Tag: Success

An Essential App for the Business Analyst: Paper by Fifty Three

Written by Jennifer Oswald, CBAP on April 12, 2016. Posted in Articles.

I’m going old school in a new way…Paper.

Paper is an application for iOS that is distributed by Fifty Three. I know a lot of individuals will comment that Paper doesn’t “do” enough, but what it does do is simple, elegant and, most of all, useful to a business analyst with a creative bent.

Did you ever sit in a meeting and start riffing with someone, but the whiteboard is marked up and there is a “Do Not Erase!” circled in the corner? Or, worse, no whiteboard in the room.

Perhaps you’ve experienced the agony of having a great idea on how something should flow when you are sitting in a car on a long drive with a colleague, but you don’t have any paper to write it out?

Maybe, like me, you just need a visual to really solidify the ideas people are sharing.

If these situations irritate you, and you have your phone, look no further for a quick and handy solution—Paper!

Paper allows you to draw things freehand, take a picture and draw on the picture, or just take notes. The product is easily shared and can really help in those situations where you need to do something NOW, but you don’t have all of your normal tools at hand.

Related Article: 10 Essential Apps for the Business Analyst

In addition, Fifty Three makes a product called Pencil which is a pretty sweet stylus. Not as utilitarian as I usually need for work, but if you are an artistic soul (which I am in my free time), this stylus rocks.

Here are just some of the examples where I’ve used Paper while I’m on the go to help with my project management/business analyst activities:

Quick screen mock ups
Process flows
Checklists
Photograph of a whiteboard and then marking it up for edits

Here’s an example of the power of Paper by Fifty Three. Let’s say you’re reviewing your traditional pen and paper interview notes and you find a statement, “Client requests an interactive dashboard that shows project ROI by fiscal year.” You begin to wrack your brain trying to understand the client’s vision because you neglected to jot down the details. Adding to this stress, you come to the realization that you must swallow your pride and return to the client to grab the details. Now, here’s how Paper by Fifty Three can help.

For this example, I’ve made a private space for the interview. Within this space, I’ve included the same vague interview note; however, I’ve sat with the client to sketch out a high-level framework of this dashboard. Note how the level of “interaction” is really limited to “VCR” buttons – a detail you would’ve never known by the interview note alone.

As a PM/BA, I find that every added bit of functionality and efficiency can help. Paper works for me.

Hiring the Right Business Analyst

Written by Kupe Kupersmith on March 29, 2016. Posted in Articles.

You’re looking to hire a good BA. You realize your team needs someone with the right skills. So you go out on a search.

You go to an IIBA chapter meeting and 30 people looking for a job say they are interested.

Eight recruiters hand you their card; three people have friends that are looking. Your HR policies require you to post the job internally and externally, so another 30 applicants send in resumes.

How do you create a short list? What do you look for in the candidates? What is your decision criteria for a good BA? Do you use techniques? Do you use certifications like CBAP, CCBA, or PBA?

On the flip side, you may be the person looking for a job. You see a role for a Sr. BA and get excited. After reading the fine print, you are less excited to see they are looking for someone with 3 years of experience. You believe a senior BA is someone with closer to 10 years of experience. There is no one definition of BA roles. Job descriptions and business analysis needs are different company to company, sometimes team to team in the same company.

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Just as job descriptions are different so are BAs. You can’t easily compare two people with the same titles. In the type of work we do there are so many variables in the scenarios BAs find themselves in. Those scenarios define their experience.

So finding people with the right experience or finding companies that can utilize your experience is hard work. It’s not as simple as finding a job posting with a specific title and know it is right for you. As a hiring manager, you can’t look at applicant’s former titles and know they have the right experience to meet your needs. So how do you navigate through these muddy waters?

My belief is just because someone has a certification does not mean they are a successful BA or can be a successful BA in every scenario. And just because someone knows a number of well-known techniques, does not equal a good BA. These just happen to be things that are searchable on resumes and LinkedIn. Therefore, they get used more often in job postings and resumes. The upside is you can reduce your search by finding people with “keywords.” The downside, which is bigger, means you drop off people from your search that may be more qualified.

An entrepreneur I knew looking to move into a BA role struggled to get interviews while people less qualified were getting interviews and job offers. All because keywords were missing from his resume and LinkedIn profile.

I just had a talk with someone looking to break into the BA field. When we started the conversation, he said no one was giving him a chance because he had no experience. After we had talked for 30 minutes, he had more BA experience than many people I know. On his resume it was not listed in terms most recruiters look for. In a class I was teaching, a student said he never used many of the techniques we were discussing like Use Cases. Getting to know him, he was an over-qualified senior BA. If he was going out in the market looking for a job he may have a harder time than anticipated.

Maybe you were on board with me regarding the certifications. But techniques? Techniques have to be a filter, right? My advice to you is to relax on the techniques. Seriously, how hard is to teach someone how to write a User Story? How hard is it to teach someone how to use symbols for a workflow diagram?

If it is not techniques, if it is not certifications, then what?

Well, let me clarify now that I got some of you fired up. It’s not that it’s not about certification or the techniques. It’s just your first decision filter should not be techniques and certifications. Once you find the right candidates for your short list, then maybe use techniques they know and have experience with and certifications as a data point to make your final decision.

What is your first decision filter look like then? It is the items that are less teachable. It’s the qualities I highlighted in my last post. Empathy, Yearning for Learning, Politely Challenge, and Networking. Hop over to my post The Four Chords of Great Business Analysts for a sense of what I mean.

The challenge is, these types of qualities are hard to express on a resume. They are less concrete skills. So, if you are hiring, how do you find the right people with these qualities? It’s easy really! If you are posting a position, you need to list these as things you value in the role. Many job postings don’t address these as critical qualities of candidates. They include must have experiences like:

Develop use cases and functional specifications
Develop and manage user acceptance criteria
Coordinate the process to analyze, evaluate, implement, and maintain systems developed internally and/or externally with an outside vendor
Gather, develop, coordinate, and maintain business requirements

If instead you frame the must have qualities as I listed above then you will attract the best. You need to flip your emphasis on what is required experience of the job.

And if you are looking for a job, look for postings that value these qualities. Project methodology and required tasks of your job will change over time. If the hiring company values the ability to politely challenge, for example, you will excel in the role regardless of what certifications the company values or what techniques are used in that organization.

I know some of you are doing this already. Keep it up, share your stories and successes with others!

All the best,

Kupe

Realizing Value – The Latest Trend or Here to Stay? Part 1

Written by Elizabeth Larson on February 29, 2016. Posted in Articles.

In January we published our annual article about the seven trends in business analysis and project management. If we examine these trends, we see that they have one theme—they are all about value. We see and hear the word “value” in articles, blogs, on videos, and even in the definition of business analysis: “…analyzing business needs and recommending solutions that deliver value…” (BABOK® Guide 3.0).

ith so much emphasis on value, we wonder whether the term “value” is just the latest buzzword, or if there is enduring significance to the word. This article will examine each of the seven trends, discuss its relationship to value, and explore whether the concept of value is simply a trend or here to stay.

But what is “value?” It means so many different things to different people. Does it have to be quantified or can it be subjective? One of the authors (Elizabeth) has worked with an equal number of sponsors who required value to be measured and those who inherently understood the value of strategic projects. The latter group didn’t want to waste time quantifying something like “competitive advantage” or how much it would cost to upgrade technology, or although it could be done, measure the cost of risk avoidance.

So first, let’s attempt to define that very ambiguous word. As we said, it means different things depending on the application of the term to the business at hand. For example, in Marketing, the focus is on the customer perception of the goods and services and their willingness to pay for them. In economics, there are two components—utility and power. In Accounting, it has to do with monetary worth. We suggest that project managers and business analysts consider all these different aspects.

In 2015, the central theme of our Trends article was Innovation, without addressing whether innovation delivered value. It seemed that every organization wanted to be innovative, and every person wanted to be an entrepreneur. However, we have seen that innovation, disruption, and entrepreneurship for their own sake is not productive. Organizations now realize that a focus on “disruptive” innovation can indeed be, well, very disruptive. More and more of them are finding that disruption is expensive and that entrepreneurship might better be handled by internal people (intrapreneurs) who have organizational history and knowledge. Said another way, there has to be a business case for innovation, and it must provide enough value to outweigh the costs and risks of disruption.

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With this in mind, let’s look at first two 2016 trends and the ways in which they bring value to organizations.

Trend #1 Proving our value through Business Relationship Management

As we said in the January article, executives have long been interested in getting the greatest value from initiatives. However, they have struggled with how to determine and measure it, as well as what the term actually means. We suggested that the role of the business relationship manager could work with executives and business managers to help them define value for their initiatives (projects, programs, and portfolios), as well as help them measure the value at agreed-upon intervals. We have seen an uptick in the number of articles, conferences, and webinars on this topic, which indicates an increased awareness of the importance of organizational performance and value.

Trend #2 Agile is gaining wide acceptance but still faces challenges

We suggested that although Agile is gaining traction and has reached a level of maturity, there are still significant challenges. If we look through the prism of value, it seems that these challenges have arisen because many organizations view “being Agile” as an end in itself, rather than focusing on how Agile projects provide value.

In his article published in BA Times on February 9, David Shaffer called this out by saying, “The goal of software development is not to be Agile. …Being Agile is a worthless goal.”

Related Article: It’s Time to put Value in the Driver’s Seat

Let’s look at the challenges we listed and how a focus on value would resolve these issues.

Is everyone on board? We have long talked about how common it is to have a mismatch of goals among the executives, mid-level management, business stakeholders, and team members. The result of the mismatch is unmet expectations and disappointment. However, if every group was committed to providing value rather than becoming Agile, there would be a greater alignment of expectations and reduced conflict.
Can teams be truly cross-functional? There are many online discussions about having generalists vs. specialists on Agile teams. It seems that there is a great deal of emotion surrounding the discussions, in which some parties say that if there are specialists, it is not real Scrum while others talk about Scrum having outlived its usefulness.

Perhaps if we changed the conversation from the makeup of the teams to getting products to business stakeholders sooner, thus delivering value sooner, then the emphasis would be on what is the best makeup of the team to add value, rather than on adhering to Agile/Scrum roles.

How much governance should the team follow? Needless to say, the amount of governance depends on how much is needed to ensure the solution delivers value.

In this article we discussed the importance of value, we defined it, and described value as a central theme for all the project management and business analysis trends. We suggested that innovation for the sake of being innovative and Agile for the sake of being Agile were not only unhelpful but also meaningless as ends in themselves. Finally, we looked at the first two trends through the prism of adding value to the organization. In Part 2 we will discuss value in relation to the other 5 trends.

¹ Business Dictionary http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/value.html

About the Authors

Elizabeth Larson, PMP, CBAP, CSM, PMI-PBA is Co-Principal and CEO of Watermark Learning and has over 30 years of experience in project management and business analysis. Elizabeth’s speaking history includes repeat presentations for national and international conferences on five continents.

Elizabeth has co-authored five books on business analysis and certification preparation. She has also co-authored chapters published in four separate books. Elizabeth was a lead author on several standards including the PMBOK® Guide, BABOK® Guide, and PMI’s Business Analysis for Practitioners – A Practice Guide.

Richard Larson, PMP, CBAP, PMI-PBA, President and Founder of Watermark Learning, is a successful entrepreneur with over 30 years of experience in business analysis, project management, training, and consulting. He has presented workshops and seminars on business analysis and project management topics to over 10,000 participants on five different continents.

Rich loves to combine industry best practices with a practical approach and has contributed to those practices through numerous speaking sessions around the world. He has also worked on the BA Body of Knowledge versions 1.6-3.0, the PMI BA Practice Guide, and the PM Body of Knowledge, 4th edition. He and his wife Elizabeth Larson have co-authored five books on business analysis and certification preparation.

The 4 Chords of Great Business Analysts

Written by Kupe Kupersmith on February 23, 2016. Posted in Articles.

In our professional community, there is so much confusion or different perspectives on what analysis is and what makes someone a great business analyst. With so many different descriptions of the role, it is difficult to look at job descriptions to get the answer.

I talk to a lot of people, attend conferences, and hear thought leaders in our profession talk, and get to observe people doing analysis work. For this post I want to share what I feel are qualities that the best of the best in our field have.

How I will describe these qualities is based on a great video demonstrating how just 4 chords are used in many popular songs. Check out this funny video by Axis of Awesome to hear all these well-known songs using the same 4 chords. It is all clear to me now why so many songs sound the same.

So, in a not so quite Axis of Awesome way, I came up with a list of the 4 “chords” all great analysts have.

Why do so many great business analysis professionals “sound” the same to me? Here they are:

1. Empathy

The best business analysts have a wave of empathy flowing through them. The way they listen in order to understand. The stakeholders they work with say things like “you really understand my situation. You get my group and me.”

Looking through an empathetic lens they yearn to see how a solution impacts the people, processes, the organization as a whole, and technical impacts.

When people buy a new car, why do they all of sudden see the same car on the road? When someone ends a relationship why does every song on the radio remind them of their lost love and bring them to tears? It’s because it is what is on top of their mind, what they are focused on. A good analyst understands this. They do not assume because everyone says they understand something that that means everyone has the same interpretation.

There are two things going on here. First, the good analyst cares about all the impacted stakeholder groups. They want different perspectives to gain a holistic view. They understand there is a customer, the business, and a technology view to everything. This aids in fully analyzing the situation so that the right problem or opportunity is being addressed and that the solution is desirable. Secondly, they always have their eye on the bigger picture. They want to avoid situations that may create a scenario where solving one problem leads to another problem for a different group.

Related Article: The iTunes Impact on Requirements Analsyis

2. Yearning for learning

Great analysts always want to learn. They never stop. A great analyst will never be perceived as a know-it-all. They will be confident in their skills yet humble. They attend webinars, read books, got to training classes, conferences and love reading blogs like this! They are always searching for new techniques or different ways to use old ones. And when it comes to their process of their teams, they are always analyzing what can be improved.

3. Politely Challenging

This one is easier explained by saying what they are not. They are not note-takers. They are analytical and critical thinkers that search for the facts. They have multiple ways to “roll back” stakeholders to understand the real problem/opportunity that needs to be addressed. They don’t push forward without first making sure there is a shared understanding by the team why a solution was asked to be implemented.

They highlight the elephant in the room. You can sit in a meeting and watch how they gracefully expose the “elephant” to make sure no underlying issue has time to fester. They know it is not about individuals as much it is about results.

That description may sound like a great analyst is a little rough around the edges. A strong person not to be messed with. Actually, they are quite the opposite. They are people everyone wants on their team. They find ways not to put people on the defense. They bring teams along on a journey to uncover the real problem.

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They also know when to move to solutioning when teams are getting stuck. I think sometimes there is almost a black and white view as it relates to problems/opportunities and solutions. There is a view of no solutioning until we are all on the same page of the problem or opportunity. This assumes it’s a simple task to get everyone on the same page related to the problem or opportunity. That is not always the case. Instead of getting stuck in analysis paralysis a great analyst will start down the solutioning path to test a hypothesis and see if they can figure out the problem that way.

4. Value networking

All great business analysts have a knack, a desire, and an understanding of the importance of connecting. Why is connecting with as many individuals important? In this profession you are not paid for what you know, you are paid for who you know and how to find the information. So many people want to find ways to negotiate better, influence better, and get time with the right people to do their job. The way to do it is by building trusting relationships.

How often do you go out and connect with people in and out of your organization? How many new people do you meet a week? How many relationships do you foster in a week? Do you even think of this?

In today’s environment we need to move quickly. When you are working on an initiative, you need to know who the go-to people are. You need to be able to access to them. Just think about your day. You most likely don’t have enough time to do everything you need to do. You don’t have enough time to meet with everyone that needs to meet with you. How do you prioritize who you will talk with? Most likely one factor is people you have a relationship with already.

I’ll end my post now so you can go meet some new people!

All the best,

Kupe

Create a Path to Winning: 7 Steps to Accomplishment

Written by Clinton Ages on February 8, 2016. Posted in Articles. 2 Comments on Create a Path to Winning: 7 Steps to Accomplishment

Have you ever seen a single person walking the face of this Earth who doesn’t have at least a couple of dreams held close to their heart – the ‘ideal’ state that everyone wants to achieve someday? Of course not. And yet we see that the ones who actually try to achieve that dream in a coherent and persistent manner are quite uncommon, and the achievers are even more rare.

Bo Bennet once said that “A dream becomes a goal when action is taken toward its achievement.” The biggest issue with people not reaching their potential is that they are not focused enough to sit down and chalk out an action plan that can take them to their glory.

Words like “Productivity”, “Accomplishment”, and “Success” have been used up to a point where they seem to have lost their real essence.

A simple search on Amazon will fetch you hundreds, if not thousands of books that make claims to help you realize your true potential and achieve your life goals without putting in significant effort. A whole world of research has been done on the subject, and a lot more has been written. Despite all this buzz, the majority of the dreamers are still not even close to fulfilling their destiny.

So what seems to be the solution to this problem? Well, the first ingredient that needs to go into the recipe for your success is your unfaltering commitment and devotion to your own success. If you are not completely devoted to achieving your ideal self, no one else can ever help. Before looking for external support, you first need to make a vow that nothing will get in your way to success and happiness. Then you can look for a success and accomplishment plan that is most suited to your personality.

I have spent considerable time coaching people to achieve success and accomplish their goals, and this experience has helped me pinpoint the problems that people face on this daunting journey. As a result, I have developed an action framework, aka Coach Clinton 7-Steps to Accomplishment Methodology, which has helped many people to positively reach their destination. This is a method which was developed painstakingly and after much deliberation. The end product is a plan that generates great results.

Notice that each step in the process is a word that begins with the letter A. Why, you ask? Because we have been taught to strive for excellence. In the United States, the grade mark “A” signifies that level of excellence.

So without wasting any further time, let’s get into discussing the steps that can build your pathway to success and accomplishment.

THE METHOD

As evident from the name, this magical method consists of seven steps that are divided into three broad categories titled the Mind Mapping Phase, the Plan & Execute Phase, and the Complete & Learn Phase. The seven steps along with the relevant phases are discussed below:

I – MIND MAPPING PHASE

In the first phase, the objective is to chalk out the course of action and plan the journey toward your individual performance improvement.

Step 1 – Appraise

This process starts off with a nonjudgmental appraisal or evaluation of your individual performance. The purpose behind this assessment is to analyze every aspect of your life and categorize your actions and habits as either catalysts or deterrents toward your performance. Once labelled, the negative patterns are singled out for elimination and the rest are further studied regarding their contribution toward your life success and only the ones worth your time are marked for further continuation.

Step 2 – Ascertain

Based on your ambitions, this step begins with a determining a comprehensive set of goals for the short-term, mid-term and the long-term. Then you will create certain themes for your performance improvement and fit all the previously ascertained goals into relevant themes. Once the themes are complete with the subsequent goals, you will assign a priority to each theme so that you have a clear order of execution when you begin to take action.

II – PLAN AND EXECUTE PHASE

Step 3 – Approach

Now that the themes and goals are established and prioritized, come up with a practical plan for the themes and goals that are on top of the priority list. It is also necessary to pin down the activities that can take you toward actualization of your goals. This will require more brainstorming and a list of activities to attach to each goal. This list of activities can be a combination of both one-time tasks as well as recurring actions that become your new ‘success habits’.

Step 4 – Avert

Now, look at what you’ve accomplished so far. You have a set of themes, goals for each theme, and activities for each goal. Next, prepare for actual execution by enhancing your motivational level by creating and reciting your affirmation statement. So much of what we do or don’t do comes from our own self-limiting thoughts and beliefs. It is absolutely necessary to motivate ourselves with repetitive positive messages. Your personalized bespoke ‘Motivation Affirmation’ will catalyze this process of performance enhancement by clearing up your thinking process and making you more confident of your abilities and unique talents.

Step 5 – Actualize

Steps one through four have set the rhythm for your performance enhancement process, stay on the right track with the right pace by adding some accountability into the equation. Your stated goals must be specific, realistic and measurable – now you must hold yourself accountable so that you can measure your actual progress along the way.

II – COMPLETE AND LEARN PHASE

During this phase, you should seek to review your progress. By evaluating the results of your work efforts, you can make determinations for how to change your plan to accomplish your desired results.

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Step 6 – Accomplish

While it is necessary to work hard to make progress, it is equally important to stop for a minute and look at the distance you have covered. Celebrate all your victories – no matter the size! This sense of accomplishment provides you with the fuel to keep pushing ahead and conquer even larger territories.

Step 7 – Analyze

In this last step, take the time to review thoroughly the entire process that started with goal setting and reached completion through planning and execution.

The objective of this step is to produce knowledge by learning from the process. Use this knowledge to aim even higher next time around. This analysis will tell you more about yourself in terms of your working style, your ability to overcome obstacles, your strengths, and weaknesses along with many other important insights, all of which will guide your way for the coming expeditions.

This is very important – because this is where your self-enlightenment and self-awareness grow!

By signing up to go through this process, you will be doing yourself a huge favor – a favor that you will never regret especially when people will look at you as the ‘wow’ person who completely transformed his or her life, achieving something that was not even vaguely possible otherwise.

Follow my articles as I deep dive further into each of the seven steps.