Tag: Success

Navigating the BA Hybrid Role

Written by Tiauna Ross on November 10, 2016. Posted in Articles. 1 Comment on Navigating the BA Hybrid Role

“Who is a Business Analyst? A business analyst is any person who performs business analysis tasks described in the BABOK Guide, no matter their job title or organizational role.”

This was one of the first things I noticed when looking at the Business Analysis Body of Knowledge (BABOK) for the first time.

I was immediately intrigued by this. For a business analyst with a job that clearly aligns to the business analysis tasks described in the BABOK Guide, this is pretty clear and probably not intriguing at all. But when I saw it, I was not in a role that completely aligned to this, yet there were clearly some aspects that directly related to these BA tasks. I was an associate business analyst in the Finance function of my organization. I was hired based on having systems knowledge and an accounting degree; not because I would be aware of the BABOK Guide and the business analysis tasks within it. I’d simply researched on my own and discovered the body of knowledge associated with the title of my role within the organization.

When is a business analyst role not a business analyst role?

Over the years, I’ve observed many people with unrelated job titles who stumble upon an awareness that what they are doing is defined as business analysis. I’ve also seen the reverse in those with a business analyst title who routinely do work that would be considered project management, validation or other non-BA tasks. These are the hybrid roles that many of us find ourselves in. This is one of the reasons it can be hard to understand what the term “business analyst” means across organizations. As a job seeker, this can also make it difficult to define the role best suited for your career interests, talents, and abilities and may leave some asking, “When is a business analyst role not a business analyst role?”

I’ve been involved in many conversations about what a business analyst does or doesn’t do. It can be frustrating for a BA certification candidate to hold a business analyst title for many years only to discover that only a fraction of the work they perform actually qualifies as business analysis experience. Let’s face it, in a hybrid role, only a portion of your activities meet the definition of a business analyst according to the BABOK guide. Another reality is that your BA role could be structured in a way that would not be suitable to your background and career aspirations.

How to Navigate the Hybrid Role?

So how can someone navigate this? If you are in a hybrid role that is ever-evolving or are considering a new role, you need to know the following about yourself in order to know what is negotiable and what is not:

Which non-BA activities am I comfortable performing? Which activities am I am not comfortable performing? For example, some business analysts may be well suited for a validation or project management oriented hybrid while others do not have any desire to work in those areas at all.
What percentage of non-BA activities am I comfortable performing in a role? What am I uncomfortable with? For some, non-BA activities may be fine up to a certain percentage range, i.e. up to 25% of the time. Some may be uncomfortable with having a job where over 50% of the work pertains to non-BA activities.
What kind of role do I want to have in the future? Is this hybrid role allowing me to gain more peripheral experience for that future role? Many people start out in a business analyst role but over the course of time migrate to other roles and titles. Business analysis is broad enough to be relevant in many roles. However, if you know what kind of role you want in the future, you can ensure that the hybrid role you take on aligns with where you want to go in the future. If you want to operate primarily within BABOK defined tasks, a hybrid role may not lead you to your desired outcome
Is BA certification important to me? If the answer is yes, you will have to determine how much of your hybrid role applies toward certification and how quickly you would be able to gain the experience needed to obtain the certification you are targeting. The International Institute for Business Analysis (IIBA) recently launched a new certification program that would allow certification at the entry-level. This would allow a business analyst to be on the certification path prior to gaining the work experience required for higher certification levels. While this makes certification more accessible, a BA in a hybrid role would still need to understand how that role leads them toward other certification levels if it is important to them. The Project Management Institute’s PMI-PBA certification also requires a certain number of relevant hours to be submitted when applying for certification.

The nature of business analysis makes it relevant to many roles and job titles which can create exciting opportunities. Conversely, it can be challenging to navigate the various career paths and opportunities associated with business analysis activities. It is important for business analysts who are working in or evaluating potential hybrid roles to understand what works best for them, both now and in the future.

Updates from BBC Vegas With Angela Wick

Written by Angela Wick on November 2, 2016. Posted in Articles. 1 Comment on Updates from BBC Vegas With Angela Wick

Angela Wick is at BBC (Building Business Capability) Conference in Las Vegas this week. Be sure to check back often for all her updates!

Update #9 – Emerging Trends in Technology and Critical Skills – Ken Fulmer

Ken gave a talk this morning on how disruptive technologies are impacting the BA work we do. This has been a major theme at the conference; so many sessions talking about this and the conference twitter storm (#BBCcon) is buzzing with tweets about it.

What strikes me about this is how easy it is to think that this is far way, or that it does not impact my org or client?

IT IS CLOSER THAN WE CAN IMAGNE! As BAs we will be impacted VERY SOON and likely already but not seeing it!

Ken covered 3 areas of impact in his presentation.

Cloud Computing and SaaS

Key impacts to BAs:

Move to product vs. project capability and enhancing the value of the product ongoing. Short lifecycles and very frequent releases.
As BAs we need to help the users adjust their process to fit the package and its options without code change

Artificial Intelligence

Decisions knowledge workers make will be automated
New Skill – How to teach a machine how to think?
How much BA work can be automated?
The work left of BAs will be strategic, facilitative, insightful and creative

Automation

Things like IoT (internet of things) devices, 3D printing and Robotics
The “digital BA” helps analyze and link all these things.

Other factors of all this that impacts our business analysis:

More sophisticated customer and their needs are changing FAST too!
Disruptive business models – Like Uber? – Could a disruptive start-up or disruptive change by a legacy company totally change your industry? Are you ready?
Is your company disruptive enough?

Career challenges for BAs with this?

Understand business models and how to influence it
Understand how to digest and handle TONS of information and develop insights to value
Lifetime learning – Good BAs need to get better, learn more, expand your role

Organizational Challenges:

Invest in learning as well, develop relevant skills for teams
Expanded role in BAs, agile teams, product owners

Shout out to all of you – Do you have a disruptive mind set? Do you know how to adjust your business analysis and decision making facilitation to account for disruption in your industry? Are you ramping up your skills?

Update #8 – Business Analysis On the Cusp of Change – Katie Bolla, KPMG & Stephen Ashworth, IIBA

IIBA commissioned a research study on Business Analysis and the results have been published and discussed this week. This morning a session on the results!

A link to download the study results is available on www.iiba.org

Three Trends:

Technology and Data
Sophisticated Customers
Industry Disruption

Top CEO Concerns:

Customer Loyalty
Relevant products
Not enough time to think strategically

Key Takeaways:

Trends – How to compete in disruptive era – and where the BA fits in
- BA role moving from tactical to value centric
Shifting expectations of business analysis skills
- More cognitive, strategic, innovative, insightful
Delivering value and insights
- Looking at data differently. What insight does the data give not just how does it flow through a system
Conditions for Success
- Support and awareness of business analysis in the organization

Update #7 – Crucial Conversations: 5 Critical Concepts to Help You Effectively Discuss What Really Matters Most – With Bob Prentiss, BobTheBA

It’s Friday at 8am in Las Vegas and hundreds have their coffee in hand ready for Bob to wake us up!

As BAs, we don’t have enough crucial conversations! They are needed to lead! Mastering soft skills will get us through these conversations.

Bob took us through the steps and key elements that we need to understand how to have crucial conversations. As always he provided us with great humor and entertainment along the way.

Update #6 – The Need for Agile Portfolio Management – Shane Hastie

We are just getting used to agile as a delivery model, but now do it at a portfolio level! What does this mean? Shane has set out to help us understand!

Consider your organizations project investment portfolio a backlog of projects in the organization like a backlog that gets regularly prioritized, items can come on and off and change priorities.

According to Shane, 75% of requirements change every 12 months, and this is why we need to adaptive portfolio management.

The life of a requirement is short!

So, let’s imagine requirements at the business objective level, if these are changing just as often, how can we plan our project investment in Q4 for all of the next year?

This totally resonated with me! Many leaders I work with are frustrated that they have to decide now what projects they think they will need a year from now, and then the project takes months or years to deliver. By the time the project is implemented, it is years from the idea and too much has changed since to deliver value. And, more important things have come up since! Agile portfolio management helps organizations plan and use uncertainty and change strategically in their investment and portfolio planning.

My favorite quotes from Shane’s session:

“Stop starting to start stopping”

“The essence of strategy is saying NO, not just adding another backlog item.”

“The Portfolio/Program/Program office (or PMO) should be about value facilitation, not cost and risk office.”

Lots of deep thoughts coming out of this session!

Update #5 – I Wish I could be in More than 1 place at the same time!

I can’t be in more than one place at the same time, but I wish I could!

So many great sessions from many great BATimes.com bloggers you read!

I am currently sitting in a session with Stephanie Vineyard and her co-presenter Jennifer Starkey. They are presenting on how to build tests from User Stories and connecting Features to User Stories, and acceptance tests using Gherkin language, which is business readable and also computer-readable. This enables some automated testing in their agile environment. They have about 100 people practicing writing GIVEN-WHEN-THEN statements for sample user stories.

Also this morning Clinton Ages has a session on actualizing corporate innovation.

Yesterday while in the Agile BA Panel where BATimes Blogger Kent McDonald was part of the panel, I missed out on a session with Richard Larson, and yet another session at the same time with Kupe Kupersmith and Lori Silverman.

Later today Hans Eckman, Mary Gorman, and Heather Mylan-Mains are speaking. And, tomorrow “BobTheBA” Bob Prentiss wakes us up with an 8am session.

I have also been hanging out at the Agile Open Jam area of the conference. Last year and this year I have been honored to be a facilitator at the Agile Open Jam where anyone at the conference can come by and ask a question or submit a topic for a 20 min huddle discussion with an experienced agile practitioner. The Agile Open Jam goes all day, each day of the conference and a group of experienced agile practitioners takes turns facilitating the discussions. This year the hot topics are: Product Ownership, Scaling the Product Owner Role, Difference Between Product Owner and BA, and more Product Ownership Topics! The Agile Open Jam is organized and hosted by the Agile Alliance in partnership with the conference. Below is a snapshot of what the Agile Open Jam looks like in action!

More updates coming!

Angela

Update #4 – Agile Business Analysis: Current State of the Practice

A panel discussion with Mary Gorman, Shane Hastie, James King, Kent McDonald, and Jas Phul. Moderated by Alain Arseneault

The panel is made up of part of the team creating the 2nd addition of the Agile Extension of the IIBA BABOK.

Agile BA is a HOT topic at the conference, and many are excited to hear from the panel. I have been talking to many attendees, and the Agile BA is on many minds. No longer is there a question of if a BA fits in agile, most are now talking about the various ways agile teams are using and leveraging the BA skill set and how agile teams are doing analysis.

Some key quotes from the panel:

“It’s about learning and adapting to enable our organizations to deliver faster.”

“Analysis is critical, and the BA brings those analysis skills. Asking the hard questions, identifying value, and what we shouldn’t be doing.”

“If you are a BA no matter what type, we need to understand what the actual need is. Think then act.”

“The agile manifesto is a historical document. Instead of valuing working software, we need to be valuing the outcomes are we seeing?”

How has the role of Agile BA evolved over the last 5 years?

• Focus on value and outcomes
• 5 years ago the idea of putting a BA onto an agile team was not as accepted. Today there is a recognition that product ownership is more complex, and analysis is a really important part of it, and analysis and BA brings a lot to this. Yes, that is product ownership, not just Product Owner.
• In the past 5 years, the BA work of an agile team is more evenly spread. The idea of a rigid role structure is evolving. The focus of analysis is broad, not just the next sprint.
• BA work is evolving and recognition that BAs are not replacing thinking they are facilitating thinking, helping the team analyze.
• The positive message here is as BA professionals we have the competencies that can add value to any project, even an agile context. We are really well suited to being BAs on an agile project.

“Agile should be making it quicker and easier to get the job done, not replacing the job.”

Skills needed for Agile BAs? Here is what the panel had to say:

User experience, customer experience focus, customer empathy and getting into the minds of the customer. Understanding the potentials of technology. Value stream mapping. Understanding data (model it and communicate it). Decision making, either you make the decisions, or you facilitate them and realizing what goes into making decisions. Understanding cognitive bias. Strategy, vision, goals, objectives. Deliver value every iteration! Facilitation, collaboration, negotiation, conflict resolution.

There was a discussion on what the value of the BA is in agile… and one comment that struck the audience was: Value of a BA in agile? “Turn the question around and ask: Will you take the risk of not having a BA? Are you comfortable having developers make the decisions?”

From all of this, I hope you can feel the energy around this hot topic.

Other hot topics at the conference that I hear the crowd discuss are around themes of digitalization and getting closer to the customer.

More updates soon!

Angela

Update #3 – Your Customer is Changing – IIBA Keynote – Brad Rucker

Who is your customer? Are you sure?

Brad has challenged us at BBC this afternoon to rethink who our customer really is.

He discussed “Customer Friction,” which is any interaction that has a negative impact on the customer’s experience.

So, my line of thought when listening to Brad is: How as BAs does our requirements work impact Customer Friction? Even if the process or system being built, changed or fixed is not something the customer interacts with we still need to understand the impact and friction factor from the customer perspective.

For example, how does every project you work on impact a customer touch point? The user who uses that system or process likely is using it when interacting with or serving a customer, right? Do we, as BAs know the ways in that our requirements may cause negative feelings in customers? Or are we just thinking about the internal user? Are we helping our stakeholders think through the impact of their requirements on the end customer of the organization? Are we having these conversations on projects?

Brad talked about how easy it is to lose a transaction and eventually a customer do to customer friction and negative customer experience.

Provoking thoughts!

Update #2 – BBC Keynote – The Invisible Habits of Excellence – Juliet Funt

Juliet started us off this morning with an inspiring talk about how busyness is robbing us of being thoughtful, creative, and solving problems effectively. She talks about how taking the time to “pause” stimulates better work.

Does your office have a sense of thoughtfulness?

What would it be like to work in an environment like this?

Juliet resonates with the crowd that our time is under attack!

My favorite quote from Juliet this morning:

“Our global workforce is so fried it belongs in the food court of the county fair.”

Juliet contends that when talented people don’t have time to think, business always suffers. When is the last time you caught someone thinking? Thinking changes everything, and as BAs, our job is to provide, detail, strategy, and excellence. She is asking us to think about what is it costing for us to work without thoughtfulness?

Juliet talks about how we need skills to “de-crapify” our work life, and create space and pause for thoughtfulness to truly bring out our best skills. Juliet discusses how busyness and overload might be the biggest boulder in the road for what you are trying to achieve on that project!

I can relate, can you?

Does our detailed work as BAs keep us in the micro too much? How can we come up to the macro and influence a mindset of thoughtfulness in our teams? How can you model thoughtfulness to our team when we work and inspire creativity and better problem solving?

This is deep! Yes, we as BAs impact the thoughtfulness and creativity of others we work with!

In the age of overload, we are lured into a pace and pressure that actually reduces our effectiveness.

41% of our time is being taken up by low-value tasks. Why? It is so hard to let go of unimportant things. Letting go is the path to freeing up our time to create thoughtfulness.

Juliet has truly left us inspired to rethink how we spend our time and how important space and pause is.

Later today I am looking forward to sessions from Brad Rucker on how the BA role is changing with more digital business transformation and leading our organizations towards a customer-centric future.

I am also looking forward to the session on the Current State of Agile Business Analysis, a panel discussion.

Stay tuned!
Angela

Update #1 – Live from the BBC (Building Business Capability) Conference in Las Vegas!

BBC 2016 is the official conference of the IIBA and this year brings to us:

• 1400+ attendees, from 27 different countries
• 125 sessions, 32 Tutorials, 4 Keynotes
• Agile Open Jam hosted by the Agile Alliance
• Many sponsors, networking events, and great content and learn, network, and share!

Overall the conference is looking to provide pragmatic approaches to business innovation and excellence.

I will be blogging this week on the key sessions and hot topics that are all the buzz at the event this year!

I would love to hear from you on what you want to hear about.

You can comment on the blogs or use my twitter @WickAng, or @batimes to connect with us about the show. The conference twitter hashtag is #BBCCON; myself and many others will be updating the twitter feeds often.

Monday and Tuesday this week were the pre-conference tutorials. Half day workshop tutorials that explore topics more deeply. Today – Friday are the symposium sessions where speakers from around the globe give talks on leading edge business analysis topics.

There is a great video: http://www.buildingbusinesscapability.com/why-attend/ about what BBC is all about.

I am looking forward to bringing you event happenings and updates!

Requirements Are Dead, Long Live the Solution

Written by Kevin Venning on November 1, 2016. Posted in Articles. 1 Comment on Requirements Are Dead, Long Live the Solution

Requirements gathering is one phrase I have learned not to use with stakeholders as I deliver projects.

It appears to have struck fear, cynicism and/or anxiety in many of the user groups I have to engage at the most important stage of the solution – the beginning.

Many user groups have pre-conceived ideas about what this exercise really is, ranging from
‘Oh great, we get to tell them what we want for the new, super-duper system’ or
‘Just great, we give you all our knowledge about the processes and you go away to work out that’s too expensive and we can only have half of what we need.’

The secret is in the last few words of the previous sentence ‘… what we need.”

The focus must be directed towards the needs of the business so that the benefit of a solution can be seen to be realizable. By using the right words like need, a different reaction is seen. Scope is already being defined; the user groups become SMEs, and a level of respect is gained with a focus on the business value even before the workshop has started.

Elicitation and other animals

The industry then moved on with the terminology, to use the term “elicitation.” To add complexity, there were separate definitions of functional requirements, being different to business requirements, then getting technical and coming up with system requirements.

All of the types of requirements have clouded the understanding by stakeholders, and then time is lost in the defining the terminology before any discussions have begun. A plethora of white papers and authored articles can describe the differences and it’s absolutely clear in some of those esoteric minds.

Stephen Covey’s #2 Habit – Start With the End in Mind

From the book “Seven Habits of Highly Effective People,” this second habit is a fairly simple approach to delivering solutions. Knowing the direction and end-game keeps you focused as you go. It also facilitates a more direct approach to delivering without the time-consuming documentation of a build-up of phases that doesn’t always deliver tangibility or measurable benefits.

This skipping of phases with little value-add has now been conceptualized by the consulting industry into ‘Design Thinking’ whereby initial engagements with user groups will have the design of the solution at the forefront, ensuring that it will always meet the business needs.

Cheese’s of Gatherers

Some time ago, the DSDM (Dynamic Systems Development Method) consortium developed the methodology known as the cheese and three pizzas, whereby the cheese represented the business study under a feasibility study. Quite simply, for appropriate projects, conduct a study to make sure of the feasibility, then develop it to make sure it fits the needs of the business opportunity or problem.

A business fitted, feasibility that demonstrates meeting the needs, to those with access to purse strings appears a far greater representation of commitment to deliver a solution.

Today’s project needs are for solutions measured in time-to-market, risk reduction, take-up rates, or better still, what you defined as measurable at the beginning.

Do projects exist anymore that require full blown requirements gathering exercise, if they still do would you call it that?

Harnessing the Immense Power of Your Thoughts

Written by Clinton Ages on November 1, 2016. Posted in Articles.

Welcome to the next post about the wonderful journey towards greatness with Coach Clinton 7-Steps to Accomplishment Methodology.

This series of 8 articles is all about developing and expanding your horizons and realizing all of your life’s dreams. We have discussed the first three steps in this seven-step journey and today I will reveal the fourth magical step for you. To keep the conversation flowing, here’s a quick recap of what we have already discussed:

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.

Now that we are back in the flow let’s head towards the fourth step – Avert.

Step 4 – Avert

This step is called ‘avert’ because here we will make sure that you steer clear of all sorts of negativities and self-limiting behaviors. How will that be done? By focusing only on the positive aspects of your life and creating a strong will to achieve your goals. Any self-doubts, if present, will be wiped out and your internal space will be cleared up to make way for confidence and commitment.

Have you heard the story of the “Little Engine That Could?” How did the Little Engine manage to achieve a feat that was scaring away the stronger engines? The secret behind that Little Engine’s success was that it believed in its abilities. It pushed aside all doubts simply by chanting the mantra “I think I can, I think I can”! Similarly, this step involves finding the mantra that is made exclusively for you, in order to get the best results. It is also known as the Motivation Affirmation and saying it over and over again makes a huge difference in the achievement of desired results.

What is an Affirmation?

It is appropriate to take a closer look at what actually is an affirmation and how can it help you achieve your goals. An affirmation is a thoughtfully developed phrase or sentence that you repeat regularly. It is basically the act of making a declaration to yourself – repeatedly. The basic premise is that anything can be materialized into existence by repeating the same group of words repetitively. For example, if I’m not in my perfect health and shape, I might develop a positive affirmation like “My health is improving every day”. Simply put, Motivation Affirmation is using words of encouragement to help increase your positive energy and give you the “I think I can” will power to overcome difficulties and accomplish your goals like the Little Engine That Could.

Do you have a hard time digesting the fact that a few simple words can achieve such great feats and are you also struggling with how affirmations are capable of such results? Don’t worry. Because affirmations have been scientifically proven to have the power of rewiring our brain’s functioning to make us believe whatever we are affirming. When you repeat your affirmation, your brain gets a message that this is something important. In other words, this message becomes a part of your belief system, and your body acts accordingly until that goal is achieved. There are a number of scientific studies that verify the positive impact of affirmations on one’s mind and the way our brains function. So, it’s time to put aside your doubts. It’s time to make your dreams come true by drawing energy from the positivity of words!

Why do we need affirmations?

Because we all have developed some sort of apprehension about our capabilities and we have installed a mental ceiling limiting whatever we are capable of achieving in this life. These self-limiting attitudes are a result of a number of factors, which we might or might not have consciously noticed throughout all these years. Every failure – whether big or small – leaves a small amount, a residue if you will, of self-doubt in our minds. This is especially true when we do not consciously perceive this failure as an opportunity to learn and improve. These small deposits pile up to put us in a permanent state of self-doubt, and we start believing that we are not good enough.

This step, in your journey towards success, is very important because using the motivation affirmations, you can easily get rid of these negative thoughts and avert your negative behavior. Motivation affirmations help you in two ways:

By using professionally developed affirmations, you can get the negative thoughts and attitudes out of your way. This cleansing is very important because nothing good can happen if you are holding on to negative attitudes and habits.
These affirmations are called ‘motivation affirmations’ because once the roadblocks are clear, you can use them to motivate and pump up yourself to the point where there is no option other than taking action to materialize your success.

Anatole France, the great poet, and novelist, once said that “To accomplish great things, we must not only act but also dream. Not only plan but also believe.” These words go a long way to reinforce the primary point of this discussion. Dreaming and believing in the realization of those dreams is as important as planning and taking suitable action.

Motivation affirmation is the tool that will help you dream. It will bring out your true desires and by repeating those desires in a positive manner, you will start believing in achieving those desires. Once you start believing, you start achieving. It’s as simple as that!

Since these words are now paving the way for your success, you cannot leave them to chance or luck. It is very important to have your affirmations developed by a professional. With my decades of experience in helping people reach their best, I will work with you to formulate your motivation affirmations. I will do that by analyzing your unique personality, your ambitions and a host of other elements that will provide me with the feedback to come up with the words which will serve as magic for your success. The result will be a bespoke motivation affirmation for you which will catalyze this process of performance enhancement by clearing up your thinking process and making you more confident of your abilities and unique talents.

There is no rocket science in motivation affirmations. It’s just the art of using words to manifest your dreams and desires.

Once you have your motivation affirmation in your hand, you’ll be on your way to chant your way to success.

I will see you soon in the next step of our magical journey. (Hint: It’s packed with action!)

Strategy Spotlight: 11 steps to strategic analysis, planning and implementation success

Written by Richard Lannon on October 11, 2016. Posted in Articles.

Strategic analysis, planning, and management involves the formulation and implementation of the major goals and initiatives taken by a company’s top

management on behalf of the organization.

It is based on consideration of resources and an assessment of the internal and external environments in which the organization competes. The strategic business analyst has an important role to play in this process.

To be strategic means to provide overall direction to the enterprise and involves specifying the organization’s objectives, developing policies and plans designed to achieve these objectives, and then allocating resources to implement the plans. All of this needs to be analyzed and the requirements clearly defined.

I think this gets missed by organizations when they are seeking to have their strategic plans translated into requirement reality.

Imperative to implementation success is a proven approach to developing your strategy, management, and transformation needs. This must be in alignment with the strategic business analyst needs for current and future state understanding, assessing the risks components and defining the change strategy to make it all happen. But strategy all starts with knowing the steps you need to take.

Here are 11 steps that are imperative to your strategic analysis, planning, and implementation success.

1. Select the planning model and approach you will use.

This is imperative. I have witnessed many situations where the model and approach were never defined or were highly theoretical negatively impacting the stakeholder’s comprehension and participation willingness. Don’t make this mistake.

2. Identify your key stakeholders.

Proper stakeholder analysis is a must whether you are facilitating strategic planning sessions or reviewing and analyzing presented plans to determine their viability or build business cases for better business decisions.

3. Establish the questions you need to be answered.

There are at least seven key questions that must be asked and answered (see Question Everything About Your Business – 7 Candid Questions That Need To Be Asked), but that is not all. Find out what the outcome requirements are and host a ‘Questions to Ask’ session with your team to create a list of the questions you need to be answered. Categorize those questions by business impact and importance and identify the stakeholder source.

4. Determine where it is you and your team need to go.

This is all about your company’s ‘Vision of Success.’ It includes key strategic business information of vision and mission, values and guiding principles, and goals and objectives. This information should not be fluff. As a strategic business analyst, you need to know what is on the strategic agenda (goals and objectives) and why. Then you need to help translate that into tactical requirements (if you were not part of the initial planning). This is one place where you bridge the gap from the strategic to the tactical.

5. Focus on the business impact zones.

I have spoken about this for years, written articles about it and a book on the topic. Still, it amazes me that organizations and professionals (I mean business analysts) miss this point. There are generally four business impact zones (process and productivity, tools and technology, business development, and people and culture) with very specific requirements. Each impact zone affects the others through the decision-making process and actions taken. If you push on one you create ripples that impact the others. For example, recently a professional service company was forced to let go 120 of its employees. Externally the market changed (external) and the organization did not adjust quickly enough (internal), revenue declined (business development) and they were forced to let people go (people and culture) and adjust their working parameters (process and productivity) and renegotiate contracts on their working assets (tools and technology) to decrease costs.

6. Create a strategy map outlining focus areas.

Business leaders and teams lose focus, often caused by an external event (market shift, lost client) or people challenges (poor management, lack of communications, not asking the right questions, no alignment). A strategy map provides a visual of the key decisions and focus areas and is an important business artifact for the business analyst. As business requirements go, a strategy map can be translated strategically, tactically and operationally. This is Business Analysis 101.

7. Build an action roadmap to guide your business.

A strategy roadmap is a high-level implementation plan that displays the strategic agenda (goals and objectives), the strategic initiatives (programs), the business champion (the leader or sponsor), the work elements (projects), an alignment path (to keep things aligned), and time and milestone requirements. The best part is it can be a Gantt chart that can be translated and implemented.

8. Establish work plans with key activities.

This is another one of those steps that organizations and senior teams skip because they say they do not have time to do it. Then they wonder why no one is focused on what needs to be done. Simple rule, you don’t work-plan to fail, you fail to work-plan. Can you imagine what would happen if you hired a company to build you a new house and there were not work-plans from the drawings that were created? If the strategy and roadmap are the blueprints, then the work-plans are the tasks and activities, the resources, timelines and costs of making it happen with someone in charge of implementation. Still, someone needs to establish the work-plans solution requirements.

9. Identify the risks through risk analysis.

There is always risk and if you are going to have work-plans to implement the strategic initiatives, then you need to do risk analysis. The level at which you do your risk analysis will be dependent on your role. You will need the standard inputs – objectives, risk results, external and internal influences, future state solution value and requirements priority. There are a lot of factors that play into risk analysis.

10. Create a communication plan to engage people.

This is another activity that is often skilled or misunderstood, or there is a communication plan but no one has communicated that it exists and someone else starts to create a new one. There should be a strategic communication plan for the organization that gets translated into tactical and operational requirements. The communication plan is used in transformations, change and implementation.

11. Go the distance through implementation.

You have gone through the strategic planning and analysis process using a proven approach, and you have created all the supporting requirements, but nothing is going anywhere. This is one of those things that sometimes happens. You need to put a process in place to make things happen whether it is through quarterly reviews, metric dashboards, timeline reviews and status meetings, progress audits and touch points, next level work-plans and resource assignments, communication implementation – the list goes on. The strategic business analyst can have an important role to play in this as does the project manager.

At the senior levels, I have been asked to facilitate ‘Go the Distance’ meetings with the executive teams to help keep them on track and do point audits with project and operational managers who have been tasked with getting things done with report backs to the executives. I guess this is a career development thing for the junior and intermediate business analyst. Still, you need to support the strategic implementation of the key strategic initiatives in the organization.

Final Thoughts

There are many steps to be taken in the strategic business analysis world to shape the direction of an organization. Over the course of my career, I have been privileged to have worked on initiatives that have allowed me to explore each step stated here both horizontally (mile wide, inch deep) and vertically (inch wide, mile deep). It takes a lot of work to define and action an organization’s direction. Unfortunately, the amount of effort is often misunderstood or put aside for bandage solutions. No matter the circumstance strategic business analysis, planning and implementation is important to the success of any organization. Good luck.