Skip to main content

Tag: Training

Mentoring and coaching newly hired BAs in an agile organization

As an experienced Business Analyst in a fast-moving company with an extremely complex technology stack, I am often faced with the challenge to transform a new hire into an effective analyst. She will initially find it very hard to successfully navigate and benefit the organization. That gets even more complicated because in modern organizations we rarely have the opportunity to consolidate and clearly document our processes, tools, and software applications.

I am going to share my experience in arranging a lean yet effective mentoring program.

Problem statement: what’s the best way to bring a newly hired Business Analyst up to speed in the most efficient way?

The answer I elaborated on overtime was through mentoring and coaching. I believe that you need guidance and feedback to be able to gain complex core and technical skills as those required of a Business Analyst.

Mentoring is aimed at improving someone else skill sets

My objective was to conceive a full-fledged mentoring plan. I wanted this process to be generic and reusable. At the same time, it would not have to interfere with my other work commitments. As a first step, I drew a list of projects that I was or had been working on recently as these would most likely make up the new hire’s work background for a while. For each of them, I noted down the main concepts she would have to retain, as a sort of Acceptance Criteria.

I did the same with tools and techniques, and these were especially focused on the Agile software development process.

Getting to know the main stakeholders, teams, and their responsibilities was to be also part of our mentoring activities. These would give the new hire a sort of system view of our company, especially of the technology platform.


Advertisement

I estimated the time needed to go through those and give her the basic information. Hence, I built a rough timeline of my mentoring sessions and tried to stick with it. Our sessions usually lasted one hour and were held early in the morning, so as to avoid being interrupted by other colleagues.

The result was a win-win situation: the new hire would feel more at ease with each class and soon started to contribute to her development team. I also improved my teaching and collaborative learning skills.

Coaching helps you achieve your goals

It is common knowledge that skills acquisition is only possible through practice and real learning does not occur unless you apply what you’ve studied to real-life problems.

Putting my early extreme programming skills at work, I introduced the concept of pair analysis in our mentoring program.

Whenever I had an analysis activity at hand (in fact, that was all days the entire day) we would sit together with the new hire and try to understand the requirements, share some assumptions, note the open points, contact the relevant stakeholders, take part in some meetings together, document and evaluate our solution options, etc.

A typical exercise was for her to write the User Stories for the requirements we had elicited together and then to explain them to the development team. Initially, she was charged with relatively simple problems, and as her skillset started to improve, I asked her to take on more challenging requests.

In terms of core competencies, I told her to prepare and facilitate lessons learned sessions with the development team. Every time she would have to change the format of the session and to follow up on the action items. Facilitating group discussions in the comfort of your team enhance your self-confidence and is an excellent way to improve your interactions and communication skills.

Personal development is always of paramount importance for a Business Analyst and even more so for a junior one. My advice span from books to read, to other training material or courses I had attended myself. Sometimes we would both listen to the same free webinar and discuss what we had learned afterward.

Key Performance Indicators

We were also able to establish some key indicators to assess how our mentoring and coaching process was performing. They were also used for other analysts joining our organization afterward.

The ones we selected are below:

  • The time needed to bring the new hire up to speed (number of weeks)
  • The complexity of the problems the new hire would be able to autonomously manage after a given amount of time. That assessment would be repeated at different points in time, e.g. 3, 6, 12 months.

Mission Impossible: BYO Mentor

What is mentoring

Mentoring in Europe has existed as early as Ancient Greece. The word’s origin comes from Mentor, son of Alcimus in Homer’s Odyssey. Mentorship is the influence, guidance, or direction given by a mentor. Mentors have hands-on experience that their mentees can learn from, so that the mentees can gain proficiency. [1] Mentoring is like a professional relationship similar to an apprenticeship but without command and control.

Why mentoring is important

The IT industry is a fast-moving industry and it is extremely important for IT/project services professionals to keep their skills up to date. Technologies of today and tomorrow will always require you to learn new things. Regardless of what you want to learn, you want to know the best way to begin and a reliable way to track to completion. This is where mentoring can add value to your own process – it will give your learning process more certainty by providing trust, advice, support, and discipline. My own experience proved the benefits of mentoring. I have had 3 mentors. The first one advised me to widen up my eyes in terms of career path, rather than adhering to the shallow and limiting views of IT occupations. The second fast-tracked my learning of a new skill set. The third gave me a different lens to see sustainable productivity. They all played a very vital role in my career development and I truly appreciate their help and effort.
To give back to the community, I have also become a mentor through 3 different not-for-profit organizations in Australia. Thanks to their careful mentor-mentee matching processes, I have been able to advise my mentees with my stories of success and lessons, so that they feel well informed in critical decision making.

BYO Mentor

Traditional mentorship requires 2 people to be involved: the mentor and the mentee. Due to different reasons, connecting yourself with a mentor may not be suitable for you. If that’s your situation, don’t give up: think bold: BYO Mentor (Be Your Own Mentor).
Is BYO Mentor a mission impossible? Absolutely not!
Actually, you know yourself better than anyone else. You have trust in yourself and you surely will support yourself. All you need is some methodology on structured advice, plus discipline.
Let’s find the answer together by looking at a real example of BYO Mentor lifecycle.

BYO Mentoring Discipline:

  • Be familiar with the concept of SMART goals prior to this session.
  • Allocate 60 mins (of uninterrupted time) for this session.

You need to know what you want to achieve by setting your goals. Your goal may be as simple as to master a new skill or understand new knowledge, which is straightforward, or as complex as to advance your career, e.g., by being appointed to a different position.

Advertisement

Session 1 – Goal Setting

BYO Mentoring Advice: Big or small, you’d better follow the rule of thumb by writing down your goals in a SMART way.

The acronym SMART means your goal is:

  • Specific (Concisely state the expected outcomes)
  • Measurable (Make it both quantifiable and verifiable)
  • Achievable (Make it challenging but realistic or state if it is aspirational)
  • Relevant (Make it relevant to your long term objectives)
  • Time-bound (Be clear about the timeframe that it should be achieved by)

SMART goal example:

  • For a Business Analyst professional: I want to pass the IIBA CBAP exam by 30th November 2021.
    By following the above guideline, you should be able to get your own SMART goal. If you come up with more than one goal that’s fine, you just need to prioritize them and focus on the first one first.

Session 2 – Gap Analysis

BYO Mentoring Discipline:

  • Session 2 should start no later than 2 weeks after session 1 completion.
  • Determine the reliable industrial/official source of information, prior to the session.
  • Allocate 60 mins for this session, in the following sequence:
    a. 40 mins for Future State Analysis
    b. 10 mins for Current State Analysis
    c. 10 mins for Gap Identification

Future State Analysis:
Once you have specified your goal, do your own research on what it takes to achieve your goal.
BYO Mentoring Advice: Analyse industrial/official sources.
Want to become a Senior Business Analyst? Download 10 Position Descriptions from jobs websites. Want to pass the IIBA CBAP exam? Go to the IIBA website to understand the detailed process of certification. Put your research outcome into an Excel spreadsheet in the “future state” tab.

Current State Analysis:
Equally important, make sure you do a reality check on where you are at now.
BYO Mentoring Advice: Align your current state analysis to the future state analysis.
Have you got some of the essential experience for your dream job already? Have you met the eligibility criteria for your preferred exam? Put everything in the same Excel spreadsheet to the “current state” tab.

Gaps Identification:
Now that there is the “future state” (your goal) and the “current state” (what you already have), you are ready to identify the gaps.
BYO Mentoring Advice: Compare your future state v.s. current state, and work out the gaps.
Example: To Pass the IIBA CBAP Exam

  • Future State analysis:
    o Meet Exam Eligibility Criteria
    o BABOK Knowledge Study
    o Prepare for the Exam
    o Take and Pass the Exam
  • Current State analysis:
    o (✔) Met Exam Eligibility Criteria
  • Gaps Identification:
    o (X) Study BABOK Knowledge
    o (X) Prepare for the Exam
    o (X) Take and Pass the Exam

Session 3 – Action Plan

BYO Mentoring Discipline:

  • Session 3 should start no later than 2 weeks after session 2 completion.
  • Allocate 60 mins for this session, in the following sequence:
    a. 30 mins for Action Options Generation
    b. 15 mins for Options Comparison
    c. 15 mins for Decision Making and Due Date

With the gap analysis done, you are on track to create a customized action plan, which takes your availability and circumstances into account.

Action Options Generation:
Refer back to your gap analysis outcomes. Each gap identified should lead to relevant action options.
BYO Mentoring Advice: Action options can be generated by analyzing the industrial/official sources. Action options must add direct value to bridging the gaps you identified.
Example:

  • Gap: “Study BABOK Knowledge”
  • Action Options generated:
    o Join an IIBA Chapter hosted BABOK Study Group
    o Register a commercial education provider’s training course

Options Comparison:
Simply list the advantages and disadvantages of each action option. Bullet points will be sufficient.
BYO Mentoring Advice: If you don’t know how to compare action options, start with cost, time, and frequency.
Example:

Decision Making & Due Date:
Decide which action option you will go on with, and assign a challenging but realistic due date.

BYO Mentoring Advice: When choosing from different action options, as long as you pick a good option, that’s fine. There is no need to navigate to the very best option, as this will consume too much time.
Example:

  • If you prefer weekdays: choose “IIBA BABOK Study Group”. Join the next available group.
  • If you prefer the weekend: choose “Training Course”. Enroll in the next available course.

Session 4: Ongoing Inspection

You need to inspect your progress and track it to completion.
BYO Mentoring Discipline:

  • Remind yourself of your actions on a weekly basis
    a. Send delayed email to yourself
    b. Set up calendar appointments
    c. Ask your family or friend to check your progress

A lot of email tools/apps can support delayed emails. Send yourself delayed emails targeting key milestones in line with your action plan. Plus, you can add calendar appointments to remind yourself of key dates. If these are not enough, ask another person for help.

Continuous Improvement
Mentoring or BYO Mentor are meant for our continuous improvement. If you want to be a better self. Do something now. Remember If your circumstances changed, consider participating in a human-led mentoring program.

Sketchnote Sceptic?

Visual thinking skills and the creation of visually engaging outputs are becoming more popular and prevalent. Is this a valuable business skill, or a forgettable fad?

What Are Sketchnotes?

The technique was defined and developed by Mike Rohde, and is closely related to other visual disciplines such as graphic recording, visual meeting facilitation and rich pictures.

Sketchnotes combine words and visual elements, to create a record or convey information. The visual elements might include simple sketches, icons and borders. The textual elements can be words or sentences, and make use of different fonts, styles, size and direction. Sketchnotes can be created digitally and by hand – or a combination of both.

The Case Against

Attention seeking?

Sketchnotes often grab our attention, but information filtered through someone else’s brain may arouse more questions than answers. “It’s interesting to see what someone else has learned, but is it helping me learn anything?” The usefulness of other people’s sketchnotes is very variable.

It’s for creative-types!

The professional sketchnote images we see can make us feel inferior. “I wouldn’t know where to start” and “I can’t draw” seem like valid barriers to trying this technique.

All the stuff

As with most aspects of our lives, there are a lot of options. This can translate to what feels like a lot of decisions to make, and “I don’t have the right pens/software/tablet…” can lead to an outcome of ‘do nothing by default’.

Really Listening

People speak quicker than we can write (or draw). If we are concerned about creating an attractive output, this might mean we miss something.


Advertisement

The Case For

Attention seeking?

There is no obligation to share our sketchnotes. We can all experiment with sketchnoting free from the pressures of other people’s opinions. The time may come when we create something to be proud of, and would genuinely be of use to others, but equally the notes are personal and do not have to make sense to anyone else.

It’s for creative-types!

The fact that professional photographers publish beautiful images does not stop the rest of us of using our phone cameras! Creativity is a skill that can be practiced and improved, not a set aspect of personality. We don’t need permission to try something creative, even if it’s outside our usual approach.

All the stuff

Though it would be tempting to believe the right equipment and software would take significant investment of time and money, the reality is that we have everything needed to try it. A pen, some paper, and something to learn or remember.

Really Listening

With the growing amount of virtual input – TED Talks, webinars, online events, remote meetings, we can easily become distracted or attempt to ‘multi-task’. Sketchnoting provides a mechanism to give our full attention to the situation at hand. Distilling the key messages is easier with sketchnoting than traditional notes!

BA Oct16 20

Source: qaspire.com. Image reproduced with permission.

Sketchnote Skills

Listening and comprehension skills are more important than drawing skills for creating great sketchnotes.

People often use visual imagery when speaking, mention anecdotes and use metaphors. By picking out these visual clues, we can enrich the linear verbal information to create a connected visual record. Learning a very small number of icons can build the confidence to add images to notes.

Conclusion

Sketchnotes provide a lasting record of personal development activities; including books, events and training. Over time this builds to a library of knowledge we will be happy to revisit, to reactivate and refresh the learning.

If we let go of the desire to be perfect, and the narratives we tell ourselves about ‘not being creative’ and ‘no good at art’, we can move away from the ubiquitous pages of text and bullet points. We can create engaging outputs that help us remember more, synthesise information and make connections. 

Resources

Mike Rhode, The Sketchnote Handbook (2012)

https://rohdesign.com/sketchnotes-1

http://qaspire.com/sketchnotes/

www.meetup.com/TheVisualJam

https://graphicsmadeeasy.co.uk/

How to Level Up your Business Analyst Career

As a forward-thinking Business Analyst, this question is probably crossing your mind frequently.

You’ve established yourself in your career, but you may feel stagnant, eager for a change of scenery or simply ready to learn something new. In a competitive job market, Business Analysts need career know-how to navigate their next steps to keep their work fulfilling. Read on for simple steps you can take to take your Business Analyst career to the next level.

Understand Which Career Path You Want

To get an edge on advancing your career, you need to know where you want to end up. Business Analysts can take their careers in any one of a variety of directions. It all depends on your interests, strengths and opportunities.

As you move through your career, you’ll see that job titles and descriptions become more specialized and specific based on industry and skills. If you’re interested in the tech industry and you’re good at bridging technical work with communicating specialized ideas, a role as an IT Business Analyst could be a great fit. If you’d prefer to work in a variety of industries doing C-level consulting, you may consider a path into a Management Analyst position.

These are just a couple of examples of advanced and in-demand career paths for Business Analysts. Collabera and New Horizons Computer Learning Centers have detailed descriptions of directions that Business Analysts may take as they move throughout their careers.

Find a Mentor

A mentor is a great industry-specific resource for everything from day-to-day questions to giving insight into career decisions. Mentor-mentee relationships can begin organically, like with a trusted superior at work, or you can seek one out with a networking program. The International Institute of Business Analysts (IIBA) hosts local chapters where you can meet other analysts at different points in their careers, and they are forming a mentorship program for members.

A mentor should be someone you can see regularly, perhaps daily or weekly, and who can get to know you and your work habits well. Ideally your mentor is someone at your company, but a former colleague or even a professor can make a great mentor too. With a mentor, you’ll form an ongoing bond that will evolve as your career goals change.


Advertisement

Get a Career Coach

While mentors are typically fellow Business Analysts, career coaches are professionals who operate from a higher level as they help you seek out new opportunities. They may not be Business Analysts themselves, like a mentor would be, but they have plentiful resources for networking, optimizing your soft skills, and helping with resumes and cover letters.

Career coaches often focus on a local region where they have expertise on the job market. They meet with their clients for sessions lasting up to a couple of hours for a flat fee. Virtual and nationwide services are also available through organizations like TheMuse. If you plan on meeting with a career coach, make sure you have an idea of what you want to accomplish during your session and have documents like your resume and work history handy.

Take Classes

Your experience as a Business Analyst doesn’t have to come solely from formal education or on-the-job projects. Taking classes allows you to improve existing skills or add new skills to your resume through cheap and accessible means.

Business Analyst networking groups, like the IIBA, hold specialized workshops to help you hone your skills and learn from other Business Analysts. If you prefer self-directed learning, there are free online resources with high-quality trainings for Business Analysts, like LinkedIn Learning, where you can earn certificates to display on your profile. Coursera also has a free curriculum that specializes in business analytics with courses designed by The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. These courses are great if you have a specialty field in mind where you may be lacking competencies.

Volunteer for Challenging Projects

If you feel stagnated in your current role, be on the lookout for opportunities to challenge yourself. Offer your input in projects that may be out of your usual comfort zone so that you can learn with skilled colleagues or step forward to tackle an issue you found in day-to-day processes. No matter the project, be sure to ask for help when you need it—that’s one of the best ways to grasp new concepts and skills. By taking on challenging projects, you’ll not only gain experience, but you’ll also establish yourself as someone who takes initiative.

Invest in Soft Skills

While it makes sense to devote your time to expanding your technical skills, don’t let soft skills fall by the wayside. Soft skills are qualities and interpersonal skills that are less “trainable” than hard skills, but translate to every role in every industry. Soft skills include conflict resolution, negotiation, communication skills and more. Usman Haq details important soft skills for Business Analysts in his article in BATimes. These skills are acquired and practiced daily, so be mindful of opportunities to hone them. LinkedIn Learning also has courses on soft skills so you can study at your leisure.

Are You Ready to Take Your Career to the Next Level?

Being a business analyst entails wearing a lot of hats. Conquer your career path by understanding your long term career goals, find a mentor and a career coach to help you reach those goals, take classes for both hard and soft skills and don’t be afraid to raise your hand for big projects.  As you take these small steps, your future in Business Analytics will unfold.

Five Crossword Tricks to Help Pass Certification Exams

I love to complete crossword puzzles. More than a pastime, they are more like an addiction for me.

At any one time I have 3-4 different puzzles in progress, of varying levels. I am no expert, but I have learned a few techniques that surprisingly matches advice I have given over the years to help candidates pass their certification exams.

You see, it helps to approach your exam like a puzzle. Why is that? The “puzzle” creators, the certification exam writers, devise tricky and challenging questions like a crossword editor does. They are difficult because the exam writers want to test your knowledge of business analysis, project management, agile, security or whatever your certification interest. I think it will be helpful to treat your exam like a puzzle to help get in the right mind frame.

To that end, I have developed a few tricks over the years to help me solve crossword puzzles. Here are five of my best tricks and an explanation of how they apply to cert exams.

1. Skip over hard answers – work the easy ones first.

No matter how easy or difficult a puzzle I work on, there are always some clues and sections that are easier than others. Use those to help answer harder ones and to build confidence. Leave answers blank you are unsure of and only lightly pencil in those you are partly sure of.

CERTIFICATION APPLICATION: Skip hard questions and leave them blank the first or second time through your exam. Exam creators like to devilishly put hard questions near the beginning to test your meddle. It is easy to spend 10 or more minutes on early difficult questions, which leaves you that much less time for the remainder. Skip them! From my own and others’ experience, difficult questions are easier the 2nd or 3rd time through.

2. Rely on patterns to figure out answers you are unsure of.

When I am uncertain of a crossword answer, I find it helpful to look at surrounding words and letters for clues. In English, certain letter combinations are more common and others will not occur at all. For example, if a word ends in “K,” odds are the preceding letter is an A, E, C, L, N, R, or S.

CERTIFICATION: APPLICATION: Look for distracters (e.g., oxymorons like “assumption constraint”) to spot incorrect answers. Look for answers that have 3 commonalities between them and one that does not (odds are good that is the correct answer, but not always.) Wording from one question can help you with others (this happened on every certification exam I took).


Advertisement

3. Make sure you understand the correct meaning of a question.

Clever crossword editors use clues that could have several meanings depending on how you interpret them. For instance, a simple clue of “Free” on a puzzle I just finished could mean the verb “to free” or the noun “to be free”. It could be free of cost, free of constraint, or carefree, such as “free and easy.”

CERTIFICATION APPLICATION: Just like clever crossword editors, clever exam writers try similar tricks to make you think and not just recall. For instance, suppose you encountered a question that makes common sense but contradicts your body of knowledge. Once example I remember from my PMP preparation had to do with paying bribes to get a project approved in a foreign country where that was common practice. That option would not be the correct answer because it violates the PM Body of Knowledge (PMBOK Guide®).

4. Use multiple iterations to complete your answers.

I have heard of expert puzzlers who complete the Sunday New York Times in one sitting (in ink no less). Most people cannot do this and on difficult puzzles I need several attempts to complete it and I always use a pencil!

CERTIFICATION APPLICATION: Unless you are an expert test taker, expect to do two or three iterations of reading through and answering questions on your exam. If you follow rule #1, you should leave blank every hard answer on your first read-through. You should also flag any questions you are partly sure of as mentioned in rule #2. From observations in teaching numerous certification classes I know the importance of this. After practice exams in class, many students reported they changed an answer or two only to discover their first one was correct. Do not let this to happen to you on your exam! Leave answers blank until you are sure of them.

5. Use your best guess if you must.

Sometimes I will write down a crossword answer even if I am not sure of it. I do this more often near the end of a puzzle to help me with adjacent answers. Confession: I have been known to fill in words to complete a puzzle just so I can finish it and move on.

CERTIFICATION APPLICATION: If your time is nearly up and you have unanswered questions, by all means use your best guess. There is no penalty for guessing, only for not answering a question. Try to pace yourself so you have time to make an educated guess. If you are seriously close to the end, put down any answer. In other words, like a crossword, go with those “lightly penciled in” answers. One of my students early on told me an urban myth that answer “b” occurs most often in exams. I am not sure if that is true but putting answer “b” on say five blank answers probably ensures you get one or two of them correct.

I have worked with certification preparation and exam strategies for many years, including training countless candidates. One common denominator among virtually all my students has been exam anxiety. We all face it and there is more than one approach to combatting it.

Treating an exam like a puzzle is one approach to reducing exam anxiety by providing strategies for navigating difficult questions on your exam. Using crossword tricks like the ones outlined above can help reduce your exam anxiety and improve your score. Let me know what you think and share your own tricks that have worked.