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Tag: Planning

Get the most out of your meetings: brush up on your facilitation skills

Business analysts are meant to be good at facilitating, it’s meant to be one of our key skills.

However, speaking to many of the BAs in my network, facilitation is the one area that they feel that they can do more. I guess one of the difficulties with facilitation is that you don’t always end up with a tangible outcome. This then makes it harder to determine the value in what you have achieved. No, one wants to go a two-hour meeting, where they sit around the desk and discuss the same things over and over again. Often, people state that they find meetings really unproductive and go far as to say that they are blockers in getting things done.  

I disagree with this, I recently attended the IRM business analysis conference where the keynote speaker Clive Woodward (famous rugby coach) stated that he couldn’t work out why people didn’t like meetings. I agree with him, meetings are meant to be a tool and if the tool is not being utilised productive manner then it becomes more of a people issue. Instead of blaming the tool, ask yourself if it is used in the most productive manner.

So, to avoid your meeting become stale and boring, we have created some top tips to get you to think outside your comfort zone for meetings. I am not going to state the obvious like making sure you have a set agenda for your meeting or defined outcomes that you want to achieve. As, a business analyst, I would expect you do this for any meeting that you facilitate.

Tips

1. Try a new type of meeting format – Lean coffee

  • • This is one of my favourite type of meetings. So, if you have not done this before it is quite an easy concept to follow. Everyone in the meeting writes on a post-it note, items that they want to discuss. Put the post-it notes on the wall. Carry out infinity sort, to understand if there are any key themes that have come out around what people want to discuss.
  • • Pick the most popular item- if you don’t have one then I would pick one at random. Discuss that item for a period of 5 mins and then ask everyone if they want to discuss it further after the first 5 minutes. If, yes discuss for another 5 mins and so forth
  • • Top tip- I would recommend not discussing anything longer than 15 minutes- I personally find after 15 minutes’ people start becoming disengaged with the subject matter. If you have not received a conclusion after 15 minutes, I would suggest you move this to the parked section and come back to it at a later stage if you need to. It is important that after 15 minutes, you move onto another topic- avoid talking for the sake of talking.

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2. Pick a different location

  • • Unless you work at Google, your office will be a typical office- bright artificial lights if you are lucky you will have lots of glass or if you’re not then you will have white walls. If you are always meeting in the same location, then by human nature you tend to associate that space with certain emotions. So, if you have meetings that are lacklustre people then tend to associate that emotion with the meeting rooms that you have in office.
  • • So, once in a while go out of the office and go to the local coffee shop to hold your meeting there. Change of scenery is great, as it gets people to think in a different way. Also, walking to the local café will get people energised, as will the fresh air.

3. Observe where people are sitting

  • • If you have regular meetings, you will notice that people either sit in the same chair or they will sit next to the same people. By sitting next to the same person, you will end up inevitable. people embracing the same role each meeting. To avoid this happening. Mix it up a bit in your meeting, I am not suggesting you create a seating plan for your meetings. What, I am suggesting is that you gently steer people to sit in a different position.
  • • Top tip- if possible move the furniture around the room, this will naturally force people to sit in a different seating position to their usual. Also, make sure you are sitting in a different place to your usual seating position.

4. Give the dominated person a task

  • • We have all been in meetings, where there is one person who talks all the time. I would suggest, with that person give them either a flip chart pen or whiteboard marker and get them to make note of what everyone is saying. By, having to write they will naturally be focused on listening to everyone in the room. If that is not possible, then I would suggest you get them to read the actions from the last meeting. By giving them this role, you are getting them to focus on the other people in the room and the role that they place in the meeting.

5. Avoid multi-tasking

  • • Ban smartphones and laptops at meetings. When people are working on multiple things at the same time, they are not able to give 100% to either of these things. To avoid having semi-interested in people – ban the laptops. In my team, if we have a team meeting then everyone has to leave both their phones and laptops at their desks. This means people are more invested in the meeting and by having them more focused in the team discussion you are more likely to get a decision quicker.

So, next time you are going to facilitate a meeting, try one of the above tips and see what difference it can make to your meetings.

The Business Analyst and the approach: A catalyst for change

My wife jokes with me that she still doesn’t understand what I do. Any time we meet someone new and they eventually ask me what I do for a living, she has to try not to giggle when I look at her.

Often the easiest explanation is to say where I work, or that I work in I.T. or that I do analysis stuff. Occasionally someone takes more of an interest and I found myself explaining more and eventually getting to what I think the core of what a business analyst is: being a catalyst for change.

It took me some years to get to that understanding. Moving into business analysis from more technical roles, it took me a while to move from having a more technical or systems-focused mindset around requirements specification and requirements management to focussing on the whole point of my job. While many employers do have a fairly clear idea of what a BA does or should do – and that is mostly centered on requirements – many employers also come to understand that the BA often comes fills a role that means a lot more than that. Thus the BA role has evolved.

The BA is placed in a role in a workplace in any variety of situations or problems. A broken process, an idea for a new project, a system integration, the test phase of a large vendor product implementation, and many more. It’s no surprise most BAs feel overwhelmed by the expectations that come with the role. The

IIBA’s BABOK is also a bit overwhelming. How can one person wear all those hats? Job descriptions from recruiters for BA roles can include head-spinning lists of selection criteria that stop just short of:

  • Faster than a speeding bullet
  • More powerful than a locomotive
  • Able to leap tall buildings in a single bound

Take a breath and relax. When you start in a role, most employers know you’ve been given a big task, and also that you’re not Superman (unless you are of course). They want you to get things to happen, to take responsibility for something others in the organization are not currently available or able to do, to be a catalyst for change.

An analyst can take a problem and break it down, work out an approach to solve it and plan the steps needed to realize the desired change. A business analyst can do this with the guidance of the BABOK. And really that is all the BABOK is – a guide. No BOK can cover the myriad situations and problems organizations face; their culture, attitudes, level of maturity, unique operating environments, or the ideal way to approach them. What the BABOK does is guide you to apply some structure to the way you work in your employer’s environment.

The most valuable step early on is to validate with your employer your approach to the problem you’ve been tasked with. Be prepared to revisit and tailor your approach as you learn more. There may already be accepted approaches or “ways we do things” in place in one way or another. Make sure you understand these and communicate any concerns or conflicts with your view of how to approach a task. If there is nothing in place, then you have a scary blank canvas to work with! Draw on your experience, your contacts, colleagues, the multitude of information out there to sketch out an approach. Be assured that the approach you develop is already bringing about change for your employer. It will help to develop early trust and confidence in the work you will deliver and set a transparent direction where there may have been no direction previously.


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Don’t be disheartened if you find your approach travels a bumpy road – the BA is often the one sent along a bumpy road in the first place. Validate with your requirements stakeholders as you go, gather feedback about each task, technique, and deliverable in your approach.

  • Are stakeholders comfortable with the approach?
  • Is your approach starting to bring about positive or negative change?
  • Are there any ways the approach could be improved?

Catalyst: a substance that increases the rate of a chemical reaction without itself undergoing any permanent chemical change. A person or thing that precipitates an event. Perhaps catalyst isn’t the right analogy. Your approach will almost certainly change as you receive stakeholder feedback, and change isn’t simply an event, it’s more enduring. The other part of the change equation is you, the BA.

One of the intimidating things about the BABOK is the underlying competencies section. Now we are talking about Superman. If I was to highlight any of these to focus on it would be interaction skills. Your ability to change; your attitude, your understanding, your approach is dependent on how well you interact with your stakeholders. Interaction skills are also the most critical skills in a successful business analysis approach, so let’s look at some of them.

Facilitation: You will struggle to apply many elicitation techniques without being able to facilitate stakeholders well. Facilitation is a skill that requires a lot of practice, and as it is challenging, you have to cut yourself some slack. Learn from your mistakes; the awkward moments in a workshop, the lack of preparation time, the misunderstanding of a stakeholder motivation. When you hone your facilitation, you will earn respect early in any workplace.

Leadership and Influencing: Your ability to lead and influence is key to enabling change, from seeking funding for a new project to improving stakeholder buy-in. Leadership mostly requires confidence, with a good dose of humility. Don’t take credit, instead encourage your colleagues with praise for their work and if you deserve it, they will credit you.

Teamwork: This is how most of us change and mature as professionals. It is through the thousands of interactions with our team members that we learn and develop ourselves. The humor, the conflict, the expert advice, the human mistakes; all of these and other experiences trigger little changes in ourselves.

In summary, a BA can be a boffin, an exceptional thinker and problem solver, passionate about correct technique and rigor in requirements management. However, if a BA isn’t transparent as well as pragmatic in the way their work is approached and adaptable to the needs of requirements stakeholders, they will struggle to effectively bring about change. Furthermore, the BA’s interaction skills will be critical to the change effort. Consider your interactions with others – how might they perceive you? How do you make them feel? Are you developing trust through your interactions? Are you using your sense of humor (and humility) and being human (not Superman)?

Up, up, and away!

Analyse Like A Boss – Define Your Own Business Idea

As Business Analysts we tend to find ourselves working as consultants, contractors or permanent in-house domain experts on enabling new opportunities or solving problems for medium to large businesses.

Have you ever thought of using your awesome array of BA skills and experience to create, operate and lead your own small business?

When you think about starting your own business, the mind begins to boggle with the enormity of it all and it feels very daunting, scary and almost impossible to fathom. Not knowing where to start and how to move forward is the biggest obstacle to overcome.

A manageable way to approach the creation of a new business venture is to break it down into small key milestones that when set out in a logical order make the enormity easier to digest and will give you a clear starting point.

After having your “Eureka” moment and forming the kernel of your business idea and concept you can leverage your existing BA toolkit and skills to do some research and get your concept down on paper. Doing some high-level analysis and modeling does not cost anything but your time. During this initial analysis, you will learn a lot about your concept and its viability and takes you a step closer towards your potential new future venture.

Product/Service

  • Consider your product and its key point of difference
  • Create a prototype where possible or a strawman on paper
  • Go through a SWOT analysis (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) to assist in seeing the bigger picture and potential risks to work through

Market

  • Analyse the potential market and buyers for your product, who are they, where are they, how old are they, what are their buying habits, how much is their disposable income, what social media do they use, how will you reach them?
  • Use free online census data for understanding customer demographics
  • Conduct competitor analysis and benchmarking, this is a great way to see how other similar businesses operate. How do they market their goods, what are their price points, what do they do well, what could they improve on, what can you learn from their experience?

Financials

  • Analyse the costs for your business start-up
  • Model profit and loss including start-up expenses, projected growth targets for the first five years of business, cost to operate and sales targets to see how viable the idea is on paper
  • Think about how you might fund the venture, financial institution loan, business partner or give crowdfunding a go!

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Company Structure

  • Analyse the best company set up for your situation, e.g., sole trader, company, partnership. It is worth seeking advice from an experienced business accountant when assessing these options as they can provide expert taxation advice and can assist if required in the creation of a Pty Ltd company
  • Perform organizational modeling to determine the roles required for your business, size, and budget
  • Determine what role you will play within the business. Always leave room to work on your business and not just in the day to day operation of your business
  • Define your company’s core values, what does your business stand for, what are your guiding principles
  • Think about your company’s persona, how do you want to present your image to your customers? Is your company cool and hip or friendly and trustworthy? Knowing how you want your company to be perceived is very useful when the time comes for creating marketing materials like logo’s and websites.

Skills and Experience

  • Analyse the key skills and experience you will need to be successful within the specific industry domain you are looking at entering
  • Rate your existing general business skills like accounting, marketing, sales, payroll, etc
  • Perform a gap analysis of where you are now, what you need to learn and how you will close the knowledge gap to acquire the relevant skills to enable success
  • Close your education gap including internet research, training courses, work experience and finding a good mentor.

Key Business Processes

  • Process analysis is required to determine what business processes and underpinning forms, reports etc .will be required
  • Define your key value stream using a process flow chart identifying points of value and points of waste within and between processes
  • Process benchmark information for specific industries is available from the APQC industry standard website and can help inform you of the typical processes your business may need
  • Create a SIPOC diagram (suppliers, inputs, process, outputs and customers) for all key processes to understand the inputs and outputs and suppliers you may need.

Tools

  • Define your requirements for software tools to manage your accounts, invoicing and payroll (or will you outsource this part of your business to a strategic partner?)
  • Document what marketing tools your company will need including a website, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and graphic design software tools
  • What customer relationship management tools are available to manage your customer database
  • What financial sales tools will you need to manage point of sale or online ordering?
  • What physical tools do you require to create your product? are these tools best rented with maintenance contracts in place or purchased outright as an asset and depreciated?
  • This information will feed directly into your cost modelling for start-up and operation

After doing your analysis on paper, you should have a reasonable idea of the feasibility of your business idea, the complexity and associated costs.

If your numbers initially stack up and you are still excited to take the next step with your idea proceed to Article 2 in the Analyse Like a Boss series – “Business Start Up” to understand some of the BA techniques and savvy you can leverage to put together the required deliverables to start up your new business venture.

All Aboard the Runaway Blockchain Train

The ever-curious and innovative Business Analyst is always trained on the latest solutions and how these can solve business problems.

Given the controversial nature of Blockchain, many a business analyst is understandably perplexed by this runaway technology. This decade-old train has long left its cryptocurrency embarkation station and is now rounding the curve towards gaining mainstream acceptance. Now is the time for you to climb aboard this free-wheeling train and right its journey through your organization.

Initially, your inquisitive BA side will certainly lead you down: document, market, and vendor analysis tracks as you learn more about this somewhat mystical and often misunderstood technology. In a nutshell, blockchain is “a distributed and immutable record of digital events, which is shared peer to peer between networked database systems that utilize cryptographic and security technologies.” As part of your research, you will certainly grapple with such concepts as immutability, disintermediation, and cryptographic hashing.

But don’t get railroaded! At its core, blockchain is simply a distributed ledger system that securely processes transactions that are maintained for posterity. Picture a ledger as a living spreadsheet with each chronological transaction being added as row within a record’s tab. A group of digitally signed transactions form a block that is linked to a related, preceding block via a practice called cryptographic hashing. As a result, an immutable and uninterrupted blockchain of encrypted data is formed and made available to all within a disintermediating network – one without a central, intermediary system being in control.

As led by a conductor-less locomotive engine, this blockchain train faces the risk of becoming derailed at critical junctions that lack signals for direction. In the rush to the light at the end of the tunnel, corporations and government agencies are seeking to solve business problems via fast-tracked pilot and proofs of concept initiatives. To date, thousands of blockchain trials are barreling down unstable tracks that are not bolstered by technology standards, industry consensus, nor essential regulations.

As such, per the research and advisory Gartner organization, few if any blockchain deployments have reached a productionalized state within these sectors. Still, leading technologists advocate joining this captivating and bounding train as it ventures through all sorts of learning curves. Yet, don’t head down the same tracks as these energetic and well-meaning blockchain technologists who have eagerly trialed blockchain solutions. In so doing, many have employed the equivalent of a railroad tie hammer in search of a needed spike.

Instead, by leveraging your interface analysis skills, you will soon learn that blockchain nodes (e.g., servers, desktops) are akin to train stations distributed across the landscape. Depending on their roles, they are involved in transmitting, verifying, validating, and maintaining data within the decentralized network.

Further, the train’s jouncing cars are best compared to key blockchain design components – representing a set of technologies that are often misunderstood. Each technology is striving to right themselves towards maturity to support the stability of the blockchain:


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  • Security Access: Utilizes identity access management practices to grant rights to only those nodes that are known and trusted.
  • Cryptography: Protects records by use of the above hash functionality, private keys serving as digital signatures, and encryption practices.
  • Provenance: Instills an audit trail, as achieved by the chaining of records.
  • Smart Contract: Incorporates business rules that are automatically run to verify a transaction’s correctness.
  • Consensus: Validates the formed blocks, per agreed-upon proofing algorithms, before committing to the ledger.

By training your focus on these nuts and bolts features, you can best rely on your change agent talents to promote interest in blockchain within your organization.

Befitting your cautious yet ambitious mindset, step back from this fervor and assess the value proposition that blockchain holds. Take a look at your current transaction-based networks (oftentimes structured with a centralized, controlling hub) and ask yourself:

  1. Is the quantity of interdependent, transaction-based records large, and does this volume require high-performance processing? (i.e., distributed ledger)
  2. Can data be equally shared in a network among a sizeable number of partners – rather than maintained by a centralized resource? (i.e., decentralization, consensus)
  3. Must data be limited to participants due to security or privacy reasons?
  4. Are extensive regulation-based and audit-related activities frequently performed to ensure correctness, immutability, and traceability? (i.e., engrained auditability)
  5. Does data require processing via complex or regulation-based rules? (i.e., smart contract)
  6. Is the current network vulnerable to fraud or cyber-attack? (i.e., cryptography)
  7. Are network participants willing to share data and the associated processing activities?

If you can answer “yes” to a majority of these questions, then proceed by identifying business use cases. Candidates that are gaining blockchain steam include: supply chain management, identify management, contract management, financial record reconciliation, records management, and case management.

Further, your creative mind will likely spark even more use cases to explore.

So, embrace your evolving blockchain evangelist role and pitch your well-thought-out recommendations to your leaders, teams, and even external partners. Enlighten them about blockchain’s potential to transform the way organizations do business and delight their customers.

Better to climb aboard now and get your organization’s gears going, then missing the train all together as it nears a destination of widespread, mainstream adoption next decade. And if you are ready to embark on this incredible journey or even pilot it, then it’s full steam ahead!

Are you struggling to elicit requirements from your Stakeholders?

Gathering requirements from business stakeholders on your project is often very demanding and sometimes uneventful.

There are a number of ways to drive the conversations to ensure the requirements are captured and turned into meaningful detailed requirements.

This article suggests some tips to nurture the most out of the project team during requirements gathering.

Ensure you have buy-in from the project team

The team has been selected by their managers to participate in the project. They are the ones with the subject matter expertise. These team members must have the right attitude for the project and understand what it means to workshop requirements. Projects team members must be 100 % committed to the project and understand the project outcome.

Ensure the team understand why requirements gathering is important

Inform the team how important this part of the project stage is. If the scoping process and fleshing out of the requirements is not carried out correctly and efficiently prior to the development stage, then later on the team will be left with a long list of clarifications and a long list of issues during the testing stage.

Prior to the workshops

It is always good practice to discuss the approach you will take for the requirements gathering sessions. This needs to take place before the workshops. It is a good idea to have a brief meeting on the approach that will be used. The meeting will also cover any questions that people may have including ensuring they understand what activities they will be performing.

If this approach meeting is held first, then the team can dive straight into requirements workshops. Remember, everyone’s time is precious.


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What kind of workshops?

Always have the problem statement close at hand. That way everyone can keep referring back to it during the workshops.

User stories form a good basis that can be developed and fleshed out during the workshops. Requirements that are captured using user stories tend to capture three key items: Who the user is; what the user needs; why the user wants it.

Use these stories and keep referring back to them while developing your requirements.

Processes

Business processes are key assets to the project. The current processes in both diagram and steps formats are one of the main essentials for capturing and developing requirements. They describe how things are done and provide insight on how things could be improved on and how they are done.

Mapping out future state processes may take several workshops however once a couple of processes are near complete the team will understand why these are so important.

Summary

The three key items to successfully elicit requirements from the Stakeholders:

Engage > Question > Confirm