Tag: Stakeholder

“We are all only ever temporarily Not Disabled”

Written by Jake Horton on November 19, 2019. Posted in Articles.

Life as a Business Analyst during the requirements gathering phase is always an interesting time.

You are the one person who must remain impartial to choices, neutral to a solution and unemotional to the pain points stakeholders may have. You must also don many hats and adopt many points of view; one day you are a marketeer, then a payment processor or even a member of the onboarding department. Being sure also to never forget the many governing factors concerning your project, such as company compliance guidelines, government legislation and of course, budget constraints.

Like most of the world we live in as Business Analysts the above was not something I learned overnight, it was an iterative process. With each project I learn something new, with each company something new again and it would be foolish of me to ever think that this process will end. Being an analyst is a lifelong commitment to change.

Enter a new project, a new challenge and a new learning.

I have recently been working on a Government project, my first experience with a Public Sector client. The project itself was to be a 6-week Discovery phase looking to establish the AS-IS of a current system, and present back to the client, options for a future solution. I approached much of this work in the same way I always have; I engaged in workshops, held interviews, conducted shadowing sessions and so on.

The main difference to a private sector client was the checklist of areas that we had to consider as part of our work to meet with the Government framework for Digital Projects. The framework ensures all work carried out by different companies remains uniform, but most importantly represents the needs and wants of the entire population, after all we are designing systems that could be used by any person who lives in the UK.

One of the bullet points in this checklist was for accessibility needs. Accessibility is something I am guilty of having never given enough consideration to during requirements elicitation. Until now I have never thought about putting myself in the position of someone with additional needs and shame on me, as 1 in 5 people in the UK are affected by a disability that leads to Web Accessibility requirements. So, I decided to seize this learning opportunity and ensure I was skilled up going forwards. I was then very fortunate to find the Home Office were holding an ‘Introduction to Access Needs’ workshop as part of a practice run for a European Conference covering the same topic.

The workshop was extremely informative and well structured. As well as covering the requirement for accessibility needs, we also learned about the different types of need and were able to experiment with apparatus that replicated a specific disability and use some of the tools designed to provide the assistance required.

The ethics behind accessibility is possibly not something you have considered before. I think many would categorise an accessibility tool as something that; ‘makes life easier’, for a disabled user. However, what we should be taking into account when designing new digital platforms is how to make sure that every single user has the same experience. This is actually a very key point as we are not even specifically talking about disabilities here.

Have you considered mobile users vs web? IOS vs Windows? Online vs Offline? These are all possible different users of your system and all deserve the same experience. It may well be that a lot of these points are non-functional requirements that come later in the development, but if you make sure you are considering them at the start, you can save yourself a lot of time and effort in the future.

So now we have the right mindset when thinking about accessibility and disabilities. A key quote from the workshop, “We are all only ever temporarily not disabled”. Over half the population over the age of 65 experience a disability of some sort, so it will happen one day if we are lucky enough to reach a mature age.

So, what disabilities do we need to consider? Some examples include visual impairment, colour blindness, impaired hearing, dyslexia, dementia, autism, loss of limbs, mobility issues and the list goes on. Within these groups there is also a wide spectrum to consider. It is not simply 20/20 vision or blindness but a whole world in between. Another key takeaway from this session was the introduction of temporary disabilities. Maybe you have a broken arm for 6 weeks or even just find yourself in a loud space; have you ever used subtitles because it is too loud to hear? If the answer is yes, then you have also experienced a temporary user access need.

“For something to be accessible someone needs to be able to complete the task they are trying to achieve without encountering a barrier or issue.” So, what are the characteristics to consider to ensure that we meet this brief when designing a digital service; Perceivable, Understandable, Operable and Robust.

The first two points are focusing around information. The user must be able to perceive the information they need, that means it should be available to one of their senses be it sight, hearing or touch. You should not isolate one group from accessing information available to another, for example if information is displayed as text then a screen reader should be able to convert it to speech. When we think about understandable, we must consider those who struggle to process text, let’s take dyslexia as an example. We should keep copy brief and to the point and avoid alienating language and using large bodies of text which could be overwhelming for the user.

The second two points focus on usability of the system. It must be operable, if someone is using a keyboard or even no keyboard for example, they can still do everything that someone using a mouse can do. This includes being able to navigate the website, use forms to provide information and use controls such as buttons. The service should also be robust so that technology being utilised by a user works as it should every time, such as a screen reader.

All of the above must be in place to help a user achieve the goal of completing their task. More information on these principles can be found at https://www.w3.org/WAI/intro/wcag The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is an international community where Member organisations led by Director Tim Berners-Lee, work together to develop Web standards. W3C’s mission is to lead the Web to its full potential.

Luckily there are many different considerations we can make during the design that can help us reach our goal of an achieving an equal experience for all. We have come a long way from simply making text size larger on screens and the expanding the list of devices available to help users interact with online services which is refreshingly. There is also now a wealth of information including helpful articles to assist you in asking the right questions and optimising online platforms to deliver a positive and equal experience to all users, I have included some of these links below:

https://webaccess.berkeley.edu/resources/tips/web-accessibility
https://www.gov.uk/service-manual/communities/accessibility-community

If you want to ensure that your website is inclusive to all users, you can test it using www.wave.webaim.org to see how it currently rates in terms of access needs. You may be surprised to find that your site is alongside some of the most popular websites that are still underperforming in this area. A poor accessibility press article can have hugely negative effects on a company’s reputation as evidenced in this article about Domino’s pizza here.

As a Business Analyst, I hope you have found this article helpful or it has at least made you think a little more deeply around a potentially throw away term or design after thought. You may want to ensure that during your next requirements gathering session you ask the question or even go out and meet some of the people affected by a badly designed system first-hand. It is really important to understand our end users and their needs to help deliver the best possible solution for all and to support a more inclusive society where others are sometimes needlessly left behind.

Improve Collaboration by Understanding Natural Human Instincts

Written by Deena Chadwick on November 7, 2019. Posted in Articles.

Last January, I was lucky to have an article posted right here at BA Times.

How To Get Requirements From Resistant SMEs Part 3. It is about what to do when your SMEs clam up. It mentions using a person’s natural human instincts to get them talking. One of the hardest things to do as a professional is to put theory into practice. I have been asked several times this year to elaborate on what I shared, by giving examples or case studies on How.

First let’s do a quick refresher, the FBI and Homeland Security states that these are the natural human instincts that trigger people to share information.

A desire to appear well informed, especially about our profession
A desire to feel appreciated and believe we are contributing to something important
A tendency to expand on a topic when given praise or encouragement; to show off
A tendency to correct others
A desire to convert someone to our opinion

Part of the reason people struggle with practical application is because you have to create a scenario that triggers someone to act on their instincts. I will share several examples or case studies that show you how others have successfully applied these techniques.

A Desire To Appear Well Informed

1. In larger groups, meetings, or messages

“Jack, it has been a few weeks since our last show and tell, before our developer shows you wants coming up, why don’t you give us a quick summary of how our last release helped your team?”
“Today is all about coming up with new ways to help our production support team reduce their backlog of support tickets, before we get started, Harry can you tell us what solutions or bandaids your team is already using?”

2. In small group conversations

“James, have you met Nicki? Nicki you can explain what your team does better than I can…”
“Ok I include the two of you in a half an hour meeting before the brain storming session. I was hoping that the two of you, who have a vast amount of knowledge, would mind talking through the most important points before the team got here, so that the meeting has a bit of a head start.”
“Milly, we are about to go into another grooming session…which is going to end in you having to make all of the decisions any way. Can you do a quick pass before the meeting so that we don’t waste time going into detailed conversation for something you already know the priority for?”

A Desire To Contribute or Be Appreciated

“Jonas, I just got out of a planning meeting and they finally approved us to start working on the improvements you guys have been asking for. Would you mind being my goto expert? I need someone who can help me focus on this from a user’s point of view.”
Meeting Invite: I know we normally have James, Calvin, and Sanya in our kick off meetings but I have also added Stacey. I have noticed that when a lead from UX is involved from the beginning, we spend less time reworking usability issues from user acceptance.

A Tendency to Expand On A Topic

“Greg that seems important to talk about, but not here in stand up. Why don’t we finish up the daily meeting and then can most of you guys stay on the line so Greg can explain the issue in detail and we can decide as a team what to do.”
“Jeremy, let’s switch gears for just a minute. Instead of starting with a list of changes, can you tell me a little about what your team has accomplished recently and what they are looking to accomplish and improve on in the next cycle?”…”Ok now can we map those goals and accomplishments to the items in the list to see which ones should float to the top?”

A Tendency to Correct Others

“So I hear your team would rather start from scratch learning a new system, than deal with the issues you are dealing with today.”
“I am telling you the report is wrong, everytime I rerun it, it looks exactly the same!” “Oh so you are saying the report should always change each time you run it?”
“James, can you do me a favor? Can you job shadow Erica and then share with me what she could do in her processes to be more efficient?”

A desire to convert someone to our opinion

“Harry, can you tell Madu what you told us the other day. I may not have explained it right, but Madu completely disagreed with us.”
“Why is this so important that my team has to work 10 hours plus a day and work on the weekends?”

These are just a few examples, but I hope they inspire you to engage that reluctant SME or Stakeholder by triggering their Natural Human Instincts.

BEWARE: Analysis Kills Empathy

Written by Christina Lovelock on October 30, 2019. Posted in Articles.

‘When the analytic network is engaged, our ability to appreciate the human cost of our action is repressed.’ [1]

Neurological studies have shown that our brains have two completely separate networks that deal with ‘analytical thinking’ and ‘empathetic and social thinking’, and that these are mutually exclusive processes within the brain. To engage one, we must switch off the other.

Analysts often say things like:

“That decision doesn’t make sense…”, “But they are not being rational…”, There is no logic behind it…” and “If you look at it objectively…”. These are things that are important to us, and many of us believe it’s what we are being paid to do for our organisations, but are we missing something?

Knowing that we are biologically unable to engage problem solving and empathetic mental processes at the same time gives us a significant opportunity to ensure we switch perspectives and consider both the ‘logical’ and ‘human’ view-points.

BAs need to use tools as checklists to remind us to properly explore the human side of IT, digital transformation and organisational change. There are some useful techniques which allow us to do this is a structured way such as:

Empathy mapping
SARAH curve
POPIT™ Model
Persona analysis
User journey mapping
Impact mapping
Force field analysis.

Empathy mapping can be used to great effect, not just in the context of business change, customer experience or system implementation, but as a mental checklist in our day to day interactions with others.

Empathy is fundamental to building good working relationships, and to ensure the human impact of our analytical decisions is properly appreciated.

This adapted empathy model allows us to explore a particular person/ relationship in depth, and is especially useful for what we might label as our ‘difficult stakeholders’, where the relationship is not working well.

Sees & Hears

How does this situation appear to the other person? What are they hearing from me? (not the same as what I think I’m saying). Are they getting different messages from others? What do they hear about me/this situation from others? What outputs or deliverables do they see from me? What behaviour do they see from me? What is the impact of my actions on them?

Says & Does

What are their activities and deliverables? How do these relate to what I do? What do they say to me and about me? How do they behave towards me/towards others? Is there a difference? What do I observe in their body language, facial expression and tone?

Thinks & Feels

What might they be thinking about this situation/this relationship? Do they think it’s a difficult relationship? How might our relationship ‘difficulties’ be impacting them? What can I observe that helps me infer their feelings? How do they express their feelings? (choice of words, tone, volume, non-verbal cues, frequency of our interactions, methods of communication).

Pain & Gain

What are their priorities? What do they want to achieve? What are their frustrations and blockers? How am I contributing to these? How can I help them? What would be the benefits of a better relationship with me?

As is always the case with empathy mapping, there is a limit to what can be learned through observation and assumption. At some point we have to speak directly to the person we are trying to understand better, but asking ourselves these questions should help us to empathise and may improve a difficult relationship significantly.

Conclusion

Logical. Methodological. Problem solver.

Many BAs identify with these skills to the point that we see them as personality traits, but we need to understand the warning this research has given us. BAs need to hone our empathy skills to be able to truly understand and represent different perspectives, and to build our working relationships.

‘Empathy is like a muscle: It has to be trained and exercised to become stronger.’ [2]

When we have finished our logical analysis, we need to remember to switch on our empathetic analysis.

References

[1] Empathy represses analytic thought, and vice versa: Brain physiology limits simultaneous use of both networks.(2012)

[2] State of workplace empathy: Executive Summary (2018)

Leadership Lessons from a Grade School Teacher

Written by Richard Larson on September 25, 2019. Posted in Articles.

Would you like to be a better leader? A more effective mentor?

If so, you can probably benefit from reflecting on past mentors of yours who have influenced you. For me it was a favorite teacher of mine back in 6th grade when I was 11 years old. Mr. Fernholz was a young and engaging teacher. He was to me the embodiment of what a good teacher should be.

Mr. Fernholz stands out to me not so much for any specific things he did. Rather it is because of how he approached his job and how he made his students feel. Well, I’m not sure about how others felt, but I hold him in high regard to this day.

1. Genuine Encouragement.

For one thing, he did not talk down to us or demean us like some of the previous teachers I had (oh the stories I could tell.) He genuinely respected his students and wanted to bring out the best in us. There was nothing obvious about it as much as his attitude. It took me years of reflection to realize how much he respected us.

One personal example was his encouragement of me. I wasn’t the best student at that time and did not work as hard as I should have. My 6th grade friends were not the best students either and there were strong social pressures to slack off. My grades were OK but not great. Mr. Fernholz frequently remarked that I was not working up to my potential.

Mr. Fernholz could have just accepted my under-achievement like my other teachers had. Instead, on many occasions I remember him saying “if you don’t go to college, I will hound you until you do.” HIs quiet encouragement was a constant motivation and not only through college, but during stressful times throughout my career. Thanks, Mr. F!

People on our teams and those we lead or mentor need encouragement like my 6th grade self did. It needs to be genuine, though, and not patronizing. People sense the difference and your interactions will be less effective.

2. Fairness.

A good leader/mentor is also fair, so when praise is warranted, they will give it. But when guidance is needed, (s)he will provide that too in a fair way. An incident in my 6th grade class illustrates this point.

Towards the end of my 6th grade term, the class took a major test. It was difficult, but I had studied for it (likely after some encouragement from Mr. Fernholz). Sometime during the exam, I accidently kicked some books out of the shelf below my seat. This was not surprising since I was a fidgety kid. I ignored the books so as not to appear like I was looking up answers in them.

When we got our exam results back the next day, I scored well, higher than any other exams I completed that year. It was astonishing, then, when Mr. F wanted to talk to me after class. He told me another student said she saw me cheating on the exam by looking up answers from the book that had fallen. My better-than-ever results probably added to the credibility of the accusation. Still, I was dumbfounded and hurt that someone would accuse me of something so untrue.

To this day I believe that my teacher had somehow perceived I was telling the truth. Maybe he was able to read my body language and other non-verbals to make his determination. He may have also factored in my past behavior, which if not exemplary, was at least free of any issues. He probably also took the context into account—such as some previous awkward interactions between “my accuser” and me. Maybe Mr. Fernholz understood it, but I’ll never know.

3. Set boundaries.

A final significant memory of 6th grade has to do with discipline. Our class had a disruptive kid who I recall was named Mike (it was a lot of years ago). Mike was a classic problem child, and today might be given special counseling or medication. Mike frequently acted out his feelings and disrupted the class on many occasions.

Partway through the school year, Mr. Fernholz set aside a corner of the classroom with masking tape that would be “Mike’s Area.” When class was in session, Mike was not supposed to leave his area, which reduced his disruption a great deal. It really did improve the classroom dynamics. In today’s world I fear that kind of treatment would likely get a teacher reprimanded if not suspended.

What I can now reflect on is that Mr. Fernholz’s treatment of Mike was pretty fair. The kid wasn’t ostracized since he stayed in the classroom. He could participate in discussions and was expected to do al his normal work. What “Mike’s Area” did for him was to set boundaries that he seemed to need. (Some kids today are said to have “boundary issues” when they overly pester others.) That certainly described Mike, and my teacher’s handling of it was appropriate and effective.

We need to be able to set boundaries with people on our team and with whom we mentor. The boundaries might be the amount of time they take up. They might be the kind of advice a mentee seeks. Over the years, people who I have mentored will easily stray from career advice to asking for consulting help for solving work problems. Every mentor’s boundary line is different, and my advice is to be aware of yours and set expectations up front.

To summarize, I have come to realize Mr. Fernholz was my first mentor. He was also an early example for me of a good leader. He may or may not have viewed these things as his role, but he was effective in them. We can improve our own leadership by thinking about and modeling the way effective mentors have helped us. You probably have good role models in your life that you can reflect on how they helped you and how they made you feel. Please share your tips for how your mentors have helped you.

Learning Best Practices for Requirements Gathering and Management from the Legal Field

Written by Gavi Hoffman on July 25, 2019. Posted in Articles. 1 Comment on Learning Best Practices for Requirements Gathering and Management from the Legal Field

As a Business Analyst one may be tasked with many different responsibilities;

scribe, organization analysis, owner of requirements lifecycle, coordination across teams, etc. However, much of Business Analysis may be grouped together under one overarching role: keeper of the truth. If one has done their job correctly, they will be the person the project looks to when looking for accountability and confirmation as to the details and direction of the project or organization.

So, how does one make sure that they have the most accurate, and up to date, information? The legal field, which often is also a field that looks to find the truth within a collection of facts and information, can provide some best practices we can learn from:

You CAN Handle the Truth

There is a somewhat well-known rule in the legal field: never ask a question you don’t know the answer to. Most people don’t realize this rule only applies when one is asking questions during trial and depositions, however if one is asking question to learn more about the facts of the case at the very beginning of the process it is critical that a lawyer ask many questions that could impact their case; especially if they don’t know the answer.

One could argue that in Business Analysis the rule about asking questions is not only the opposite of the legal field, but it is also applied almost universally: alwaysask a question you don’t know the answer to. In fact, even if you thinkyou know the answer; one should ask anyway to confirm that you have the right information. Don’t worry about looking like you don’t know everything; you don’t! That’s ok! Its more important to have all the information that you need to do your job effectively.

Keeping the Record

Every trial and deposition has an official record kept by a stenographer to ensure that there is an unbiased accounting of everything that occurred. This can be leveraged by all parties, not just those involved in the trial, but also by those who want to use the trial as a precedent for future trials and decisions.

A BA is very often the scribe in meetings and workshops who maintain the official notes for everyone involved in a project or organization. These notes are essentially the record which includes; minutes of meetings, options for different approaches and decisions made by stakeholders. Therefore it is critical that one not only keeps diligent notes that are easy to understand, but that they are sent out for confirmation to those people involved in the conversation to make sure the official record is accurate.

Find All the Witnesses

On TV the viewer is often given the impression that there is one key witness that seals a case for one side or another, and many times that witness is hard to track down. However, in reality, many times cases are much more mundane and attorneys have to rely on a collection of witness testimonies to paint a full picture of what happened in a case. It is rare that there is a singular witness who is the silver-bullet for the entire case, rather it is critical to get all the witnesses needed to build out the entire story the attorney is attempting to lay out.

As a BA who is looking to produce the most accurate and comprehensive requirements in the time allocated it is critical to find all the relevant stakeholders and contributors that will contribute the requirements for a given project. Therefore, one must make sure to not only talk to those people who are proactively identified as important stakeholders but to ask, if one sees a certain group is not included in workshops or is mentioned in passing during a workshop, about their inclusion. An example of some groups that are often left out accidentally-but are almost always critical to the success of a project-are the compliance and security groups. They may not be involved in the day to day activities of certain projects they often have the final say on whether something can be done.

By making sure all necessary parties are involved in building out the requirements, even if they are just consulted, we can do our best to make sure the requirements for the project are complete.

It’s OK to Lead the Witness

When someone is testifying as a witness the side that called them begins with direct examination. During direct examination, it is critical to set up the reason the witness is being called to testify with open-ended questions, but attorneys are not allowed to ask questions that lead them to answer in a specific way on direct examination, this is known as “leading the witness”. A good example is if the answer is yes or no it is probably a leading question, and if the question starts with, “Tell us about what happened…” is probably not.

As a BA, while many times asking open-ended questions will get better information from those you are speaking to, there are times where close-ended questions (aka leading questions) are critical in getting specific information that is needed. This is especially true when you are dealing with stakeholders who give ambiguous answers and/or don’t have time to give long complex answers. By “leading the witness” one is able to get to the heart of many matters quickly, which is often critical in capturing the most important information.

Facts Matter

Attorneys know it is critical to call out testimony or information that doesn’t make sense when summarizing their arguments for the judge or jury. By calling out inconsistencies in evidence or testimony attorneys look to expose possible flaws in their opponent’s case.

Similarly, BAs should expect to ask follow up or clarifying questions, if they receive conflicting answers from different stakeholders or inconsistent information. It is incumbent of the BA, as the keeper of the truth, to probe into any area or information that doesn’t seem right to try and discover if the information received was accurate or if something needs to be clarified.

While the stakes may not be as high as in the legal field, we can learn a lot from the legal field in how we deliver on our projects to make sure we have the best and most accurate requirements.