Tag: Success

Strategy Spotlight: Master These 7 Skills to Become an Excellent Interviewer

Written by Richard Lannon on August 16, 2016. Posted in Articles.

It’s time for that one-on-one meeting, the interview. You know the one. It’s the meeting that you need to prepare for to ensure it goes well.

This is one of those topic areas that I am never too sure whether to describe as strategic or tactical. Maybe it is a bit of both from an individual micro-strategy and tactical action perspective. But, it is a skill that the professional needs to master in order to acquire the right information from all levels of stakeholders, from the CEO to the frontline staff.

Related Article: Top 8 Mistakes in Requirements Elicitation

I have learned from years of working with people and interviewing them that the one-on-one interview requires you to master a number of skills.

Now according to the BABOK, an interview is a “systematic approach to elicit information from a person or group of people in an informal or formal setting by talking to the person – the interviewee, asking relevant questions and documenting the responses.”

7 Skills to Master to Become an Excellent Interviewer

1. Be Really Clear on Your Purpose: This might sound like a no-brainer, but if you are not clear on the interview purpose then you will have a real challenge focusing the session. Create an interview purpose statement. Use the business problem as a starting point but be clear on the outcome. It is all right to say that you are here to discuss a specific topic and what you hope to gain.

2. Be like a Journalist or Sales Person: The best and most successful sales people or journalists know they have to ask the right questions to determine the needs of the stakeholders. They have studied the art of question creation and asking. I know the response I get when I say “sales people.” I am not talking about the stereotypical fast talking oddly dressed car sales person.

What I mean is to develop your abilities to present yourself professionally and know the questions you need to ask to better understand the stakeholder needs.

Being a journalist (in the traditional sense) is about developing the ability to dig deeper, know when to do so and be prepared when you hit the jackpot.

3. Observe Your Favourite Interviewer: This is a tip I picked up in acting and facilitation classes years ago. Identify those interviewers you really respect for their abilities. They could be late night hosts, hard talk professionals or news professionals. Create a character profile of them. Determine what they are known for (style), what is it they do well and where can they improve. Now watch them and observe with the point of learning and then incorporating some of their skills into your own routine.

4. Develop Active Listen Skills: Do you listen well? Now be honest with yourself. Active listening is a skill that anyone can develop. Research suggests that the mind thinks 4 to 7 times faster than we can speak and in general we only speak about 100 words per minute. It is easy to get distracted and think of other things. It has been suggested that with most people (no matter the gender), active listening increases with the greater interest in the topic. So frame or reframe your topic for the optimum personal interest.

When listening, use techniques to show you are actively listening.

5. Be a Chameleon and Adapt: I believe you should profile yourself and the people around you. I know this can be controversial. But when you profile yourself you learn a lot about who you are and how you operate. You can learn what behaviors you engage in under certain circumstances. It also helps you learn to adapt your natural communication style to the person’s needs, not yours. That is one of the keys to being a successful communicator, therefore interviewer.

6. Preparation is the Key: You have to prepare for an interview. This means doing your research. If you are meeting with someone new, then research who they are and what they are all about, their department, and who works for them. Even check out their social media profile. It all helps. The next part of preparation is to know what you want to ask. The key to doing a great interview is to have great questions. So work with someone and create a list of the questions you need to ask. Make sure your questions directly relate to your purpose and the outcome required. Always create an open and get the most important questions up front.

7. It is All About Timing: Most people miss this important point. They go to an interview session, and they miscalculate their timing and the number of questions they can ask and discuss in any meaningful way. Ask yourself this question. If you were to have a 30-minute interview how many questions could you ask and get answered? Generally, it would be around 5 to 7 questions plus dialogue and add-on questions. In the interview, you need to master the open, connection, questions, linking and close. If you would like a copy of my interviewing meeting timing chart send me an email and I will forward it to you.

Final Thoughts

Interviewing is a significant skill to master as a professional. It requires a balance between art and science. The best thing is that you can study to be an interviewer and practice it with business associates. This skill will be used when working with a variety of stakeholders at different levels in your organization.

Mastering some of the components of interviewing will go a long way towards you getting better business, stakeholder, solution and transformation requirements. Good Luck.

And Remember,
Do your best,
Invest in the success of others,
Make your journey count.
Richard

5 Signs You Need a Different Business Analyst on the Project

Written by Brad Egeland on August 10, 2016. Posted in Articles. 1 Comment on 5 Signs You Need a Different Business Analyst on the Project

A great business analyst can really make the technical project very successful.

I’ve had the pleasure of working with some very good business analysts along the way, and my project successes have been frequent as a result. Having very competent business analysts to work with has allowed me to focus more on my critical project management tasks and to be more successful and client-focused as a result.

That said, there can be times when the project seems to be suffering at the hands of a less-than-productive or competent business analyst. It hasn’t happened to me, but I can look back and see times where my projects would have suffered had any of these come to light…and I’ve seen colleagues’ projects suffer in some of these areas. Here are six signs that the project business analyst likely needs to be replaced – no matter where you are in the project timeline.

1. Can’t get requirements finalized.

Not all projects have the luxury of having a project manager and a business analyst; I realize that. But when they are separate positions, the business analyst is going to be the go-to tech liaison. If requirements aren’t well defined, as a task, responsibility and accountability for that is going to fall more on the shoulders of the business analyst. And if they aren’t working well with the project manager, project tech team and project customer to get those detailed requirements figured out and well documented, then that business analyst likely needs to be replaced before it’s too late.

2. Selection of the right technical solution is not happening.

The business analyst – after working with the project manager and project customer to define customer business processes in the “as-is” state of affairs and discussing what the “to-be” environment and processes need to look like – should be the lead on determining the technical solution. Along with help from the project manager, tech lead, and customer, the business analyst will likely be the one taking charge in determining the necessary technology to get the project to where it needs to be. If that isn’t happening, if the business analyst can’t make that happen, then they likely aren’t technically competent to work on this project. They need to be replaced at this early juncture before the project falls into a deeper technical state of trouble.

3. Tech team discord.

This is ultimately the project manager’s responsibility, but if there is a dedicated business analyst on the project, then he is likely the one working with and interacting with the tech team the most while the project manager focuses on the status and organizational aspects of the project. If the technical project team is not working well as a unit, then the business analyst needs to be aware and make or suggest adjustments, have team discussions, etc. If they work closely with the tech team, and that is the overall expectation and it isn’t happening, and there is discord among the team, then some of the tech team may need to be replaced. But, likely, the business analyst may need to go as well.

4. Tech document deliverables are not acceptable.

The project manager is ultimately responsible for every project deliverable that goes to the customer. I believe in having everything that goes out go through a peer review process. You can’t always guarantee 100% error-free deliverables, but if everyone on the team is reviewing everything that goes out, then that makes them accountable, too. With that many eyes making sure everything is in place, the chance that you’re sending out a bad deliverable is exponentially decreased.

I haven’t sent out a bad project deliverable in almost 9 years as a result of project team peer reviews on all deliverables. On a tech project, the business analyst is usually working extremely closely with the tech team to produce the project deliverable documents. If the functional design document or the technical design document or any similar documents are going to the customer with errors, then it may be time to replace the business analyst. You don’t get many second chances on customer satisfaction.

5. User acceptance testing goes poorly.

Often on a technical project, the tech lead will play a big role in user acceptance testing (UAT). I think we all know that on a technical project, user acceptance testing better go well, or there are going to be some big issues and problems with customer confidence, frustration, and satisfaction levels.

That critical UAT sign off is really the last significant approval point before the project goes live. If UAT doesn’t go well, then the project will likely experience delays, the budget will take a hit and – even if the project has been going well to this UAT point – it will still likely turn into a failure as it limps toward go-live after the poor UAT experience.

The business analyst plays a big role in holding the client’s hand through UAT preparation and the actual testing process. It needs to go well. If it doesn’t, you may need a new business analyst but it is likely going to be too late to replace them and find a new one. If any signs point to a less than well-prepared for UAT experience, then action may need to be taken BEFORE UAT. Not after.

Summary / call for input

Certainly overall responsibility for failure at any point in the project lies with the project manager. It is up to the PM to ensure that everyone fits well into the project team and to take action if that is not the case. But accountability for several key elements such as these on any technical project usually goes to the business analyst. These are critical elements to project success so if they are suffering, the business analyst may need to go. Be proactive, watch for signs. Take action.

Thoughts? Do you agree with these areas? What others would you include? Please share and discuss.

Strategy Spotlight: 6 Strategic Spotlight Terms You Should Know

Written by Richard Lannon on August 3, 2016. Posted in Articles.

Recently I wrote about the importance of communications and having a common stakeholder language.

From a strategy spotlight perspective this is extremely important. Definitions and a common language help the business analyst keep people on track so they move things forward. Often I have to tell my stakeholders what the terms mean in the context we are using them in and that they cannot change the definition. This approach helps move stakeholders forward. In the strategic facilitation this is a valuable approach. Even if you are not doing strategic facilitation or planning, as a business analyst or project manager you need to know the key terms to align your work and project initiatives.

Here are six strategic analysis, planning and implementation terms I often give to clients to ensure that we are all speaking the same language and our work aligns with the over arching business requirements and stakeholders needs.

Strategy Agenda Item is a high level plan of action item designed to achieve a vision. Since strategic planning is a component of the business planning that is to be done before you take tactical action it is imperative that there is a clear understanding of the strategic agenda items as they provide focus. Often rather than focusing on internal operational issues, a strategic focus means addressing and solving business problems through the effective use of existing resources. As strategic initiatives are defined resource usage is analyzed.

Strategic Initiatives should represent the most significant line of business or cross line of business projects that are planned to improve the business in some way with consideration for the four key business impact zones. In this part of strategic planning phase the team is deciding the essential focus and key initiatives that must be met to achieve the strategic agenda items. Depending on the size of your organization these will become enterprise, program or project initiatives. They can be very strategic or tactical based on your organization’s size, structure and present culture. At the initiative level the way you define success in the attainment of our objectives should be clarified, the speed and distance of action determined and the critical success factors defined. This takes a while to do.

Business and Initiative Champions are individuals that go beyond their operative responsibilities. As defined here, they are individuals trying to influence strategic issues larger than their own immediate operational responsibilities. They take the initiative and accept responsibility and accountability for it. The potential ways and objectives of championing cover the whole process of strategy: the formation of the content of strategy as well as the process of implementing strategic contents.

If the focus is more of being an initiative champion then that person should bring discipline and rigour to planning and execution of an initiative ensuring the timing and achievement of milestones and deliverables are agreed upon and managed. They will need to tie investment in strategic items and strategic initiative to specific and measurable outcomes and enable issues to be addressed and resolved proactively, before they jeopardize outcomes.

A champion can be used more specifically to refer to a senior manager who champions the project, ensures that it is properly resourced and uses their influence to overcome barriers for the team.

Measurable Outcomes are the measurable results of the implemented objectives and must be defined in measurable terms. Measurements are essential for understanding what is happening in your business–what gets measured gets done. In a business environment, measurements come in many forms and include hard, soft, lagging and leading indicators.

Lagging indicators are used to measure performance and allow the leadership team to track how things are going. Because output (performance) is always easier to measure by assessing whether your goals were achieved, lagging indicators are backward-focused or “trailing”—they measure performance already captured. Just about anything you wish to monitor will have lagging indicators. Leading indicators are precursors to the direction something is going. Because leading indicators come before a trend, they are considered business drivers. Identifying specific, focused leading indicators should be a part of each business’s strategic planning and decision-making process.

You can pre-determine or reverse engineer measurable outcomes by either using the SMART and/or CAR principle. As part of the measurable outcome determination always consider key stakeholders.

Key Elements are the big things that need to be done in order to be successful. They are the big buckets of work. The key to creating key elements is to understand the scope of work at a high level and to be able to state them clearly. A scope of work sets forth requirements for performance of work to achieve strategic and project objectives. The scope of work must be clear, accurate and complete. It needs to be understood by a wide audience. Defining key elements is part art and science and takes a while to master.

Milestone is one of a series of numbered markers placed along a road. Within the framework of strategic planning, a milestone is a special event that receives special attention. It is often falsely put at the end of a stage to mark the completion of a work package or phase. Milestones should be put before the end of a phase so that corrective actions can be taken. In addition to signalling the completion of a key deliverable, a milestone may also signify an important decision, which outlines or affects the future of an initiative or project. In this sense, a milestone not only signifies distance traveled (key stages in a project) but also indicates direction of travel since key decisions made at milestones may alter the route pre-determine in the various plans (strategic, tactical or operational).

Final Thoughts

Whether you are working on a top-down, bottom-up or mid-level initiatives having clear definition of these terms will help you. It is very difficult to walk into a room and write a list of terms on a white board and ask people to define them. You will spend a lot of time on an activity that should be done prior to meeting. I believe the professional provides the words and defines the terms that will be used. I have provided variations of these terms when working with clients to align their thinking, to build or interpret roadmaps and plans already created and to ensure stakeholders had a common language. I invite you to adapt them for your own use. Good luck.

Always
Do your best,
Invest in the success of others,
Make your journey count.
Richard
Article adapted from SET for Success, Chapter 15, by Richard Lannon

21st Century BA: You are the Decider!

Written by Kathleen B. Hass, PMP on July 14, 2016. Posted in Articles.

In the 21st century, enterprise business analysts (EBAs) have emerged to fill the gap in strategic analysis needed to make appropriate decisions about the way forward for your organization and its enabling technology. According to Forrester: Technology-empowered, digitally savvy customers are changing the world, the economy, and business. How you (your organization) respond determines whether you win in the age of the customer.ⁱ

It is at the enterprise level that BAs can really make a difference by driving decisions based on value, and driving innovation based on creativity. Yet, EBAs have so many decisions to make about the direction of their careers that it can be overwhelming. It is tempting to sit back and just “see where our career is going.” But make no mistake, you are the decider! You need to continually develop, review and update your professional development plans, and then steer your career in the direction you have chosen. Three key areas for BAs to consider include:

Enterprise Business Analyst Roles,
Business Domains, and
Technology Domains.

ENTERPRISE BUSINESS ANALYST ROLES

No one individual can fill all of the potential roles of the enterprise business analyst. And as businesses mature and respond to the challenges of the marketplace, more roles are emerging at every turn. In this article, we examine the most prevalent EBA roles in play today:

Trusted Advisor
- Business Relationship Manager
- Internal Consultant
Business Technologist
Strategy Analyst
Business Benefits Manager
Designer/Innovator
Agilist/Minimalist
Team Leader
Data Scientist
Business Architect
Data Architect
Process Architect

Prior articles discussed in depth how an EBA works as a Business Technologist. For this article we will discuss the additional critical enterprise roles, starting with a focus on EBA as trusted advisor and strategist….the very top of the food chain of the business analysis practice.

TRUSTED ADVISORS

To become a trusted advisor to middle- and senior-level managers, you must be perceived as a credible, knowledgeable, strategic thinker. The EBA role is to fill the gap in holistic thinking and creative leadership at the enterprise level of organizations. As this new leadership role emerges, don’t miss out!

There are several roles EBAs fill as trusted advisors. Make no mistake; these are leadership roles within organizations that are undergoing significant change. These roles are typically placed within the Professional Services or Shared Services groups of most organization models.

Business Relationship Manager

Striking executive level relationships
Ensuring effective executive sponsorship of projects
Driving issue resolution to achieve business outcomes quickly
Understanding the business context, and communicating a holistic view of the technology, data, and process perspectives
Assisting in establishing priority and portfolio objectives by driving value management
Managing change at the organization level and stakeholder impact level

Internal Management Consultant

Act as a critical source of decision-support information to business leaders

STRATEGY ANALYST

Enterprise BAs provide the essential analysis needed for executives to make informed decisions about the future. EBAs lead strategic research and analysis activities to capture the information listed below to provide executives with decision-support information. Without this vital information, executives are flying solo. Exceptional strategic EBAs use tools (not templates), capture and validate the information in teams of diverse, credible, influential thinkers, and prepare lean, straight-forward executive-level reports. Decision support information includes:

A deep understanding of customer needs and desires
Competitive analysis and market research
Current state capability analysis using easy-to-understand visuals including a typical SWOT analysis of strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats
Regulatory environment compliance and non-compliance analysis
Strategy Road Maps. Capture all of the research information into an organizational roadmap including:
- Vision, mission, goals
- Strategy arenas, differentiators, economics, conduits
- Capability assessment
- Recommendations: solution, outcomes, risks
- Implementation approach prioritized by value
- Success criteria
- Strategy Execution Framework. Many organizations are unable to execute on well-formed strategy because they have no framework to guide them on the journey. The balanced scorecard has evolved from its early use as a simple performance measurement framework to a full strategic planning and management system. The balanced scorecard transforms an organization’s strategic plan from an attractive but passive document into the “marching orders” for the organization on a daily basis. It provides a framework that not only provides performance measurements but helps planners identify what should be done and measured. It enables executives to truly execute their strategies. Perspectives that are measured include the customer, financial, learning and growth, and process for a holistic view of progress towards achieving strategies. See link below for an example and explanation.

Learn more from the Balanced Scorecard Institute online at https://balancedscorecard.org/Resources/AbouttheBalancedScorecard/tabid/55/Default.aspx

BUSINESS BENEFITS MANAGER

In order to execute the strategy, someone needs to drive the analysis to convert the goals and objectives into valuable change initiatives. It is the EBA who brings the right people in the room and facilitates creativity sessions to identify innovative solutions, and then conduct a feasibility analysis of alternative solutions. The results of the analysis become proposals to build the most feasible solution in the form of a business case.

Typically, a business case is no longer used once a project has been approved, resourced, and funded, and implementation is underway. However, as you design and build the solution, it is the EBA’s job to continue to validate the expected costs and benefits, and update the business case. Alert your executive sponsor and steering committee if the original assumptions or projections are at risk, and recommend a course correction. This validation/update cycle is essential to keep the business case alive, particularly to keep everyone’s focus on the business benefits. Remember, the business case is developed when we know the least about the endeavor, so it will no longer be valid unless it is updated as more is learned.

After the new solution is deployed, measure the value to the customer and the effects to the bottom line. If the value of the solution does not measure up to the original benefit projections, recommend adjustments and improvements. Manage so that the worth of the solution is directly related to value to the customer and benefits to the business, both of which lead directly to wealth to the bottom line.

Innovation experts are advising us to abandon traditional business case methods, and focus on mini business cases (just seven or so slides) that propose change in the context of the customer and the innovative product. The trend today is to use a mini business case that will strengthen the persuasiveness of your proposals and get you noticed. Typical information includes:

1. The customer

The customer situation

The customer need

The customer problem/challenge

2. The product concept

The new product

The business model

3. The discriminator

Current solutions and competitors

Our competitive positioning

4. The feasibility

Technical feasibility

Cultural feasibility

Process feasibility

Economic feasibility

Marketing feasibility

5. The value

Value to customers

Wealth to bottom line

6. The timing

Why now

If we don’t do it, then….

7. The Decision

Further effort to confirm the viability

Further effort to examine uncertainties, risks, complexities

The team, the process and the timing.ⁱⁱ

DESIGNER/INNOVATOR

Innovative solutions very seldom emerge using traditional BA requirements elicitation techniques. Rather, design-centered EBAs realize that innovation is about designing a great customer experience. EBAs foster collaboration, creativity, and innovation when working with groups at all levels of the organization to design the transformation. Understanding that all people are creative, EBAs seed creativity across the organization. Your challenge is to learn quickly how to use design principles to foster creativity; prioritize these activities high in your professional development plans:

Discover creativity-inducing tools and techniques used by facilitators everywhere for problem-solving and decision-making.
Examine how to augment structured facilitation techniques with investigation, experimentation, and creativity-inducing activities.
Learn how to reinvent your team facilitation model often to keep your teams engaged in the innovation process, whether working on incremental enhancements or breakthrough innovation.
Discover the magic of design thinking, and how it is being used in progressive organizations to develop breakthrough solutions to complex business problems.

Design thinking is a collection of practices that help teams better identify with customer experiences, and shift from logical problem solving to creative experimentation. It involves multiple thinking approaches:

Systems Thinking: holistic, linkages, logic, deductive. Think ecosystem.
Inside-out thinking: business view of customer experience
Outside in thinking: customer view of customer experienceⁱⁱⁱ

Universities and colleges across the nation are beginning to use design principles to teach their students how to design innovative, transformational solutions to complex problems (often referred to as wicked problems). The Institute of Design (D. School, http://dschool.stanford.edu/) at Stanford has become one of the trendy, most talked about drivers of design thinking because of the practices they are spreading around the world to improve our lives through a collaborative approach that inspires human-centered innovations. Design thinking is a mindset of combining creative and analytical thinking and applying it toward solving a specific problem. Stanford offers a crash course with the tag line: Be a Design Thinking Facilitator! The process includes six steps:

Empathy: understanding your customer through observation, engagement, immersion
Define: drafting a problem statement from needs
Ideate: brainstorming wild and crazy ideas
Prototype: experimenting, welcoming early failure, inventing, re-inventing
Test: gauging customer desirability, financial and technical feasibility, business viability
Repeat

You will know Creative Leadership when you see it. Teams are engaged in constructive dialogue. The EBA is considered an expert facilitator. People want to work on her teams. The EBA has exceptional technical skills, deep knowledge of the business, a highly flexible style, superb relationship-building skills, and is comfortable with uncertainty. Often innovation teams are removed from the day-to-day operations, fully funded, fully supported from the top, but time-boxed to bring about innovation before the competition.

AGILIST/MINIMALIST

Agile projects are those that involve incremental delivery of value to the customer. Let’s face it: Agile projects are more successful. Standish Group provides us with this information, based on more than 10,000projects from 2011-2015 segmented by agile process and waterfall method.^iv

Agile, incremental projects are taking the world by storm because iteration is the best defense against complexity and risk. Smaller projects are just simply easier to manage because of the reduced number of decisions that must be made and dependencies that must be managed. Start by mastering the lingo of the agile movement: (there is always new terminology!):

Communication – visualization, daily stand up meetings
Consensus – collaboration, co-location
Business case – business value
Requirements – product backlog, user stories, story maps
Solution Scope – product vision
Documentation – sticky notes
Project management – self-organizing teams

For each successive iteration, implement the minimally viable solution. Strive to make these basic principles apply to all projects:

Active user involvement is imperative, as it is about the customer experience
The team must be empowered to make decisions
The timescale is fixed; this helps minimize scope and accelerate decision-making
Capture requirements differently, lightweight & visual; requirements evolve
Develop small, incremental releases and iterate
Focus on frequent delivery of products prioritized based on value
Complete each feature before moving on to the next
Apply the 80/20 rule (remember, only 20% of features are typically used)
Testing is integrated throughout the project lifecycle – test early and often
A collaborative & cooperative approach between all stakeholders is essential^v

Despite the evidence that agile management is successful, organizations are having difficulty transitioning to an agile approach to projects. Institutionalized structures and processes are designed to support the more serial approach to change. It’s a leadership issue. EBAs are well positioned to provide the requisite leadership and to help accelerate the transition to bring about value to customers and to the organization quickly, thus sustaining or advancing competitive advantage.

TEAM LEADER

EBAs spend most of their time working through and with others; they are famous for pulling teams together to bring about innovative results quickly. Sometimes team members are not located in the same place, making team leadership even more challenging. Global teams are a vital asset to expand resources and to capture the nuanced preferences of different global markets. Indeed, about 80% of our project teams in existence today have members who are not physically co-located. And the trend is only going to continue. For many CEOs, seeking partnerships and forming global teams is a high-priority endeavor. EBAs are stepping up to assist in this struggle.

EBAs understand that virtual teams add a significant amount of complexity to change initiatives. The challenges of virtual teams include:

Fostering creativity at a distance
Building and sustaining great teams of diverse characteristics
Distributed team leadership, communication, collaboration, and decision-making
Using virtual teams as a strategic advantage
Encouraging innovation through edge-of-chaos leadership
Managing agile distributed teams with a light touch
Managing innovation projects that are always urgent at a distance
Leading unplanned, urgent projects as they emerge

EBAs also understand that high-performing teams share a number of characteristics:

Team members are diverse, high trained and highly practiced
Clear goals, direction, priorities
Clear roles among team members
Cooperation
Engagement
Prioritization based on value
Common expectations
Robust communication
Defined decision-making practices

EBAs are stepping up to manage the numerous transformational change efforts facing organizations today. Transformational change is profound, fundamental, disruptive, and irreversible, and it is essential today for organizations to remain viable. It involves breakthrough practices, structures, businesses, and technologies. Incremental continuous improvements to the way we do things today are not enough in the 21st century inter-connected, innovation-driven economy. Transformation requires:

Visionary leadership, a holistic approach
Clear understanding of goals
Understanding of the ‘as-is current state’, the ‘to be innovative future state’, and the gap between them
Sophisticated risk management and change management

DATA SCIENTIST

In this knowledge economy, your business is smart when it acts on the basis of data, information, and rules. It is the EBA who becomes the business intelligence specialist – the data scientist. Converting data into information that can be used to make decisions. There are a myriad of components that comprise business intelligence:

Customer behaviors
Competitive trends
Technology trends
Business rules
Operational business decisions
Business analysis
Business architecture
Business processes
Business vision, mission, strategy
Business policy monitors (KPIs)

ARCHITECT

Business architecture is a holistic view of the business and the supporting technology. It is a set of visual and textual representations of the essential components of a business and their relationships. It can be thought of as a blueprint used to plan change and align strategy with execution. EA supports business transformation by providing a holistic approach for planning change, provides a common understanding, leverages new technology capabilities, and harnesses the unwieldy IT environment. Many organizations focus on just the IT architecture. A holistic view includes both business and IT capabilities that are viewed as an integrated whole. Strategic capabilities include the following. EBAs sometimes specialize in one or more of these areas.

Business capabilities: functions, structures, processes
Information capabilities: information entities, application portfolio
Technology capabilities: supporting technology
Solution capabilities: business applications and tools

Business architectures are used as a tool to communicate about the business. Business architecture is developed and used by visionaries, strategists, executives, architects, managers, consultants – everyone working at the enterprise level. Then project teams build out the details of the architecture for the areas undergoing change. Change-driven organizations are using architectures because they bring about a certain level of maturity, an understanding of enterprise capabilities.

Leading-edge businesses are embracing architectural techniques to begin to ‘think visually’ about the enterprise and the innovative solution. Through architecture, we increase business agility by managing change visually. Business architectures integrate disparate views of the enterprise to facilitate innovation through rich pictures (sometimes called ‘picture thinking’). The EBA often fills an architectural role, facilitating groups of business experts to ‘design the business’.

Business architects and business process professionals have traditionally focused on designing durable business processes that can stand the test of time. However, new technology disruptors such as mobile and social are forcing teams to rethink business and process design from an outside-in perspective. To deliver next-generation business process solutions, business architects, and business process professionals are shifting from “systems thinking” paradigms that emphasize process modeling to “design thinking” paradigms that emphasize creativity and customer experience. This will require teams to adopt emerging strategies and practices for integrating design thinking principles into their business process management (BPM) initiatives. According to IBM, the key questions are these:

How can your organization achieve sufficient business agility to accomplish your objectives among growing economic uncertainty? Does your business model take advantage of smarter technology and differentiating capabilities? Ultimately, are you capitalizing across business and IT to embrace increasing complexity to become a standout performer in your industry?^vi

DECIDE WHICH ROLE YOU WANT TO PURSUE

Working at the strategic, enterprise level is vastly rewarding. Leap from a project-focused BA to an enterprise business analysts (EBA) in a single bound. You can then be a part of crafting the future of your company.

However, there are additional decisions to be made. Which business domain are you passionate about (financial, healthcare, engineering, education, etc.)? Which domains are out there looking for enterprise, holistic thinkers and problem solvers? The EBA role can be very challenging, so it helps immensely if you are forging the future in the business domain that excites and rewards you. Once you have chosen the business domain, research to see which technologies are emerging to support better or even drive the future of that domain. Future articles will examine the domains that are undergoing transformations and the technologies that are enabling the change.

i https://www.forrester.com/home/

ii Gijs van Wulfen, May 23, 2014 Blog. “How to Present your Idea to Top Management”. Online at: https://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20140523142826-206580-how-to-present-your-idea-to-top-management?trk=prof-post (accessed May 2014).

iiiFranz, Annette, August, 2015. Outside-In vs. Inside-Out Thinking, Online at: http://www.cx-journey.com/2015/08/outside-in-vs-inside-out-thinking.html

iv Standish Group, Standish Group 2015 Chaos Report – Q&A with Jennifer Lynch, October, 2015. Online at: http://www.infoq.com/articles/standish-chaos-2015/

v Waters, Kelly, 2007. What is Agile? Online at: http://www.allaboutagile.com/what-is-agile-10-k

vi Design For Disruption: Take An Outside-In Approach To BPM, Forrester, Online at: https://www.forrester.com/report/Design+For+Disruption+Take+An+OutsideIn+Approach+To+BPM/-/E-RES91465

Why You Need Good Business Analysis: Better Business Performance

Written by Tim Coventry on July 7, 2016. Posted in Articles.

Every organization performs business analysis, and good business analysis is all about better business performance. Together, technology and good business analysis are the keys to superior results.

By using an expert in business analysis, your projects or actions will be created for you to the highest of standards bringing you a far lower risk of failure.

This gives a business peace of mind when they know they have;

A greater engagement of the business
A very good result in alignment with your plan
Better chance of making new changes
Decisive project decision-making
Improvement of projects or initiatives
Instigating change in support of improved technology
Improved business results
Higher return on investment

Proper business analysis engages and empowers stakeholders, allowing them to deliver value to customers in better ways.

Related Article: Good Business Analyst, Bad Business Analyst

Here’s the thing about business analysis. It’s all about helping more companies to think about the “why” before going ahead, thus preventing a technology project or initiative providing little or no value to an organization.

Here’s an example of a proper business analysis. We were engaged to analyze a cash handling business process after an audit report. This report raised concerns over staff counting cash. The goal was to improve the process to create increased security controls.

Results of our first executive stakeholder meeting

We proved through strategic questioning, most of the company’s customers were familiar with credit and loyalty credit cards. By understanding the requirements and the context of the organization we were able to provide a solution. Therefore, increasing the opportunities available.

Furthermore, it reduced the use of cash. Rebranding the internal customer card created an environment with better compliance reporting and customer patronage. The cash handling process was the issue, but the processes around it provided the solution.

Example #2

Another client requested us to assist with the use of a barcode scanner. This scanner would be for inward and outward goods at their warehouse.

To begin with, we completed an initial analysis of the stock handling process. As a result, we found using barcodes was going to require a large overhead to put into effect.

The reason for this:

Over 40% of outgoing stock was in the original packaging
10% of stock was individually prepared for dispatch

We found the Return on Investment (ROI) would be negative. For this reason, it was not a viable solution.

Our business analysis resulted in the client making the decision not to go any further. The business outcome was that we were able to provide high value to the client.

Example #3

Another client sought a solution to manage the approval process and documents. These were associated with their major energy capital projects, having a value of up to $100 million.

We performed the business process automation analysis. We also mapped the future state processes and explored the business and functional requirements through a series of stakeholder workshops using aspects of our method, and customized templates in line with the Business Analysis Body of Knowledge (BABOK®).

Based on these documented processes and requirements we developed an automated workflow solution.

The outcomes of the process automation solution were:

Increased consistency of the approval process
An automated audit trail for the approvals
An increase in the tracking of documents, resulting in a greater efficiency with approvals
A reliable mechanism for staff to determine the status of payment requests and payments
Reduced time by eliminating manual and resource wastage on printing and manual approvals
Reduced physical file storage

In the final analysis, the outcome of minimized approval delays reduced the external contract resources required for approval processes. Within six months, the cost of developing the solution was paid for by using the automated workflow.

An expert business analyst requires a unique skillset many senior executives have never experienced, so it is difficult for management to distinguish between average and good business analysis. Often subject matter experts or untrained individuals are used as business analysts to deliver suboptimal business analysis.

The BABOK® Guide states that “Business analysis is the practice of enabling change in an enterprise by defining needs and recommending solutions that deliver value to stakeholders. Business analysis enables an enterprise to articulate needs and the rationale for change, and to design and describe solutions that can deliver value”.

The best way I explain what business analysis is to senior executives is that it is all about better business performance.

Good business analysis is the foundation for organisational:

innovation
business agility
cost reduction
cyber security
risk control, and
technology efficiency

The BABOK® Guide also states “A business analyst is any person who performs business analysis tasks described in the BABOK® Guide, no matter their job title or organizational role”.

The BABOK® Guide does not make the distinction of Business Analyst quality, competency and experience or breadth of tasks and techniques. Evidence in the field strongly suggests good business analysis is more likely to be achieved by a well-trained business analyst, experienced in the breadth of business analysis from strategic to detail, industry aligned, certified and practice supported.

As organizations look to become more innovative to survive and prosper with technology in overcrowded industries, this is critical. Businesses today are more competitive and good business analysis can deliver an advantage that gives business the differentiating edge they require to prosper.

In many forum discussions, a business analyst is described as a bridge between business and IT, a problem solver, a decision enabler, a requirements manager or engineer, process modeller, an agile team member, etc. However, if good business analysis is all about better business performance should we not describe a business analyst as a person with competencies, skills, and experience and aligned to industry standards that contributes to better business performance?