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Top 6 Critical BA Skills for the Future (and today!)

Written by Angela Wick on . Posted in Articles. 1 Comment on Top 6 Critical BA Skills for the Future (and today!)

As we cruise through the last days of 2016, it’s important to peek in the rearview mirror. Reflecting on the past reveals patterns and trends in our travels that we can use to predict future destinations.

When I look in my 2016 review mirror, I gather insights from deep conversations with industry leaders, real world problem solving with clients, and sharing ideas with students. These insights drive my thinking about the future of business analysis.
Can you guess where we are going? Do you know what skills you need to pick up along the way?
Regardless of title (BA or not) and approach (traditional, agile, or hybrid), everyone in the business of discovering, defining and delivering value can prepare for the future by developing the following skills:

1) Data Insights

Modeling and data relationships are moving to the back seat while data insights take the wheel. This means that we will be asked dig deeper into our data to discover insights that our stakeholders are not aware of and would be difficult, if not impossible, to elicit.
Data insights start with a comprehensive understanding of our customers and our business. Using our customer and business understanding we can look at data differently and analyze the customer patterns and behaviors. These patterns provide insights to where end users experience value in the product/solution itself and it’s features.

2) Requirements Anthropology

Data insights are critical, but data does not always give us the full picture. Requirements anthropology asks us to go beyond the data and the information we elicit from stakeholders. We need to develop an empathetic mindset that allows us to enter the world of our users and identify their behavior patterns. When we approach our requirements like anthropologists, we take a deeper look at the role the product or solution plays in the end user’s life, work and habits. It’s about observing behaviors and understanding where value is derived for a variety of user types.
An anthropologist’s work would not be complete with out looking at the entire ecosystem of how the user behaviors and patterns impact the preceding or resulting business process. Can business model or process changes improve the life of the user and ultimately the value the user receives? This is what requirements anthropology is about!

3) Visualization

The ability to create effective visuals has always been important, but the purpose of visual communication is changing. In the past, we used data in a visual form to prove a point or simplify a decision. Modern visuals are about concepts, exploring, and learning rather than the typical inform & declare process of the past.
We have a giant amount of complex information at our fingertips, so we need to think harder about the purpose of each visual. Effective visualization skills (with the help of many new visualization tools) help our teams make sense of the vast and complex information, and help us along the learning journey to gather insights about where value lies. The complexity of today is making this learning journey an imperative! Insights regarding value are no longer obvious, they are the “needle in the haystack.”

4) Forensic Thinking

Forensic thinking helps teams get to the root of complex problems by applying a scientific approach. Forensic thinkers use a logical process to confirm the problem’s cause by direct observation, examination and/or objective measurement. This approach helps BAs gather meaningful, accurate requirements rooted in facts rather than stakeholder perceptions or assumptions.
An important focal point for our forensic thinking is the customer experience. Modern teams use forensic thinking to explore customer patterns. Forensic thinking also aligns well with solutions that prevent and investigate fraud and digital/cyber crimes.
So, what does forensic thinking look like? It involves going far beyond what stakeholders say or think they want or need and truly looking at various resources, tests, data, and connections that build upon one another to get to the learnings that ultimately provide insights.

5) Data Security

In the past, data security skills fell on the shoulders of our techie teammates. Now BAs need data security skills too! We need to understand which data assets are most valuable to the organization, and help the organization weigh decisions about protecting this data. If teams protect data too fiercely, they may compromise business performance. Think about the customer who abandons a purchase because the app wants too much data or takes too long to authenticate. Or think about the internal user who abandons core systems to use an “unauthorized” program to meet customer needs and business goals faster.
As BAs we need to understand these dynamics and be prepared to discuss the impact data decisions have on solution requirements, solution design, user/customer experience, and risk to the organization. We need to understand the value of data and the possible risk/reward trade-offs.

6) UX – User Experience

UX is changing and new UX skills are coming into play in this digital era. The huge migration to mobile and tablet devices over web/PC screens will grow as we rely on our devices more and more. This means more UX-related projects and product development for BAs. Responsiveness, modular design and service design are key. BAs with UX skills understand how the UX design features play with all technical layers.
Other key areas of UX include customer experience mapping and rapid UX work. This means understanding the business model and processes very well in order to design a UX that supports the strategy, business model, and flow of the most critical pieces of value.
Formal wireframes are fading out in favor of quick hand-drawn lo-fidelity sketches that go straight to the build process for quick feedback from users. It means more collaborative design sessions instead of reviewing wireframes. BAs who want to keep up with UX will also need to acquire persuasive design and user-centered design skills.

Are you seeing increasing demand for these six skills in your organization? They shine a bright light on a giant shift in our thinking about business analysis. In many organizations, BAs focused largely on analyzing internal systems and processes. Based on my discussions with many of you this year, BAs are increasingly looking outside. They uncover value by analyzing the end user’s environment, thinking, patterns and behaviors.
Don’t get left behind! Develop skills that fuel the future.
Please leave your comments below.

Consistency is the Key to Accomplishment

Written by Clinton Ages on . Posted in Articles.

I hope you are with us in this amazing journey towards achieving the super you, with Coach Clinton 7-Steps to Accomplishment Methodology.

This series of insightful articles intends to let you in on this proven methodology to realize all your dreams and reach even beyond them.

Let’s have a cursory look at what we have covered so far:

Step 1 – Appraise: Analyzing your actions/habits, eliminating the unproductive ones and picking up the value-adding activities only.

Step 2 – Ascertain: Formulating, categorizing, and prioritizing your success goals.

Step 3 – Approach: Developing a comprehensive, actionable plan to cover all your goals.

Step 4 – Avert: Formulating your unique Motivation Affirmation to set your brain up for success.

The next step that you will be learning here marks the end of the ‘Plan and Execute’ phase, but stay alert because I consider this step to be the actual core of this entire methodology.

Step 5 – Actualize:

Actualize is the step that commands the real action in this process. Here, you will take the important information chalked in the previous steps and use that to start taking action. This guided action will definitely bring you closer to your goals.

Now that you have reached this far, you have reached the point where all the planning has been done and the analysis phase is up ahead. This is the perfect window providing you with the opportunity to take action, execute and start checking items off your list. The simple act of cutting out to-do items has a special energy hidden inside it. So when you start acting on your plans, you get the chance to ‘kill’ tasks that have been bothering you and making you feel guilty for years. Doing this simply means that you are unloading the heaps of burden from your shoulders and congratulating yourself for getting on the track of achievement.

Remember the motivation affirmation? The fulfillment that you will start feeling by getting things done will supplement the positive impact of your affirmation. These two elements, when combined, will improve your confidence and enhance your self-beliefs. Result – added energy and increased rate of goal attainment.

Now, it’s time to share a few essential ingredients that you need to add in during your action phase. This will significantly increase your chances of success throughout this step.

  • Perseverance – This single word has a whole world of potential in it. A great mind like Albert Einstein credited his successes to perseverance with these words: “It’s not that I’m so smart, it’s just that I stay with problems longer.” This clearly means that you need to keep moving forward, even in the face of crippling obstacles and all types of resistance. No matter how hard the task at hand may be, you can overcome it by just maintaining your momentum. So, while executing your plans, stay focused on the deliverables and persist in all situations.
  • Self-Leadership and Self-Management – In his world-renowned book, Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen R. Covey puts forth these two, golden concepts – ‘Self-Leadership’ and ‘Self-Management.’ Stephen introduces both ideas in his third habit which is “Put First Things First”. Self-leadership involves the strategic prioritizing of your goals and setting your goals and principles. Self-management is the discipline of executing those goals in the order of priority which you have decided earlier. This step, actualize, relates to self-management and involves taking practical steps to realize your goals in the right order. So, during your action phase, being mindful of these two concepts can guarantee greater chances of success.
  • Organization – When it comes to meeting your goals and achieving your dreams, we must be mindful of the obvious reality that we only have a very limited time on our hands. If you are genuinely interested in achieving your goals, you just cannot afford to waste this most precious resource. The best piece of advice that I want to give you on saving time is to organize. Organization is the key to realizing your ambitions and making it possible in the smallest amount of time. By organizing, I mean that you break down your large goals into smaller, and more manageable, objectives. This simple act will work wonders for you. First of all, you will stop being overwhelmed by the sheer size of your ambitions. For example, if you have an ambitious monthly income goal, you will keep being intimidated by its magnitude until you set a progressive goal that bumps up a little, every month. This way, you will achieve your dream figure instead of sitting down very day to procrastinate and brood over your unfulfilled goal. Another plus of chunking your goals is that you keep getting motivated with every small achievement. This gratification adds fuel to your commitment to reaching the summit.

It is also very important to assign a measurable result and a definitive deadline to each sub-task to make yourself answerable in an objective manner.

So here you are with the most important information about this process in your hands. I am labeling this as ‘most important’ because this is where most of us stumble and never get up. Taking action comes as the most difficult thing to a vast majority. People who do take the initiative and start taking action, lose momentum along the way, for reason or another.

By knowing the exact problem points – where people usually fail -, you should consider yourself to be lucky. So beware of falling back into the arms of lassitude. Keep yourself motivated by hitting milestones and strive for the next one and the one after. There is no point in wasting time in preparing your plans and chalking out action strategies if you don’t intend to spring into action when it’s needed. I’d recommend to put in your 100% commitment to action from the very start and leave no space for excuses.

I had been thinking of finding the best way to sum up this very important discussion. And thankfully, I was reminded of these priceless words by the one and only, Pablo Picasso:

“Action is the foundational key to all success.”

I’ll be with you soon to take you further up the road with the next step

Strategy Spotlight: 4 Communication Skill Components that a Professional Should Master

Written by Richard Lannon on . Posted in Articles.

I was asked by a participant at a PM/BA World Event hosted by Diversified Communications and the local IIBA Chapter what I felt were the some key areas to study as a new business analyst.

I paused for a moment and said facilitation, documentation, integration and presentation is a good place as any to start. As I reflected on my comment I wondered why those four items came top of mind during a keynote presentation question and answer period. I realized that for years I have been preaching the importance of these skills and capabilities in my three day Business Analysis, Gathering and Documenting Requirements program where communications is the key.

But, what is communications. Well it is more than the words you use. Good or effective communications combines a skill set that includes verbal and non-verbal capabilities and as a professional, it is imperative that you become a communication master. Now, what does that have to do with facilitation, documentation and integration?

Facilitation: To be a facilitator you have to master people and group dynamics on a variety of levels. Often this means attending training, getting coaching and mentoring and practicing a variety of skill sets all aimed at developing your verbal and non-verbal communication skills. There are skill sets that include your ability to:

  • profile people and adjust your behaviors to their needs not yours,
  • actively listen where you focus fully on the speaker from their body language, tone of voice and non-verbal cues,
  • be an improvisational expert and adjust when needed and as required (sometimes entertain),
  • run meetings from the one on one interviews, small group discussions to the larger workshops,
  • know where it is you are starting (problem) and where you need to go (the outcome) and set the course and tone to get there and lots more.

Documentation: This is one of the areas I think is often misunderstood. By definition, documentation is material that provides official evidence and serves as a record. Generally this is not the fun stuff for a lot of people. Documentation is part of communications. From the written text to the depicted requirements using diagrams, it tells a story and brings the audience on a journey from problem to solution.

Documentation that relates to facilitation on a number of levels as it is that skill set that requires you to know how to develop surveys and questionnaires, to create interview questions like a journalists, and to capture that information as factual, authentic as possible to communicate to your respective stakeholders, your audience.

Whether you are writing a proposal, a charter, building a requirements plan, creating a summary of findings, doing a financial analysis or writing a full business case. Documentation is a communication’s vehicle as it about your ability to write and communicate with words on paper, a computer screen or some other medium.

Integration: Bringing it all together is what it is all about and this is called integration. I think this is the hardest part of any professiona’ls work as it is a lot of work. Often called the heavy lifting, you could spend twenty hours communicating with people to capture information and another sixty hours or more putting it all together.

Information integration similar to documentation requires you to know your audience and the key deliverables. You could be writing a summary of findings with no analysis for your peers or maybe the executive team. Maybe you are developing a presentation deck for the executive and you have to determine what information must be made available. You could also be required to create a requirements attribute table or a program roadmap where you need to determine the sequence and wording of requirements for the strategic, tactical or operational. There is also the possibility that you have to integrate the material as business, stakeholder, solution and transformational requirements. The list of possibilities is endless. So studying and building your information integration skills for communications is extremely important. It is not just about you.

Presentations: In today’s world I just can’t see how you can survive as a professional without developing your presentation skills. This skill is about your ability to effectively deliver engaging presentations to a variety of audiences. You need to learn how to structure presentations, design slides, set the tone of the presentation with your voice and body language. It all counts.

To develop this skill consider taking training on thinking on your feet, acting and improvisation, joining a club that teaches you and helps you practice presentation skills, learn the difference between being a speaker, trainer and facilitator. There are differences in the skill set that you apply given the audience.

As a professional developing your confidence in front of an audience is important, learn not to lecture but to engage, develop your ability to profile your audience, find ways to keep things short and simple with repetitive markers, and anticipate questions.

Final Thought

One of my favorite programs to speak and train on is Gathering and Documenting Requirements because it applies a practical and realistic skill set in communications, facilitation, documentation, integration and presentation that the professional needs to develop for their career success. This skill set can and will be applied throughout your career and life, whether you are working with your peers and other stakeholders solving a problem, researching a vacation, buying a house or hanging out with your friends engaging in conversation around living everyday and succeeding in all that you do or want to do. Yes, I guess you can say these are four skills will make you a communication expect if developed well.

You’ve Set the Goal – Now What’s Your Plan?

Written by Clinton Ages on . Posted in Articles. 1 Comment on You’ve Set the Goal – Now What’s Your Plan?

We are continuing to walk on our proven path that consists of the magical seven steps towards success and achievement in life and – known as the Coach Clinton 7-Steps to Accomplishment Methodology.

We have discussed the first two steps at length which are appraise and ascertain , and now we are on the third stage which is called the ‘Approach’ step. By reaching here, we are past the mind mapping phase and things are going to get more action-oriented and practical from here onwards. So this is the time to strengthen your commitments and actually take some practical steps to start the realization of your dreams because without targeted action, all that remains is mere talk and nothing practical.

Here is a recap for you in order to help you connect the third step with the first two and understand the process more clearly.

  • In the first step, appraise, we talked about doing a comprehensive self-evaluation so that you can separate the positive patterns from the ones which are hindering your performance.
  • In the second step, ascertain, we had a detailed look at everything related to devising your goals so that these goals are based on some solid foundations instead of personal whims.

If you have worked on these two steps, you must have in your hand:

  1. A detailed picture of your strengths and weaknesses along with a plan to further improve yourself by leveraging the pluses and eliminating the shortcomings
  2. A full-fledged document containing your short, medium and long term goals stacked in separate categories for further action

With this information handy, you have all the prerequisites that you need to start the first step –one that will guide your actions leading to achievement of your long term goals. During this process, the information from your self-assessment and your list of goals will be used as input for directing your activities.

Developing Your Action Plan

You cannot accomplish even the smallest of goals without making its action plan and listing down the real actions that you will have to undertake. Now that you have all your goals in front of you, it’s time to take each goal and support that goal by attaching an action plan with each one.

Here are the time-tested recommendations that will help you develop your action plan in order to direct your efforts towards completion and continuous success:

  • Categorization – First of all, you need to take each goal and study it thoroughly before labeling it in one of the categories that you have already listed down. The categories may include personal goals, professional goals and the like.
  • Prioritization – Within each category, you will now make a priority list by ranking your goals according to their importance. The ranking will be done based on the importance whereas the level of importance will be the outcome of your personal desire to do something and your intended achievement from fulfilling that desire. After ranking the long term goals, you will move to rank the short term goals under each major goal in order of level of contribution in fulfillment of the parent goal.
    It is of great importance to set the deadline for every one of your goals according to their rank – otherwise these goals will be very less likely to see light of the day.
  • Monthly Planning – When you are clear about your goals and their priority, it becomes easy to map them on a given timeframe and then pursue them according to the time limits. On the same lines, you need to create a monthly planner and chalk out your goals on that planner. Doing this will help you stay on track by giving you a visual of your to-do list so that you stay reminded of the pressing tasks that need to be completed before its deadline.
  • Task Division – Now take your top most important goal and make a list of all the individual activities that will have to complete in order to achieve this goal. While doing this, think the goal through and make sure that you list down all the activities without missing anything. These measurable activities – instead of a large goal – will be the ones that will bring you closer to your goal.
  • Weekly Planning – Once you have listed all the subsequent tasks that will help you materialize a goal, the next logical thing to do is to arrange them in their natural order of completion. By doing this, you will have a sequential to-do list which simply requires you to complete each task in this order without having to waste your energy cutting through a clutter. Just like you made a monthly plan, these sub-tasks will be planned on a weekly timeframe and at the end of every week, you should ideally be able to tick off all the week’s assigned tasks.
  • Weekly Review – While working on a weekly schedule, it is always helpful to identify milestones for each task and stop during the week to gauge your progress. Pat yourself on the back if you are on the right track but in case you are not, re-plan your remaining week wisely and take quick action to make sure that this week’s targets are met positively. To make more room for these tasks, audit your plans for the running week and push down anything that is not serving your goal achievement.
  • Resource Planning – After all your planning related to the tasks, their importance and their right order is done, the next step is to analyze your plan with a resource perspective. I recommend you to sit down and list all the resources that you will need to materialize your goals. The resources can fall into broad categories like People, Technical, Knowledge, and Information resources. Once you have a list of what you need, now plan the acquisition of that resources in terms of the possible source(s) to get hold of a particular resource as well as the time required to obtain it. This important step will ensure that you don’t waste time in the middle of the journey in arranging for resources.
  • Action! – Now that you have planned each and every detail of your mission, it’s time to get running and start completing your weekly tasks so that your monthly targets are met. This way, you will see yourself start to check off your short term goals from the goals’ list leading to achievement of your bigger goals.

So today, we dived into the details of planning your goals in the most effective manner and if you have followed this discussion, you can already see your life’s ambitions being materialized – one after the other.

While it’s good to take some well-deserved rest after a big breakthrough, I cannot overemphasize the importance of building and maintaining your momentum because if you relax during this process, it will take you much more energy to get this momentum back – significantly increasing your chances of failure.

So now that you are starting your action plan, here are a few motivating words from one of the most accomplished personalities:

“Action is the foundational key to all success”
– Pablo Picasso

Stay tuned for the upcoming discussions that are geared to help you keep pushing forward on this track of success and achievement.

7 Must-have Skills for the Business Intelligence Business Analyst

Written by Pam Clavier on . Posted in Articles.

Business Intelligence (BI) is a top priority across the world: Gartner estimates that 90% of organizations have some form of BI capability…

with global BI spend for 2016 expected to reach 16.9 billion US dollars. Simultaneously, experts predict future demand for BI professionals to increase even higher than present, resulting from a future shortage. The time is rife with opportunity to explore specializing in BI. If data, information, and analytics interest you, perhaps it’s time to explore expanding your Business Analyst (BA) skillset to specialize in BI.

Related Article: 9 Key Skills Every Good Business Analyst Needs

The BI BA uses BA and BI tools and techniques to build BI solutions that align data, business, and technology to deliver actionable insights needed by the organization to support decision-making. The BI BA may be involved at various points in the BI lifecycle – from data sourcing and analysis to enhancing, integrating and presenting information – all the way to delivering analytics and actionable insights.

The BI BA role requires hard and soft skills. Hard skills are left-brain skills that can be learned through courses and experience, given an inherent or acquired aptitude. Soft skills take emotional intelligence, using the right-brain. While the well-rounded BI BA demonstrates a wide range of both these types of skills, there are a few essential skills that underpin the BI BA role that employers typically seek at a minimum. We see these as critical for the BI BA, over and above the traditional BA skill set – consisting of, for example analytical and critical thinking, problem-solving, technical writing and ability to facilitate workshops.

Starting with the hard skills:

1. Business Acumen

A fundamental skill for the BI BA is the ability to understand and converse in the business domain specific to the particular industry and organization they are analyzing. The BI BA needs a solid foundation of knowledge of the industry as well as the organization’s business model, strategy and objectives, its key issues and its competitors. Strong business acumen helps the BI BA as they follow a top-down approach translating the organization’s strategy into Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), measures and metrics. This may be done for executive, management or operational levels to support strategic, tactical or day-to-day decision-making.

2. Data Analysis and Modelling

Ability to understand data and information and convert this into insights. The BI BA must be able to think conceptually, using high-level data models to conceptually map the real world of the organization. They also need a firm understanding of how data moves from operational source systems across the organization, through the various transformation processes, to where it is ultimately used by decision-makers.

3. BI-specific Software and Analytics Programs

Employers typically seek super-user level skills in Microsoft (MS) Office applications, specifically advanced Excel for analyzing and pivoting data, the ability to use Visio for data modeling and possibly also knowing SharePoint to build custom input lists. MS Access skills are less in demand, possibly only needed on specific projects where a client department may already be using this.

Proficiency in a query language, such as Microsoft SQL, is highly sought after by employers. The capability to see and analyze data helps with the much-needed hands-on and data-focused nature of BI analysis. It helps understand the format, grain and structure of the data and moves analysis from intangible to tangible, real-life examples.

Additionally, BI BAs working in the analytics space must know how to use Commercial off the Shelf (COTS) BI and analytics software applications. A good place to see what is relevant today is on Gartner’s magic quadrant for BI and Analytics platforms. As of February 2016, Gartner ranks Tableau, Qlik and Microsoft the highest in terms of leadership and vision.

4. BI Methodology and BI Journey

The traditional BA must understand the Systems Development Lifecycle (SDLC). Similarly, the BI BA must know both the BI methodology and BI journey for their particular department and organization.

In terms of BI methodology, the BI BA must specifically know: how requirements flow through BI development processes; key handover points, who the BI team members are and how to collaborate with them and; governance and maintenance processes required in operations after project conclusion.

The BI journey entails understanding the overall organizational approach to BI in terms of how the organization intends to move from maturity to maturity level, the technological platform and tools it plans to use to do this and what organizational structure it sees of use in getting there.

On the side of the soft skills:

5. Big Picture AND Detail Oriented

Paradoxically both of these skills are required. Often the BI BA is working in the minutia – the finest grain of data – and needs to understand this in all its subtle details. These may entail where it is sourced from, what are the transformation rules, who uses it, who owns it, etc. At the same time, they need to understand the organization’s vision, how this translates into the various strategic, tactical and operational level objectives and then how to translate the objectives into KPIs, metrics and measures that link to detailed data elements.

6. Ability to Navigate Politics

BI solutions typically cross a number of functional areas and departments, where key stakeholders may have their own agendas for a particular BI solution or may be fearful of or unwilling to share information. While the common mantra in business cases for BI solutions is “a single version of the truth”, the BI BA needs to be able to navigate politics such as turf wars between departments and key stakeholders and inability to define key business and data terminology.

7. High Tolerance for Ambiguity and Ability to Create Structure

BI scope and requirements are notoriously ill-defined upfront, emerging as further information comes to light through analysis. Additionally, data quality and structure are also not usually known upfront. The BI BA needs the soft skills to confidently manage through the fog, creating stability and structure for themselves, their BI team members and their business stakeholders as they proceed.

About the Authors:

Dr. Pam Clavier is a PM and BA with 16 years’ experience in IT and consulting. She has a PhD in Informatics and is certified as a PMP and CBAP. She can be reached at [email protected].

Harman Brar is a Director at Decision Streams. He has 22 years’ experience in BI, data warehousing and analytics. He holds a Bachelor of Engineering degree and is certified as an Oracle DBA, a Microsoft Certified Professional (MCP, MCITP DBA/BI) and is a Certified Scrum Master (CSM). He can be contacted at [email protected].

References & Further Reading

De Jager, T., Brown, I. 2016. A Descriptive Categorized Typology of Requisite Skills for Business Intelligence Professionals. SAICSIT ’16. 
Gartner News Room. 2016.
Gartner Research. 2016. Magic Quadrant for BI and Analytics Platforms. 
Selig, A. Survey: What Employers Are Looking For in a Business Intelligence Analyst.  
The Business Analyst Body of Knowledge (BABOK) Guide V3.