Tag: Learning

Getting Your Company to Pay for an Industry Conference

Written by Clinton Ages on January 19, 2016. Posted in Articles.

No matter how good you get at your trade, there is always room for getting even better. Since every expert has had his/her own unique set of experiences, there is always something new to learn from others that can help you soar to new heights.

Industry conferences and seminars are a hub of practical knowledge, where all sorts of thought leaders can be seen in action, sharing their experiences and their time-tested strategies for growth and success. The year – the bright and shining 2016 – is still young and it is high time that you pay due attention to this important avenue of learning and include it in your formal agenda for professional development. To do this, you need to add the objective of attending conference(s) this year to your performance evaluation goals. You should aim at actively attending and participating in conferences that are relevant to your field of work and showcase experts who can add value to the process of your professional growth.

Why attend an industry conference/seminar?

If you are still not convinced about attending industry conferences, here are some of the merits to help you clear your doubts so that you can set yourself to this agenda wholeheartedly:

Learning – An industry conference is a great place to gather valuable lessons and to hear from experts who have seen the highs and lows and managed to create success. Instead of reinventing the wheel, you can learn from their experiences and accelerate your growth by avoiding their mistakes and adapting their recommended strategies.

Networking – While entire books have been written on the importance of networking with other professionals, here it is once again. You need to connect and hang out with current gurus – without any exception. These efforts will not only open more avenues of learning, but you will also come across more opportunities. With the passage of time, you can also become to be known as one of the industry experts.

Solving problems – None of the problems that we come across are new, and many others have already faced and tackled similar challenges. By meeting your industry peers, you are more likely to meet such people who have devised solutions to the problems you are facing today – stories which are not likely to be found in books or articles!

Unwinding – The atmosphere at conferences is mostly a relaxed and friendly one. In addition to providing great learning opportunities, a conference can also provide you with a window of respite, and you get to take a much-needed break from your monotonous work routine. Relax and learn!

Convinced? Great! Now let’s move on and discuss the basics of developing an action plan for attending an industry conference.

The Action Plan

The discussion that follows will chalk out the action plan which you can follow to realize this objective and make 2016 a year of unprecedented learning and professional growth.

Step 1 – Know the training policies

To start with, you will need to get in touch with the HR department to find out your organization’s prevailing policies related to training and development of employees. Some employers assign a specific amount per employee for such activities in a given year. If such a limit exists, you will need to figure it out and then look for events that fall within that range. Sometimes, there is room for going beyond that limit by obtaining special approvals. If that’s true, you can grab this opportunity to register for an event without having to worry about the costs.

Step 2 – Sign up formally

After sorting out the financials, it is a great idea make things formal and make this objective a part of your performance evaluation for 2016. Add attending your identified conference to your list of 2016 objectives and review it with your manager. This way, you will be officially informing your organization of your intentions and personally committing to achieving this goal- and that with a deadline.

Step 3 – Build the case

With that done, now you need to build the case for convincing your manager and the following questions can act as a guideline in this regard:

Why this investment shall be made toward your development?
What is in it for the organization?
What return will the organization get from this investment?

By effectively answering these questions, you can persuade the decision makers to give you the green light signal for following your development plan. It is best to elaborate by including:

The main learning points from each session of the conference you plan to attend
The strategy for putting the newly acquired skills into use
The impact of using the learning from the session on business efficiency in terms of cost, resource optimization and financial gain for the organization

The search for appropriate conferences to attend will be more fruitful if these questions and their responses are kept in sight. Using this guideline, you can frame out your training and development plan for the year and make sure that you are able to spare time out of your work schedule for that event. It is also a good idea to tie this activity with your personal development as well as it can help you establish yourself as an expert within your organization.

While you are listing the benefits of this conference to your organization, you can make your case stronger by stating the number of Continuing Professional Development credits/CEUs that you will earn. You should also elaborate the entire credit point system for which you will be earning credits. Sharing this information will help you propose a complete development plan and propose other relevant conferences and seminars in the future as well.

Once you have covered the aforementioned points in your proposal, you are then ready to confidently discuss your participation with your manager and respond to their queries and concerns effectively – and ultimately get going on your way towards learning and growth.

Step 4 – Calculate other costs

In addition to the upfront conference fee, you should do your research and state all other costs that are involved in attending this conference. This may include the travel expenses, lodging, food and any other costs that you find relevant. Don’t overdo it! Consider staying at hotels nearby or at the conference hotel if the pricing is better. Find hotels with free airport shuttles or take Uber!

Step 5 – Plan your absence

It is also advisable to get someone to cover your official responsibilities while you are away from work, attending your conference. Oftentimes, the management is reluctant to send you off to training and conferences only because your absence might cause disruption in the flow of routine activities. By taking a proactive approach, you can plan your assignments around this activity and also request a suitable replacement well in advance, if necessary. This precaution will help your manager keep the system running without any hiccups.

What Next?

You made a game plan and successfully met your objective of attending industry conferences. Bravo! But the game does not end here. To make the most out of this investment, you might want to consider the following activities once you are back:

Prepare and present a report to your management showing your actual learning and how it will be helpful in solving business problems and improving your output.
Share what you have learned with your peers at work. Why? Because sharing your learning with others help you gain deeper insights of into that knowledge and as an added bonus, you will gradually position yourself as a knowledgeable expert as well.
Stay connected with the new people you met. Make it a habit to periodically get in touch with your newly made acquaintances and never miss an opportunity to meet them in person as well. It’s a good idea to plan your next conference with these people to strengthen your ties.

Happy Conferencing!

Note from the Editor: Interested in attending a conference? Check out these upcoming conferences for Business Analysts and Project Managers produced by the publisher of batimes.com and projecttimes.com

BA Experience: Pay It Forward!

Written by Janet Walker on January 12, 2016. Posted in Articles.

As Business Analysts, we are always looking for missing information – making sure we have the whole story behind the business need, the truth about how we are doing things today and what our partners really want to do (No, really want to do.). We start with something to write on and hit the business with the big questions. Once we think we have it all, the truth and nothing but the truth, we start thinking about a technical or process solution. READY, GO!

What the Business Analyst often does is stop here, thinking they have the whole picture and are good to go. Analysis begins and then the task moves to IN PROGRESS.

What the Business Analyst seldom does is talk to other BAs about their challenge. They have a task to do, an aggressive, often crazy ETA and a story committed to THIS iteration so heaven forbid it should not be tasked out for success. Stopping to talk through the challenge is seldom seen as a valuable use of precious bandwidth. GET IT DONE!

Any of this sound familiar?

While mentoring some new Technology BAs, there were a few challenges where I assumed they knew what I considered to be basics. Why did they proceed without more information? Why did they think their requirements were complete when they were clearly (to me) not? The newbies went on to teach this oldie a lot when they said “Stop assuming we know this. We don’t think you know what you know.” What?

After chewing on that statement and some crow for a while, I came up with thoughts that may be attributed to experience – a lot of failures, trial and error and other learning paths. I will share them with you in case you too think every BA knows this stuff, and you don’t have anything special to offer. If you want to, pass this on (plus the things you didn’t know you know) to your mentees. I promise you will be happily surprised that this most basic knowledge share can make a difference in their growth and stress level whether the BA is in IT or in the Business.

Dear fellow BAs, What I didn’t know that I know …

Don’t assume Team Members (TMs) know what they are talking about when they ask for a change. They may be new users and new leaders. Help them out by diving deep. You may get some pushback, but either leave the meeting confident that your business partner is an expert or know who might be and ask that expert to a second meeting.

If you are dealing with changes to a previously automated processes, that automation may have been built with TMs who moved on. A thin understanding of an automated process can lead everyone down a rocky path. This means you will want to understand that current automated process, behind the scenes, to add your understanding to the “How It’s Done Today” discussion.

Start at the beginning and get to know your partners. As we are in an email, IM, HipChat, Conference call, Live Meeting world we have to work harder than in the past to get the whole picture. We don’t have the added advantage of body language to help us (the TM who looks down or away can speak volumes about not having a clue or disagreeing with what their Leader is saying) Don’t minimize the importance of reaching out and meeting your partners face to face or on one-to-one phone calls.

Expect your business to walk in the door with a technical solution. Everyone has a great idea, but requirements gathering needs Sherlock Holmes-type experience. Don’t be afraid of being the dummy in the room. I have been that dummy so many times I’m amazed the business still contacts me for help. Everyone started learning about your business at some time, and your partners will tell you everything about what they do and feel good about doing it.

Even if nothing else is clear, make sure you totally ‘get’ the business need. Why the heck are you in this meeting and not at lunch? What are you solving for? Wait! Hold firm. Tempted to talk solution? NO technical solution without requirements! We might be good at guessing, but without requirements, that’s all we can be, a good guesser. Actually, there might not be a technical solution. Maybe if your partners complete step A before step B, they won’t need an automated solution to find step A data while completing step B. Get it?

Who will be impacted can be a rattlesnake behind a rock. Assume your partners don’t know who else uses the same functionality. Ask. Send out a message to a wide distribution, if necessary, but watch out for those cool automated processes that other parts of your business jumped on for themselves and neither you nor your task partners know it You don’t want the noise from other TMs asking “Who changed our stuff?”

Now, the fun part, The Technical Solution!

There is a pro and con for every technical solution I have ever delivered. Remember to convey the ‘cons’ clearly for all parties and relay these cons when you officially announce the technical solution. Everyone knows what to expect. Right? Own it. The BA owns the solution, be prepared to explain the “why it is the right thing to do for everyone” – the business, technology, the company. P.S.: This is a great time to share a prototype or demo if you have something this early. Requirements may change (like you didn’t know that, but I had to write it down.), re-evaluate the technical solution when that happens.

Expect thorns in the roses. Knowing who needs to approve things can be tricky. Who really has the last word on saying the technical solution is good to go? Really. Nothing is worse that feeling you have a plan and find out someone read the email a week later and has the power to say “Well, I was thinking …”.

The same is true for when to start the tasks PLUS when technology prioritization says you can start. Don’t promise a start date until you have the date from the business and the date from whoever is tasked with making the changes. Everyone has different priorities and bandwidth.

I found that the sooner you can start talking to trainers and testers the better off you would be. Trainers and Testers, in my experience, are valuable commodities, and you want to pencil in their time early. Nothing is worse than making a big change and finding no one knows how to perform the new process. Don’t rely on your business to have training on their checklist. Have it on yours too.

ETA is the monster that the BA needs to battle. This is a truth. Once someone hears an ETA whispered over the wall, the BA is handcuffed.

Avoid verbalizing or writing an ETA if at all possible.
Since this is not possible, don’t act like a superhero. Be smart and keep a list of potential roadblocks (sunny days when everyone is always sick, etc.) on you at all times.
Be very clear about what will be accomplished by the ETA!

I don’t want to come off totally negative here, but more people than just the BA care about the start and stop. Even with the best planning software, the BA needs to tread carefully when talking about the ETA and be prepared for plan B and sound reasons for any delays.

Documentation – We hate it until we need it.

Simplify task names

Name your Project/Feature/Story/Task/Whatever using keywords that you can search on to find out why the change was made. Then, don’t forget to include the business need in EVERY task you create. The Why will make your life easier today and tomorrow.

Give a high-level explanation of what the task will do to reduce the questions you’ll get from interested, but not participating, parties.

Don’t forget to share your Task number(s) with all the business partners who will care about the changes. This MAY stop some noise about the status of your task(s).

Identify Go-To People and SMEs

Who asked for this change anyway? You know, that person now tied to you at the hip. Add their name to the list of Go-To people! Don’t forget to include a list of your SMEs too. Remember the tasks floating around yours. Is anyone working on a task that is needed by you or waiting for you? They deserve to be in your documentation. Keep them in the loop and you have a BA BFF.

One last thing about documentation – Know Your Audience. Write for the reader.

I admit I am Test Plan Challenged.

My BA friend, Marie, is crazy meticulous with her test plans, but for me, any test plan is better than none. Create a test plan and look at it daily while you are working on your task(s). You will be glad you did. You want to know when a step or task is “done.” Nothing feels better than getting to this moment so know how to recognize the moment!

If you make fancy test plans like Marie, you are special.

One more thing:

You know this documentation we were talking about here? Update it when you have any progress or road blocks. Be clear and concise. When things get hairy, your own notes will save you. I promise.

To make your Write Up the greatest story ever told. Here is the formula I wish someone told me about years ago:

Spend 1/3 of your time writing down the current situation.
Spend 1/3 of your time writing and re-writing why you are doing this.
Spend 1/3 of your time detailing the technical solution.

Lastly, if you found yourself saying “Duh” or “Pleeeeeze, everyone knows that” while you were reading my article, then you are a smart BA that assumes, as I did, every person with BA or Business Analyst after their name has as much experience as you have. Remember, some of our BA friends are just getting started (as I was kindly reminded) and can benefit from knowing what you didn’t know you know. Pay it Forward!

6 High-Value UX Techniques to Boost Your BA Role

Written by Steven LeMay on January 8, 2016. Posted in Articles.

A financial services company came to Usability Matters with a terrible problem. They had just rolled out a new platform for financial advisors and the advisors were furiously refusing to use it. Usability Matters was asked to help figure out what the problem was and how to fix it.

Not surprisingly, financial advisors at this company are on the phone speaking with their clients throughout day. Their clients call, a little chit chat ensues, and then financial matters are discussed. Advisors needed a tool that allows them to quickly pull up client information to support the banter– things like the client’s spouse’s name or the date of their last financial check-up – and then lead seamlessly into details of the client’s investments. The BAs on the project team had thoroughly identified all the needed information but it was so cumbersome to retrieve in the new design that when clients called, advisors found they had to hang up, look up the information they needed and call their clients back several minutes later. They ultimately refused to use the new platform because it failed to support the way they do their jobs. Plenty of grief all around.

In many ways, Business Analysts and User Experience (UX) professionals are two sides of the same coin. We both aim to create better, more successful products and services for our customers and we both liaise with the technical team to bring those aims to life. The difference quite often is simply one of perspective: where the BA typically represents the needs of the business, in UX we steadfastly represent the needs of the people who will use the product or service.

Every successful project needs both viewpoints, but in our example above, the financial services project team missed the user perspective – they missed the real-life needs of the financial advisors.

So let’s look at some typical BA activities and identify ways a UX perspective can add value to your BA role and help you create products and services that people will want to use.

BA ACTIVITY: DEFINE AND SCOPE BUSINESS AREAS

In this step, BA’s and UX professionals alike want to establish a shared understand of why the project is being undertaken – the project’s goals and objectives. Both roles help determine what the business domain is and who the key stakeholders are.

HOW UX CAN ADD VALUE

1. Identify User Goals

Get the project team thinking about your users right from the beginning. Identify, at least at a high level, who the users are and how the project will benefit them. No need to flesh out user profiles or personas at this step, simply document who the project aims to serve and make sure their core goals are recognized alongside the business goals.
Reach out to people who have the most direct contact with your users to gather insights. Often this is marketing, sales and support personnel.

The project model canvas can help you gather all of this on a single page.

BA ACTIVITY: GATHER REQUIREMENTS

This is where most of the BA’s insights and expertise are channelled – gathering accurate and complete requirements. From a UX perspective, we want to ensure that user requirements are included with the business and system requirements. Familiar techniques such as interviews, workshops and surveys are used and we supplement these with techniques that may be less familiar to BAs.

HOW UX CAN ADD VALUE

Try adding one of these to your next project:

2. Contextual Inquiry

Contextual inquiry or observation is a research method that provides rich insights into the context in which a product or service will exist. Spend a few hours watching how your intended users do their job, watching for key influences on their work and how your product or service will fit in to it. This technique may have helped the financial services example to stay firmly on the rails.

3. Card Sorting

Card sorting is an engaging, yet effective activity that reveals how users think about information. It allows the Business Analyst to match your organization structure and labels to the way users think of them. Simply create cards for all of the features or content elements in your project, ask people to sort them into meaningful groups and then provide a name for each of those groups.

BA ACTIVITY: ANALYZE AND DOCUMENT REQUIREMENTS

Business requirements documents are often the key deliverable from both BA’s and UX professionals but we always want to make sure this documentation includes a thorough understanding of our users and their needs.

HOW UX CAN ADD VALUE

4. User Profiles and Personas

Document who your users are. Often that takes the form of either user profiles or personas. User profiles tend to be more generalized and provide insights into groups of people. They are a great place to start but most UX folks prefer to take profiles a step further by creating personas.

Personas are usually a one page summary of a person’s behaviours, characteristics, and overall personal profile including name, age, marriage status favourite brands and technology use. They evoke empathy and they prevent thinking of generic ill-defined users that each project member imagines differently. To be effective, persona development must be firmly grounded in user research techniques.

Personas can also help objectively prioritise your requirements. Each feature can be assigned weighted values indicating how important it is to the business and to each persona. The result is a feature prioritization matrix that takes the guesswork and individual subjectivity out of the prioritization process.

BA ACTIVITY: DEFINE THE SOLUTION

The technical part of the solution is usually captured in process flow diagrams, system maps and data models. From the user perspective, it’s all about workflow, navigation, user interfaces, and interactions. Often a BA is responsible for all of these and may even create annotated wireframes.

HOW UX CAN ADD VALUE

5. Prototype Testing

Begin testing your ideas early in the process. With a little repurposing, wireframes can quite easily be turned into a paper prototype that can be tested with real users long before any code is written. Pick a few key tasks and ask people to try to accomplish them with your prototype. When they “click” on something with their finger, simply present the next screen on paper. If you can’t get real users, test with anyone you can – testing with anyone is far better than not testing. You’ll be amazed how these early insights have a major impact on the solution at little or no cost.

For a more realistic experience, try a prototyping tool and test your ideas as if they were the real system. There are great tools like Axure created specifically for this purpose.

BA ACTIVITY: VERIFY THE SOLUTION MEETS THE REQUIREMENTS

Often this step is the purview of Quality Assurance team with the BA providing support and expertise to the testing efforts.

HOW UX CAN ADD VALUE

6. Usability Testing

Usability testing is a qualitative technique that assesses not only if the solution fulfills the requirements, but also how well it does so. Ask some people – anyone if you can’t get real users – to accomplish a few key tasks and watch where they trip up. Test early, test often and smooth out those cracks in the sidewalk before formal user acceptance testing begins.

BONUS UX VALUE

7. Service Design

To add even further value to the BA and UX roles, we want to make sure that a holistic view is taken of all the user’s touch points with the business so that a harmonious user experience is delivered – you’ll hear this broader perspective referred to as service design or customer experience design.

The broader point is that the BA and UX perspectives are entirely complementary and hopefully we have given you the confidence to inject a little more UX value into your projects.

4 Habits Agile Teaches That We Can All Refocus on in 2016!

Written by Angela Wick on January 5, 2016. Posted in Articles.

Agile was born out of a conversation about what works well in software development. It wasn’t meant to be a dramatically “new” way of working. In the context of requirements, embracing agile empowers teams to focus on business value, user experience, and empathy, and collaboration. This focus should be applied to all projects no matter what approach we take or what methodology we use.

With this in mind, we need to question our current solution delivery practices. When did our focus shift away from our users? How did we lose our connection with our organizational mission? When did we stop questioning the value of each task we perform as part of the project? Why do we dread meetings and prefer to hide in our cubes instead of collaborating with our team?

We’ve lost touch with our core values, but what’s driving this divergence? Here are a few trends that may be influencing this:

Organizational governance and methodologies that focus on and measure the completion of documents and templates.
Resource reductions caused by the economic downturn in the early 2000s. Smaller teams did not have the capacity to provide maximum value; they were pressured to do the minimum, and the minimum was defined by templates.
The rise of the PM role in the 90s and early 2000s where time and cost (of getting documents completed) took precedence over the delivery of value.

“Going Agile” may not solve this problem. I would argue that many agile teams are more focused on sprint timelines, ceremonies, and velocity, then on value, collaboration, and user experience. Isn’t this the same conversation that inspired the agile mindset—just different words for schedule, cost, and productivity? So, are we really embracing the agile principles if this is happening? Or are we just looking at it like a “new” methodology?

What does “Going Agile” really mean to your organization? And, to you as a BA? Are requirements practices and value being left behind? Many agile practices, principles, and values remind us of business value, user experience, and collaboration; but why should it take a mature agile practice to do this?

Let’s get back to what matters as BAs! The documents, models, diagrams, and all the meetings are important too, but let’s remember why we are doing all of it! Let’s use the four strategies below to regain our focus. Let’s make value, user experience and collaboration part of our mindset, our behaviors, and our way of working. This can be, and should be a large part of our practices no matter what approach or methodology we use.

1. Focus on organizational value every day.

BAs provide value by keeping their team focused on the mission, vision, strategy, and goals of the organization. Every product/solution detail should align! BAs apply this agile strategy by asking themselves and others questions like:

How does this solution benefit the organization?
What part of our mission does this product support? Does it offer strong support? How could we change it to better serve our mission?
How does this list of project priorities align with our organizational strategy?
Which parts of the project help us achieve our mission faster?
Which organizational goal does this feature help us achieve?

Ask value-focused questions during every phase of the project, but especially when you are:

Identifying needs
Eliciting requirements
Assessing risks
Prioritizing features
Resolving issues
Building release schedules

2. Make user experience and user empathy a priority.

The goal of any product/project/solution is to delight the end user and, therefore, strengthen the organization. We tend to lose focus on the end user when we get bogged down in the day to day details of delivery. Our focus often shifts to the needs of the delivery team. We start talking about protocols, databases, interfaces, integrations, and upgrades, instead of user needs, user preferences, user priorities, and user experience. In addition, we need to think about and discuss how aspects of the user experience align to the business value discussed above.

To delight your end users, integrate tasks and techniques into your project work that help your team:

Understand the end user’s needs and goals.
Understand how the user’s goals align to and support higher level business goals.
Analyze user pain points to find the root cause of problems.
Uncover your end user’s thoughts and feelings about the current state and future state.
Prioritize/make decisions based on value to the end user and alignment to the organization.

Great BAs use a wide variety of techniques to help their team keep user experience top-of-mind, but here are a few suggestions:

Create, build, and analyze personas, and their linkage to value and strategy.
Use empathy maps to analyze value and user experience.
Allow users to interact with prototypes.
Get input/feedback from user focus groups.
Build user stories that are truly from a user perspective and show business value.
Ask user-focused questions: How will this benefit the user? Does this feature align with the top 3 user goals? How could we improve the user experience?

3. Facilitate engaging, collaborative and structured conversations with stakeholders before documenting requirements.

Documentation needs to be secondary to shared understanding. Great BAs use a variety of facilitation techniques to help the team understand purpose, value, and context before requirements are written.

BAs need to create an environment where all team members contribute to meaningful conversation. When BAs focus on learning and discovering, instead of just collecting and recording, they will boost their team’s ability to navigate complex change. Here are the key components of engaging and collaborative conversations:

Use simple, high-level visual models to get discussions started.
Allow team members time to react to each model and help them update the model collaboratively.
Do not expect to create shared understanding in one meeting. Progressively dig deeper into details with additional visual models.
Allow thinking time in between sessions. Encourage stakeholders to share models with their team, and to identify questions, gaps, and concerns.
Analyze the results of each collaboration session to make the next session productive, helping the team move steadily toward their goals.
Let the team weigh in on what needs to be documented to move forward—only document what’s valuable.

4. Question the value of everything we do (and are asked to do) as BAs.

We can dramatically change the results when we understand the “why” behind everything we do. The why defines the value of each task and helps us act efficiently on that value proposition. BAs should ask themselves and their leaders:

What value does this task, requirement or feature provide?
Who gets value out of the artifacts we produce?
Why are we doing it? Because we always have, or because someone “expects” it?

Don’t let fear drive the team to do a bunch of busy work. Recognize fear as the driver and ask yourself and the team if this is really something the team should be spending money on? I like to ask myself: “If this was my home we were improving, would I spend the money to pay someone to do this?” If the contractor said he needed another $50,000 to create a 300-page spec document to remodel my home, what questions would I ask before handing over and approving that spend for a document?

Don’t waste time on things that don’t provide value for the user or the organization.

Your BA approach should be different for each project and your organization should allow flexibility. If your organization requires templates, documentation, procedures and processes that do not add value, advocate for change. Can you influence what is produced, when it is produced, or how it is produced?

What’s Your 2015 Lightbulb Moment?

Written by Angela Wick on December 8, 2015. Posted in Articles. 1 Comment on What’s Your 2015 Lightbulb Moment?

As the year draws to a close, it seems natural to pause and take a look backwards. Instead of beating ourselves up for the well-intentioned goals we left in the dust somewhere around January 13th, let’s focus on the things we did accomplish, and look towards a new year.

So, in the context of your professional life:

What did you learn this year?
What new technique did you apply?
What challenge did you overcome?
What was your 2015 lightbulb moment?

Below, you’ll see my response as well as a few great contributions from my social media community. I hope you’ll consider sharing your answer to one of these questions in the comments below the article!

My 2015 Lightbulb Moment: The more things change, the more they stay the same!

Our field of work is evolving, and it seems like the pace of change increased dramatically in 2015. Consider these events/trends as indicators of change:

Expanding definition of agile business analysis
IIBA releasing BABOK v3
Increased collaboration between BAs and Product Owners
Evolving Product Ownership landscape
Increased demand for agile BAs
PMI marching forward in the business analysis/requirements space
Resurgence of user-centered design and design thinking

My learning this year has been focused on these themes and keeping up with how organizations are adapting and changing. Individuals, teams and organizations are understanding these changes and what they mean in a variety of ways!

This is a lot of change for an industry, and yet so much remains the same:

Business analysis is required! It doesn’t matter who does it or what their title is, business analysis is an essential component of effective solution and product delivery. If business analysis doesn’t happen, we build the wrong stuff.
Effective business analysis adds and protects value! When organizations make changes, business analysis ensures the solution aligns with the needs of the organization and its customers.
Business analysis is still about delivering value through the user, the process, the data, and the rules.
The key skills needed to be a great BA (facilitation, communication, negotiation, change management, etc.) still apply!

Align Tactical Effort with Strategic Goals

From Doug Goldberg, @DougGtheBA: BAs must align tactical effort with strategic goals. First step: define business need/problem. Second step: learn business architecture concepts.

Yes! Business architecture is making a more formal appearance in our work. Organizations are seeing the need to connect the architecture to the business analysis and requirements work. This is cool stuff!

And, of course as Doug points out, our work is fruitless if we don’t understand the need first. An early understanding and continuous reminder of “why” helps us stay focused on delivering value. We treat our organization’s money as if it were our own and squeeze every penny out of our solution.

In recent classes, I’ve used the analogy of remodeling your house. If you hand over a large chunk of money to a design/build firm to remodel what would you expect? You would want the team to bring cost/value/time trade off decisions and opportunities to you, right? It’s the same for our sponsors. BAs work with sponsors to align the tactical solution with the sponsor’s strategic goals.

#Accountability

From Tim Kramer, @kramerscycling: In order to be successful the culture needs to change from “Can I do xyz?” to “My intent is to complete xyz.” #Accountability

Intent is everything! And so is delivery! Can we understand our stakeholder’s true intent? NOT what we think they want, NOT what they say they want, but really, truly, undeniably, seek to understand their intent? Yes, we can, and then we need to deliver!

SLACK!

From Ilya M, @Matveyich: Slack is a messaging tool that provides fast and effective collaboration with my team, group discussions, and document sharing. We’ve also integrated product monitoring.

Fast and effective collaboration is a HUGE theme this year! Teams regularly experiment with new tools and processes that boost collaboration and efficiency. We need to bust out of our silos and share information, so we can maximize the value we deliver to our customers.

Tools like Slack, can be a great resource for teams, especially when they can’t be face to face. However, like any virtual communication, be sure you are not relying 100% on text. Get visual, check for understanding frequently, and relentlessly encourage dialog over documentation.

Specification by Example

From Kristen Ericksen: My new go-to technique is specification by example. This technique makes it easy to talk in real terms, makes it easy to see and plug the holes in requirements, and gives the audience just enough to complain about, so I get the REAL requirements.

Yes! This is a great way to engage stakeholders! Examples create context and a common language for stakeholders. The team collaborates to identify examples that spell out what the solution needs to do. Everyone works together to build a shared understanding of the future state. And, as Kirsten points out letting stakeholders vent a bit does build relationships and trust, critical to success with requirements.

SHARE!

Thank you to Doug, Kristen, Ilya and Tim for contributing to this article. Let’s keep the conversation going! Use the comments below to boost our BA community by sharing YOUR favorite technique, tool or lightbulb moment from 2015!