a-better-business-technologist.
iv Leading Through Connections, Insights from the 2012 IBM Global CEO Study (www.ibm.com/services/us/en/c-suite/ceostudy2012/‎

Why How You Interact with Others is the New Black

Written by Kupe Kupersmith on June 22, 2016. Posted in Articles.

I recently spoke at the Philadelphia IIBA Development Day. I was on a panel with Jodie Kane and Paul DePalma, and it was moderated by Ken Fulmer.

The organizers of the development day asked the attendees which BABOK knowledge areas they wanted us to discuss. Based on the areas chosen we each gave our key tip for that knowledge area and answered questions from the audience. One topic area was around elicitation. When it was my turn to give my tip, I decided to use an exercise I do when I facilitate my DISC® Assessment workshops. DiSC® is a behavioral assessment and helps individuals understand their behavioral style and that of others. This insight leads to better understanding and appreciating differences of others. This leads to more effective communication, which leads to higher productivity.

When you are eliciting, you are interacting or communicating with others. To do this effectively, you must understand how others want to that interaction to go. The Golden Rule states “do unto others as you want done unto you”. The rule for interactions or communication is “communicate with others as they want to be communicated with”. Use their preferred communication style, not yours. You can know every elicitation technique in the book. That’s not good enough. In addition, you also need to know how the people you are communicating with want to interact. Ideally, your company has gone through a DISC® workshop or one like it, and you know everyone’s preferred style. If not you need a way to quickly read people. At the development day with almost 100 people in the room I did a quick exercise to help the group learn how to read and get close to understanding other’s profiles. Here is how it goes. You ask two questions regarding the person you are trying to read. 1) Are they fast-paced & outspoken or cautious & reflective? 2) Are they questioning & skeptical or Accepting & warm? Based on the answer to the questions the person will fall into one of four behavior styles.

	Questioning & SKeptical	Accepting & Warm
Fast-Paced & Outspoken	Dominance	Influence
Cautious & Reflective	Concientious	Steadiness

Here is a quick overview of the behavior tendencies of each style.

Dominance Decisive Independent Results-Oriented Straightforward	Influence Enthusiastic Talkative Spontaneous Demonstrative
Concientious Orderly Persistent Detailed Serious	Steadiness Warm/Friendly Supportive Cooperative Agreeable

Now that you know their tendencies you can start to think of ways to interact with them. Here are a few tips for interacting with each style:

Dominance – Make efficient use of time, focus on the topic at hand, and expect candor
Influence – Be open to collaboration and recognize their energy and enthusiasm
Steadiness – Show warmth and concern for their feelings, take an easy-going approach, and work collaboratively
Conscientious – Talk to them about the objective, avoid pressuring them to make a decision, expect skepticism

If you know your stakeholder’s behavior style, you can better prepare for interactions with them. For example. D’s like to focus on the topic. So tangents are not a good thing. S’s and I’s love collaboration. A workshop where they can interact and work with others is perfect for them. C’s lean towards being skeptics, so you can think ahead of time, what may they question.

The next time you are you prepping for an elicitation session first think of the behavior style of each participant.

All the best,

Kupe

Is a Multi-tiered BA Certification Program the Way to Go?

Written by Laura Paton on May 26, 2016. Posted in Articles. 1 Comment on Is a Multi-tiered BA Certification Program the Way to Go?

For anyone waiting for the unveiling of the new certification program from International Institute of Business Analysis™ (IIBA®), I have been wondering whether such changes will be helpful for organizations and the practitioner community as a whole.

The one thing I have learned over the years from the community was that the certification process, including how one applies and qualifies for these exams needs to be more straightforward and avoid complexity at all levels. Having been proposed for some time now, we still don’t know enough about the changes being made to the program to form an opinion – or do we?

Here are a few factors I have been thinking about with regards to these changes. I would love to hear what you have been pondering. In this post, I am simply putting the questions out to the community for consideration. I form no opinion, but as a current Certified Business Analysis ProfessionalTM (CBAP®) I am really interested in knowing what other certification holders are thinking.

1. Level 1 – Today knowledge based certificates in business analysis are plentiful as a large number of training providers already offer BA certificates. Will this new Tier 1 certification be a differentiator in the industry? Several years ago IIBA spoke with EEPs about providing a jointly branded BA certificate, and for many really good reasons Endorsed Education Providers (EEPs) did not want IIBA crossing the line into the training space. Has enough changed here? Do employers and practitioners believe Level 1 recognition from IIBA which assesses general BA knowledge (no experience) is more significant than a certificate from an EEP whose sole focus is on training?

2. Level 2 – The market for the Certification of Competency in Business AnalysisTM (CCBA®) has never really taken off, as of today after 5 years, there are only 850 CCBA holders. Are the proposed changes to scenario-based exam questions significant enough here to help IIBA grow this certification or are there other issues with this certification that if addressed would help the viability of the CCBA®?

3. Level 3 – The CBAP® used to be the gold standard, and those of us who acquired the CBAP® felt like we were demonstrating our senior level experience to employers. After all, the CBAP® has always been an experienced based exam. In the early years, many of us struggled to find employers who found the certification as a differentiator or who deemed it mandatory for employment. Over the years some awareness has taken place; although still not as widespread as the PMP.

CBAP® recipients felt the certification demonstrated their commitment to the profession and identified themselves as senior practitioners. With the proposed changes, CBAPs will no longer be the top tier. Are CBAPs ok with this? Do CBAPs feel an urge to run out and spend more time and money to get back on the top tier of the ladder? Anyone feeling like their credential is less attractive or valuable to you, to your employers or to the BA community? On the other hand, are the CBAPs excited about pursuing this next higher level certification?

4. Level 4 – Lastly, the new level geared to thought leaders. It has always been the case that thought leaders are recognized in the community by their contributions. Their credibility is achieved through the engagements they are completing within organizations, with the research they are performing, the articles, books, and other products and services they provide the community at large. If you look today, many very influential, experienced, top-notch thought leaders do not have a credential nor do they need it because they are already well-known in the industry for the work they are doing for all us. I am very curious to hear from the community whether our thought leaders require a certification to be recognized or acknowledged as a thought leader? If organizations are looking for thought leaders to be validated through such a process, is such a model scalable since level 4 will require an assessment?

Lastly, I want to ask about the idea of moving to a competency-based framework for certification. Back in the day when Angela Wick and her team developed the Competency Model, it was and still is an amazing product. The team spent countless hours building a framework to help articulate what skills and competencies define a novice business analyst from an expert business analyst, but it was a tool that must be applied along with a lot of other factors to be able to tell an accurate story of competency.

For example, if you are a business analyst in an organization and are not working on large, complex, transformational projects you may never leverage a lot of the skills in the upper categories of the competency framework. For your organization, for the role you have been hired into, does that make you less competent? What about the business analysts in financial institutions responsible for bringing their clients online with a standardized financial service, where each client is a new project, but the projects have little variation to them? These business analysts become very proficient working in their organization as a business analyst/implementation analyst without needing to leverage many of the top tier skills in the framework. Does this mean they are less valuable or less competent to their organization because their projects are consistent in type and size?

In my opinion, the role of the business analyst is defined by the organization based on a multitude of factors that really can’t be standardized across industries because there are an infinite number of factors that apply. To make an assessment of competency, consultants have to work with the organization to conduct interviews, look at templates, watch processes and practices first hand, and understand the project environment to assess competency within context. Knowing this ‘as-is’ state is very critical before conducting a gap-analysis to assess what competencies are missing. I have performed competency assessments for years in this fashion. My question here for the community is could a 3rd party working outside the walls of your organization assess competency without having this ‘as-is’ picture? Is this approach old school and is this 4 tier approach answering some newer needs organizations have today about the competency of their BA resources?

Lastly, I myself am interested in understanding the research completed to support a 4 tier certification. Typically I have seen a role delineation study conducted to provide the insight to align and structure a product like certification. I am not proposing it has not been done, but simply asking whether anyone knows. Since I don’t know, I am really interested in raising some dialogue in the community to hear your likes/dislikes to the pending 4 tier structure.

Please share your thoughts and provide different perspectives.