Tag: Tools

5 Reasons Why Cybersecurity is More Important to Small Business

Written by Elliot Caleira on May 27, 2020. Posted in Articles.

It’s common to hear about a new cyber attack taking place. Data breaches are incredibly common these days and can impact very nearly any company.

Ironically, small business owners seem to think they are immune to this ever present threat. In 2015, more than half of all small businesses didn’t have a threat to prevent cyber attacks.

Small Business Risks

Large companies, like Amazon or Walmart, spend millions on cyber security every year. They have dedicated staff and managed detection and response services to combat threats. If a threat is detected, it can be quickly identified and addressed, reducing risks.

Small businesses are at a much greater risk. Their information is easier to access and they simply don’t have the funds to track down the cyber criminals responsible. Ask yourself this question; If you were a hacker, which attack would be more likely to succeed?

Small Businesses are Vulnerable

Small businesses are increasingly at risk of an attack. In 2015, 43 percent of cyber attacks were targeted at small businesses with less than 250 employees. Why is this happening? Let’s take a look at five of the major risk factors for small businesses.

The Element of Surprise

According to Phil Goldstein of BizTech, the Ponemon Institute states that 58 percent of small businesses don’t consider cyber attacks a threat. This creates gaping holes in cyber security, making it easy to breach their defenses.

No Policies in Place

Large companies often have extensive policies in place, while only 36 percent of small businesses have any data security policy. This means that small businesses are woefully unprepared in the event of a cyber attack or data breach.

Phishing Schemes Work Better

Employees of small businesses are not trained to identify phishing schemes. Phishing attacks usually occur via email or other software programs and are disguised to look official. They try to trick employees into releasing sensitive information, which is then used for nefarious purposes. Employees of small businesses simply don’t recognize or report the attack due to their lack of awareness.

Ransomware is on the Rise

Earlier this year, ransomware such as WannaCry and NotPetya was used to attack companies and hold their information hostage. Once the ransom was paid, the information was released. However, those that didn’t pay the ransom suffered from devastating data breaches. These major attacks shut down entire governments and put millions of people in danger. This trend is expected to continue and increase in the future.

Small Businesses Go Out of Business After Attacks

Whereas large companies can afford the costs of a breach, most small businesses cannot. The average cost of recovery stands at $690,000. This causes nearly 60 percent of small businesses to fail within six months of a cyber attack.

What You Can Do

Since the cost of recovery often exceeds what a small business can withstand, it is vitally important to be prepared. Preventing an attack in the first place should be a priority. The following tips will help your company survive potential attacks.

Create a Cyber Security Policy

Policies let employees know exactly what to do and who to report to if they suspect a phishing scheme or cyber attack. These policies are in place to minimize the damage of an attack and stop it quickly.

Train Employees

Employees who undergo training, especially in phishing attacks, will be aware of the threat. If an employee is not aware of a threat, they can’t recognize it.

Don’t Rely on Software

Software is a valuable tool, but it is important to have live monitoring and detection to respond quickly to threats and prevent damage.

Small businesses are at a much greater risk than many believe. It is important for a small business to actively prevent an attack for the company to succeed.

Think you’re a Business Analyst (BA) not a Salesperson? Think again…

Written by Lisa Hudson on May 14, 2020. Posted in Articles.

When I began training to be a BA, I never dreamt that I would need to be a salesperson too,

in fact, I’m glad I hadn’t realised that as it may have deterred me from, what is for me, the most suitable and fulfilling career that I could have wished for.

Over the last few months I have worked alongside the CEO, Business Unit Heads and other senior stakeholders to deliver a Competency Framework for 6point6. The framework acts as a blueprint that sets out all the competencies needed per role to establish and run the business successfully on a day to day basis. This project has given me visibility of all the roles, levels and disciplines that make up a prosperous consulting firm and has allowed me to see what skill separates the junior, mid-level and senior roles throughout the organisation. The answer is simply this: the ability to sell. The better you are at selling, the more senior you are likely to become, and this is true across the whole business, it doesn’t just apply to Business Analysts.

Luckily, my first BA role was in the public sector where the idea of making money had a minimal impact on my role, but in recent years, I have been working in two contrasting commercial environments. This is where I realised that in a sales-related role pressures can vary vastly across sectors for BAs.

It’s fair to say that the last few years have been the most challenging for me as an analyst, although I can honestly say that this has been the time in which I have learnt the most about being commercial.

The truth is that the more commercial the environment, the more your analysis and sales skills come under scrutiny. It’s not enough to be a solid analyst in this environment, if you really want your career to excel or even remain buoyant, you need to be able to ‘do sales’ too. To succeed, you need to admit to any deficiencies and awaken a new skill set as an accompaniment to your usual analysis work.

If you’ve found yourself in a similar position, you may wish to explore the concept of selling and how it can impact your role as a BA. The following thoughts are from my experiences and may help you on your own BA sales journey:

How You Need To Adapt

Your attitude always needs to be positive – aim to be helpful and informative, not pushy.

Know that it’s okay to be your genuine self, you don’t have to morph into a different person overnight. You are there as a BA above all else and need to show that you are an experienced analyst and know your stuff. Relax and do what you are best at.

Aim to make a consistently good impression with prospects and clients and make a concerted effort to look sharp and be prepared for every meeting.

Getting Sales Experience

If supporting the sales process is new to you, ask your best salespeople for any tips that may be useful. Perhaps you can ask to shadow them during a sales engagement.

Have a go and learn what you can, don’t be afraid to ask for feedback on your performance. We can always improve and raise our game!

Working Together

Once you have the opportunity to work closely with your salespeople on the front line; understand that they may have different personalities, views and approaches to your own. They will at least have very different objectives, in fact some might say that salespeople bring the jazz hands and you bring the substance when selling, but whatever the analogy, you need to work together with mutual respect to understand how to give your organisation the best chance of selling professional analysis services.

You need to work as a team to target the right markets and organisations, establish how to differentiate your services from the competition, analyse how to solve client pain points and keep leads warm.

The sales team will always be looking for ways to highlight your greatest selling points and you can help them with the following tips:

Do Your Research

As with any project, you need to be well-read but when you’re in a commercial environment you need to do even more on a much grander scale. As soon as a potential sales prospect appears on your radar you need to learn about the organisation, their industry and the competition. Start by researching the business, conduct simple ‘What, why, when analysis’ to understand the basics, locate or map out their organisation chart and use LinkedIn to find out who the key people are that you need to engage with. Understand their business model and critical success factors and find out what you can about their product or service roadmap.

Once you have this information, run an internal session with the sales team and other stakeholders involved in the process to share your findings in preparation for the next engagement.

Employ Sales Techniques

Your sales team will want to ensure that the prospect is worth pursuing before committing resources to any further work. They may do this by employing one of the following sales techniques to qualify and prioritise the deal in relation to other sales leads:

BANT (Budget, Authority, Needs and Timeline) is a sales qualification methodology that helps to determine whether a prospect is a good match for you based on their budget, their ability to buy from you, their need for your product, and the purchase timeline.

CHAMP (Challenges, Authority, Money and Prioritisation) is thought to be a modern version of BANT and describes key questions that need to be answered to better qualify leads and close sales.

SPIN (Situation, Problem, Implication and Need-Payoff) is an acronym relating to four types of sales questions designed to bring a prospect into interest and through to a sale.

Regardless of the method used, if the opportunity is not worth pursuing at this stage, you may still wish to leave the door open for something more fruitful later. Now that you’ve had the chance to understand their business you can use that knowledge to suggest analysis opportunities in the future and set up regular check-ins to keep in touch.

Understand The Two Sales Personas

In sales there are two personas: Hunters and Farmers. Hunters chase brand new sales leads and aim to close as many deals as quickly as possible, whereas farmers look to source more business from existing clients and do this through the development of long-term client relationships. A strong sales team will no doubt utilise and balance both approaches, and as a BA you will be able to help both scenarios in the following ways:

Hunting:

Look out for opportunities on procurement websites
Use your industry contacts to look for new work and tell everyone what your company does
When an opportunity has been identified, help the initial bid process by writing ITT (Invitation to Tender) / RFP (Request for Proposal) responses to detail why you are the best supplier for the job
Where an RFP response has been successful; lead on all analysis elements for the bid presentation, create bid content and use case studies (only where you are free from client Non-Disclosure Agreements) to show how you have previously delivered what they are asking for and detail how you would approach and satisfy their personal requirements

Farming:

Develop relationships with your clients on every project and act as their trusted advisor
Understand their business; the risks, how they make a profit, what they need to succeed and so on
Identify other opportunities where analysis could help to solve their business problems

Pre-Sales Analysis Workshops

You often only have one chance to make the right impression with a new prospect, even with new faces from existing clients. This adds a lot of pressure; you need to ensure that your workshops are engaging and fill the audience with confidence in your ability to understand, analyse and deliver quality outputs, you don’t want to deter people from buying from your organisation. If you have ever read the book ‘Pitch Anything’ by Oren Klaff, you will understand what I mean by this. You need to hook people into what you are selling, help them to relax enough to let their guard down and clearly demonstrate how your offerings can be used to resolve their issues. You need to do all this while remaining calm, humorous and professional. Sounds easy right? It isn’t necessarily easy for everyone, but solid preparation is the key to successful workshops.

At the end of the workshop, ensure that you have summarised pertinent points from the session and your next steps clearly, try and leave your prospect with something of value and follow up with professional documentation from the session:

Documentation

Any documentation you share externally needs to be of an excellent standard, look professional and be error free, tidy and consistent. This advice applies equally to internal clients but is of paramount importance when you are trying to sell your services externally. The following points act as a checklist for all of us but may be particularly helpful for entry level BAs who are bravely diving into the pre-sales process:

When choosing techniques and models, select the ones that emphasise the points you are trying to make. All models and diagrams should be neatly documented, well-aligned and symmetrical if appropriate. Each diagram should be referenced with a figure number and description.
Adopt an organisational document style with consistent sections, fonts, font sizes, colours, line spacing, headers, footers and page numbering.
Begin the document with a front sheet showing your organisation’s logo and your prospect / client logo.
Provide a Table of Contents that can be auto-updated during the creation of the document. Remember to update one final time just before sharing the document.
Section headers could include: Introduction and background, Engagement details, a problem section which aims to describe the understanding of the problem that you can help with, a solution section, conclusions and recommendations, follow up information, contact details with team names and roles.
Approach cost modelling with caution, you may wish to add costs into full documentation and leave them out of presentation slides so you can choose your moment to touch on this sensitive topic. Always discuss costs with your salespeople to ensure that the right price is quoted for the work and relationship. For example, your organisation may feel it appropriate to offer a discounted rate now in exchange for the possibility of gaining a long-term client.
Clearly thank the reader for their time during the engagement to date and state that you would be delighted to support them further if they wish to proceed.
Make sure your documents are audience appropriate and pitched at the correct level. For example, senior executives are less likely to be interested in exhaustive detail, they are more likely to want an overview of your offering, and similarly, end users will want to delve into the detail and really understand how their lives may be impacted by any proposed changes.
Once you are happy with the document, take the time to finesse it before sending it out for review. Double check the points above and ensure that references to ‘we’ relate to your organisation and references to ‘you’ relate to your sales prospect.
Request proofreading from someone who has no stake in the sales proposal who can concentrate on grammar and spelling. Once revised, schedule peer reviews by a salesperson and / or senior manager who can focus on the content and make sure that the document is in an impressive shape before you share it. You need to impress your managers and fill them with confidence in your consulting skills too!
This advice also applies to any accompanying or attached documents and a top tip is to always open and double check any email attachments prior to pressing send!

Get More Involved In Marketing

As you progress through your BA career you may find yourself in a leadership position. This will naturally involve a greater focus on selling BA services.

You will need to work closely with the marketing team to put together BA offerings and create Go-to-Market strategies. It will help to understand how much money your BA function is currently turning over each year in comparison to targets defined by your CFO. You will need to identify value propositions for your offerings and align them to your identified target markets.

Conclusion

Selling may not be for every BA, but even if you can improve your sales technique a little it has the power to enhance your career exponentially.

It would be a mistake to assume that you don’t need to worry about sales as a commercial BA but ultimately, there is nothing wrong with letting your genius shine through your solid analysis work either. It just helps if you can sell or at least apply some commercial acumen.

The Remote BA

Written by Jenny Quillian on May 6, 2020. Posted in Articles. 1 Comment on The Remote BA

The purpose of this article is to offer suggestions to the Business Analysts working remotely from your team and your stakeholders.

This article is an extension to my previous article which encourages the Active BA. With today’s technology and your initiative it is possible to remain a strong and active BA without the face to face engagements which used to dig into requirements and resolve issues.

My key suggestions are below. I encourage readers to add comments below with their own ideas.

Use all the technology available to you.
Be proactive at reaching out to your team and stakeholders.
Enhance your online meetings with online presence and visual aids.

Long distance teams are quite common in today’s IT projects, and there are a number of offerings for team collaboration. Use them all. If the dev team has a Slack channel, then join it and monitor it every day. If the PMs are using Microsoft Teams then sign on and learn that too. You may need to install multiple web and video conferencing tools because one stakeholder group uses Go To Meeting and another uses Amazon Chime. Become proficient in both so that you are a proactive attendee.

Proficiency in communication tools is essential to 1) keep up the flow of ideas, discussions and feedback, and 2) maintain the soft skill of Presence when conducting meetings.

The role of Business Analyst is to provide the bridge between business and technology teams. Much of this occurs during hallway chats and office drop-ins. You pass the PM’s desk and stop to say Hi. They have a small issue that you help with by reaching out to the stakeholder immediately with a quick question. It is essential to replace these informal communications by being comfortable with all tools to the extent you can casually reach out across the ether. Replace the office walk-by with a brief daily update to each of your contacts in whatever mode they are working in. Keep the bridge together by proactively reaching out to teams and stakeholders.

Conducting successful requirements sessions over collaboration tools starts with the same basics as your on-site meetings – Preparation and Presence.

Preparation was covered in my earlier article, The Active BA. The concept applies to on-site and n-line meetings. The soft skill of Presence requires new approaches for on-line meetings.

Rule #1 – use a web camera. Maintaining the illusion of face to face communication is essential to make the remote connection and prevent audience drift. Use the tool function to keep the attendees visible during all screen shares.

Rule #2 – use visual aids as much as possible. Use screen shares with a powerpoint or other visual display to keep focus on today’s agenda and current topic. If the purpose of the meeting is just a daily catch up, then a screen of just faces is fine, but if the purpose of the meeting is to provide deliverables – answers, ideas, input – then do not allow your audience to talk to a blank screen.

Speak with strength when talking to your audience. The screen is now your stage and your role is still “Powerful BA”. Carry the same confidence that you use in a meeting room. If you like to walk the room while presenting in meetings, then get Bluetooth connectors and step back from your desk. Set up a white board in your home office. Practice and film your presentations for play back and review.

If the meeting is a daily stand-up – then feel free to stand up.

One final observation – check the background clutter in your home office or whatever room you are working from. Remove all distracting items. Align the camera to display your certificates and not your personal photos.

Be a Better BA Through Reflective Practice

Written by Christina Lovelock on February 19, 2020. Posted in Articles. 1 Comment on Be a Better BA Through Reflective Practice

Self-reflection is easy to say but hard to do. As BAs we love a framework, and here is a great one to guide us on how to really reflect and learn from ourselves.

In a world of constant input, so much to read, listen to and watch, and so many people to learn from it seems almost impossible to believe that we can learn from ourselves with no input.

Are you really allowing yourself to learn from your own actions and experiences? Are you quick to judge your experiences? When we feel under constant pressure to maximise value, spend so much time in meetings, constantly consuming inputs and producing outputs, time for reflection can look like a luxury or a folly.

Make learning the ultimate goal of every activity and interaction.

The Gibbs Reflective Cycle (1988) is in common use in many professions across the world, it has six straightforward stages:

Description: of the experience
Feelings and thoughts: about the experience
Evaluation:of the experience, both good and bad
Analysis: to make sense of the situation, your own actions and responses
Conclusion about what you learned and what you could have done differently
Action plan: for how you would approach/change your approach to similar situations in the future.

The cycle is equally relevant to help us to reflect on a major event or timeframe (such as “My last 10 years in this job” or a small event or encounter (such as “Two minute elevator ride with the Chief Exec.”).

We can use the framework to reflect on all common BA activities, such as workshops, interviews and outputs we produce.

1. Description

This is the narrative without commentary. No value judgements, no evaluation, just what happened.

What was the situation and context?
Who was involved?
What did I say and do?
What did I see and hear?

2. Feelings and thoughts

This what was going through my mind at the time, how the situation made me feel. This is not about asking ‘why was I so nervous?’ or ‘what made me angry?’ just identifying the thoughts and feelings.

What was I thinking at the time and now?
What where my expectations?
How did I feel?
How do I think others felt?

3. Evaluation

This stage allows us to make judgements about the experience. Was it good/ great/ ok or terrible? But we still don’t try to answer why we feel that way about the experience.

Did I enjoy it or not?
What was good and bad?
What went well/ not so well?
How did the reality compare to the expectation?

4. Analysis

Now for the why.

Why did I feel that way?
Why did I act that way/ say that/ do that?
Why did things go well/ not so well?
Why did that happen? (What else do I know that helps me to make sense of the situation?)

5. Conclusion

This brings together all the previous questions, a chance to summarise and create key take-ways from the situation.

What did I learn?
How will I recap the situation to others?
What skills do I need to develop to get a better outcome next time?

6. Action Plan

So what, if anything, needs to happen next? This stage allows us to identify a range of actions, which might be ‘keep doing what I am doing’ or might indicate a different approach in future.

What will I do differently/ the same?
How will I develop the skills I have identified?
How will I put into practice the conclusions I have made?
How will I apply what I have learned?
How will I celebrate success?

Worked Example

A common question BAs are asked (and ask ourselves) is “How was the workshop?”

Common answers might include:

“Long.”
“It was great, thanks for asking.”
“The room was hot.”
“OK.”
“I think everyone enjoyed it. We got some good feedback.”
“I’m exhausted.”
“We had some last minute drop-outs.”

These answers are a scatter-gun of thoughts, facts, feelings and evaluation. We are better than this! Let’s take a logical approach:

Description: There were 15 people, from 4 departments. 3 people sent their apologies on the day. We had a mix of whole-group and break-out sessions, and the workshop lasted 3 hours with a short break. A couple of people had to leave early.

Thoughts and feelings: Before the session I was nervous, and then a bit frustrated when I found out some key people weren’t coming. I hoped people would come with the right attitude, and also worried we had a lot to cover in the time. I knew I was well prepared for the session.

Evaluation: I enjoyed it, we did manage to stick to time, but it was a bit rushed at the end. People seemed to be happy to contribute. The groups worked well, and I was pleased to see a range of different people give feedback. It got a bit noisy with three groups all working close to each other. Once we got started I wasn’t nervous anymore, but I found it difficult to bring the room back together after the break-outs.

Conclusion: I think three hours might be too long for people, so perhaps split the session down. This would take also take some of the pressure off me, I had to do so much prep work! Thinking about the groups in advance really helped though.

Action Plan: I am going to send a thank you email to everyone, we worked hard today. Next time I am going to book two rooms, so we can spread out a bit, and I am also going to phone people the day before and confirm with them they can attend or send a representative. We will limit it to two hours, and I will have better eye on timings, either by nominating a time keeper or setting a timer.

Applying the logical steps to structure a thorough response takes a little longer than a one word answer – but still only takes a few minutes and the learning is so much greater!

Conclusion

Self-reflection is critical to self-development. Self-awareness and personal development can also be achieved through feedback, but feedback without the power of self-reflection is wasted.

It is hard to reflect, and is even harder to avoid equating reflection with evaluation. Allowing ourselves to make more time for structured reflection can help with every aspect of our lives. Its time to start asking ourselves questions, and finding our own answers.

Further reading: Gibbs G (1988). Learning by Doing: A guide to teaching and learning methods.

The Active BA

Written by Jenny Quillian on January 16, 2020. Posted in Articles.

The purpose of this article is to encourage Business Analysts to be active in your role.

On some teams the BA is a project management support role rather than a leader. While PMs always need our assistance, all projects benefit from having a strong BA with a focus on delivering the business needs. I extend the concept to include proactive and reactive

Be Active. Don’t be a passive member of the project team. Be active in meetings, in proposing ideas, and contributing to the discussions
Be ProActive. Create and present a business analysis plan and BA methodologies to the project team
Be ReActive. Be ready to react quickly when new information, technology or needs are introduced

Be Active

Be active in meetings, in proposing ideas, and contributing to the discussions.

Project meetings can be a lot of fun. The exchange of ideas among technology experts can be uplifting and inspirational. Requirements gathering meetings can also be lively and productive as stakeholders share their knowledge and ideas. But sometimes meeting can be dull and they can be frustrating, especially when participants go off track or monopolize the discussion. Whatever the situation, the active BA is leading or contributing to the discussion. There are two techniques that can help – Preparation and Presence.

Preparation means know your subject.

Within the project team we are the conduit between the technology teams and the business they are supporting. We can bring to the project team an understanding of the user needs and of management’s expectations of how the technology product / output will benefit their organization. It is not necessary to be a Subject Matter Expert in the technology or in the user’s business domain, but you should have sufficient knowledge of both to be an effective liaison between the customer and the development team. Stay current with the technologies of your architecture and your business. Be active in offering your ideas. It is especially important to offer your thoughts in project meetings on requirements that are implied in discussions. Clarify early and often.

The BA Times article Mind Maps for Business Analysis shows how to use the 5W Mind Map to present requirements and anchor team members during project meetings.

Before the first requirements gathering session make sure that you have some understanding of the organization and business of your stakeholders. In large organizations it may be necessary to create your own org chart to place the stakeholders and at least recognize where there may be differing expectations. Talk to a few individuals to get a sense of direction. Think of this as you would a vacation trip to a new country, where research and talking to others who have been there helps get the best out of your days once there.

For all requirements meetings ensure that you have a powerpoint or other visual display to keep focus on today’s agenda and current topic, with an appendix readily at hand of all requirements and decisions previously confirmed. To run a good meeting, be prepared with 1) visual clues and 2) the ability to steer discussion back to the subject of your choice. The latter requires presence.

Presence means having the ability to focus the audience on you and your line of discussion.

There are many tricks and tips for controlling meetings. Agendas, time boxed discussions and parking lots all help, but even with these a facilitator with no Presence can lose an audience.

Entertainers have presence. They move around the stage and engage their audience. Elton John played a piano, but he jumped around that piano to keep the audience eyes on him. When it’s time to focus the audience, stand up and move around as you speak. Use hand movements and point to the presentation as needed. Write comments on the wall boards while you continue the dialog. When you have made your point and want member discussion, sit down and allow the focus to move back to them.

Speak with strength when talking to your audience. I have an accent which goes down well with my local audience, but that alone would not keep their attention if I mumbled. The meeting room is your stage and your role is “Powerful BA”.

Another lesson from the entertainment business is practice. Strong speaking skills can be developed with practice. If your organization has a BA work group, then use this to present a topic to your peers. If you are part of a local IIBA Chapter then volunteer to make a presentation.

Be ProActive

Create and present a business analysis plan and BA methodologies to the project team.

The proactive BA starts with a business analysis plan and BA methodologies, then presents the plan to the project team during a kick off meeting so that they understand and support it. The plan should include roles and responsibilities with regard to requirements analysis, In a great project team, and especially in scrum teams, there is a degree of this analysis conducted by technical members. The business analysis plan will set boundaries for the team to understand who is responsible for getting requirements to a level of specificity so that can be ingested by the developers.

The BA operates in a continuous change environment, so continuous learning is an essential part of the Active BA career. Learning should include development of BA skills as well as staying current with technology. One of my recent projects was migrating apps to AWS cloud, so I spent time learning the vocabulary and cloud concepts to increase my effectiveness in the team. See BA Times article Add BA value to your AWS cloud Project.

Be ReActive

The third branch of the active BA is to be reactive to change. Be prepared and act quickly when new information, technology, or needs are introduced. Reaction times are faster for the active BA with preparation and continuous learning in place, and the ability to ignore sunk costs.

Sunk Costs is an Economic principle that costs already incurred have no part in decisions on future expenditure. For a BA this means that time and effort spent to date sometimes have to be wiped out when requirements change mid-project. Forget the hours spent defining the module that will now be outsourced. Let Finance worry about the dollars and cents of wasted time. The BA should immediately pivot to new requirements and how this change affects existing requirements.

The same assessment applies to the backlog and deliverables on Agile projects, but with regular adjustments from sprint feedback, and strategy changes can still occur during a delivery phase that wipe out existing work. An Agile BA is Active, Proactive and Reactive.