Mastering Business Analysis

Karl Wiegers shares his lessons on requirements, project management, design, quality and more. Karl’s advice can make you significantly better at what you do. Show Notes Karl Wiegers started programming in 1970 and has collected 60 lessons he has learned in several areas of software development including requirements, design, project management, culture, teamwork, quality, and process improvement. Each of these lessons bring insights that can help you to and your organization to become significantly better at creating high quality, valuable solutions to your customers. The Need to Iterate Almost everything we do takes more than a single shot and design is a good example. The first lesson in the design category of Karl’s book is “design demands iteration”.  There’s always more than one design solution for a software problem and seldom a single best solution. The first design approach you come up with is unlikely to be the best option.  A good rule of thumb is that you’re not done with design until you’ve created at least three designs, discard them, and take the best ideas from those three and build something better. The same holds true for requirements.  It will take a few iterations to get it right.  These are cyclical things that you have to plan in your project management approach.  You’re going to have to build in some reviews, get some feedback, prototype, and do some modeling to make sure we’re on the right track. Icebergs are always larger than they first appear; that means that there’s going to be growth in the project. There’s going to be new information and new ideas that come along.  You have to build in that growth and include contingency buffers into your plans.  The bigger the project, the more unknowns and ambiguity and the more likely it is to change. Understanding Stakeholders and Customers Usage-centric development (as opposed to user-centric) is more likely to satisfy customer needs than product or feature-centered development.   We shouldn’t care about features as much as you care about knowing what people need to do with the product.  That’s the difference between the usage-centric approach and the product-centric approach. That begins by understanding your stakeholders.  Stakeholders are individuals, groups, or even systems who can shape or influence the direction of a project or who are affected by the project.  To be successful, you need to identify your various user classes and identify who’s going to be the literal voice of the customer. Keep in mind that the customer isn’t always right, but they always have a point.  Many times, the customer may ask for a solution, which may or may not be the right thing.  To provide valuable solutions, we need to understand the underlying problem.  If the solution they propose is the answer, what is the question? Listen to the full episode for more lessons and advice on stakeholders, quality, applying what you’ve learned, and more. YOUR HOMEWORKPick two areas you want to get better at and vow to spend some of your time on the project learning about those areas. Look for opportunities to apply that new learning on your project and perform in those areas better than you would have before your commitment to learn and develop your skill in that focus area. Links Mentioned in this Episode Karl’s Personal Website – KarlWiegers.comProcessImpact.com – Karl’s business and book informationInformation on Karl’s book, Software Development Pearls Karl Wiegers Karl Wiegers is an independent consultant, author, speaker, and thought leader in the project community. His books on software requirements are considered required reading for Business Analysts and Project Managers. As a consultant and trainer, Karl has worked with more than 100 companies and government organizations of all types, helping them improve the effectiveness and efficiency of their software development activities. Thank you for listening to the program To get more valuable content to enhance your skills and advance your career, you can subscribe on iTunes. Also, reviews on iTunes are highly appreciated! I read each review and it helps keep me motivated to continue to bring you valuable content each week. TrendingMBA007: How to be a Badass Business Analyst – Interview with Bob Prentiss Popular EpisodesMBA103: How Mr. Finch Stole the ProjectMBA060: Business Architecture and Business AnalysisMBA007: How to be a Badass Business Analyst – Interview with Bob PrentissMBA058: Reusable Discovery TestingMBA144: The 12 Days of the ProjectMBA116: Implementing Solutions vs Problem SolvingThe post MBA228: Software Development Pearls appeared first on Mastering Business Analysis.

Ian Reynolds discusses how to discover the right solutions for your customers and then deliver them quickly. Show Notes Many organizations, especially as people are trying to work in more Lean and Agile ways, work towards producing a minimum viable product (MVP) and move on after achieving it.  These organizations aren’t thinking about the value that could be delivered after the MVP. They believe that if they put a minimum viable products in our customer’s hands, they know whether or not it’s a great product.  Instead, people need to be working towards a minimum viable business as opposed to the minimum viable product.  You could put a great product out there, but if you haven’t designed it to solve for the customer’s ultimate needs by testing it and getting early feedback and created a degree of stickiness in a business model that will help you retain and add clients, you have a problem. You don’t necessarily have a business and you haven’t necessarily solved the problem.  Over optimization towards what you believe to be a viable product is not necessarily that MvP. It’s a business model that’s going to have sustainability. What’s Valuable to Customers When you’re developing a product, the easiest person to fool is yourself. You may believe that you have a great product, but you need to test it to validate that belief.  That could be as simple as using a survey to check the validity of your idea. Building a product (even a scaled-down version of a working product) is a very expensive way to test an idea. If you build the product first and then try to go out in the market and then make the adjustments, you’re going to have to build it again. Faster Delivery There are two major inhibitors to speed to market.  One is trying to do everything yourself.  The desire to understand exactly how the product is built and have too much control over the process of building that product is not efficient. When you’re building a product, it’s not reasonable to be so in the weeds that you’re concerned about using a specific technology or growing to an understanding of how everything works.  When starting your business or starting your MVP, don’t try to have one person do everything. Have people that are specialized in their given fields and fractionally use their time. The other big impact to speed to market is if you don’t have a needed skill set in house. Training that skill and building competency can take a long time. You don’t necessarily have to hire for it as that could be much more expensive than using an outside party. Listen to the full episode to understand how to test and discover the right solution and how approaches such as DevOps can help accelerate both discovery and delivery. YOUR HOMEWORKFirst Tip: Look at what the biggest players in the market are doing in terms of their engineering culture and then figure out what is it that they’re doing efficiently that you can copy. Don’t try to invent things yourself or come up with a new process; figure out what they’re doing and just copy it.Second Tip: Analyze the opportunity cost of doing something in-house versus using a third party by looking at what an outside party can do for you and what specialization they have. If they could solve the problem for you quickly, maybe they can do it much more cheaply. IAN Reynolds Ian is the Chief Solutions Architect at Zibtek and Head of Venture Partners at Golden Section Studios. In his role as Solutions Architect, Ian matches business needs to technical solutions that solves the customer’s problem. Thank you for listening to the program To get more valuable content to enhance your skills and advance your career, you can subscribe on iTunes and other podcatchers. Also, reviews on iTunes are highly appreciated! I read each review and it helps keep me motivated to continue to bring you valuable content each week. TrendingLightning Cast: Business Agility More Popular EpisodesLightning Cast: Which Communications Channel Should You Use?MBA056: Design Thinking for Better Business AnalysisMBA075: Slices of Big TruthsMBA001: Introduction to the Mastering Business Analysis PodcastMBA213: Applying Theory of ConstraintsLightning Cast: The Business Analyst Career Path The post MBA227: The Minimum Viable Business appeared first on Mastering Business Analysis.

In this lightning cast, we explore the 5-step design process Elon Musk uses for SpaceX to innovate and get better results. Show Notes In a recent interview, Elon Musk shared the 5-step design process he uses at Space X to achieve better results.  Below are the details of this design process. Step 1: Make your requirements less dumb. Make sure you start with high quality requirements and that you truly understand the ‘why’ behind each.  Simply using requirements because someone told you that’s what they want makes your requirements dumb. “It does not matter who gave them to you. It’s particularly dangerous if a smart person gave you the requirements because you might not question them enough.  Everyone’s wrong.  No matter who you are, everyone’s wrong some of the time.” Elon recommends that for whatever requirement or constraint you have, it should come with a name, not a department.  That’s because if there’s a question of concern, you can’t ask a department. You have to ask a person.  The person who’s asking for the requirement or highlighting the constraint must agree that they will take responsibility for that requirement. If you fail to do this, you may run into the situation where some random person who’s no longer with the company came up with the requirement off the top of their head with no foundation in a real need.  That’s a dumb requirement. Step 2: Delete the part or process Look critically at the process or piece you’re developing and try to remove pieces instead of always adding new things.  Work to understand the value that’s added by each part or each step in the process and reduce or eliminate those that don’t add value. “If you’re not occasionally adding things back in, you are not deleting enough. The bias tends to be very strongly towards ‘Let’s add this part or process step in case we need it’. But you can basically make in-case arguments for so many things.” Step 3: Simplify or optimize the design Optimizing should only be done after you make your requirements less dumb and try to delete the part of process.  The most common mistake you can make is to optimize something that shouldn’t exist in the first place. Step 4: Accelerate cycle time We want to reduce the amount of time from when we start working on something to when we finish.  The easiest way to do that is to focus on one thing at a time and eliminate task switching.  With that focus, you can get things done more quickly . . . just make sure they’re the right things. “You’re moving too slowly. Go faster, but don’t go faster until you work on the other three things first.” Step 5: Automate Once you’re confident you have the right requirements with the right ownership, removed unneeded steps, optimized the design, and done things quickly, you can automate the process.  Don’t spend the time and effort to automate the wrong thing or automate too soon. Using Elon Musk’s five-step design process may help you and your organization to innovate faster and focus on customer value. Latest Episodes MBA228: Software Development Pearls MBA227: The Minimum Viable Business MBALC: Elon Musk’s 5-Step Design Process MBA226: The FOCCCUS Formula MBA225: The Value of Business Models MBA224: Corkscrew Thinking MBA223: The Human Work Machine MBA222: Testing Your Business Ideas MBA221: Systems Thinking and Business Agility MBA220: Thoughtless Design with Karl Wiegers MBA219: How To Be an Agile Business Analyst BA Toolbox – A3 Report MBA218: Customer-Centric Transformation Lightning Cast: Agile Planning MBA217: Objectives and Key Results Lightning Cast: POWER Start for Your Meetings MBA216: Outcome Based Change Lightning Cast: Resistance to Change MBA215: The Challenges with Leading in Product Management MBA214: The BA Success Path MBA213: Applying Theory of Constraints MBA212: Transforming Your Work with Modern Agile MBA211: Adaptive Leadership MBA210: Vital Communication MBA209: Visual Thinking MBA208: Facilitative Leadership MBA207: Bad Behaviors in the Workplace MBA206: Succeeding with Analytics Lightning Cast: BA Goals Revisited MBA205: Beyond Data Literacy MBA204: Top Skills for 2020 MBA203: Career Insurance Yes, Virginia, There Are BAs in Agile Lightning Cast: Failure to Launch (a new product) MBA202: Business Value Analysis MBA201: Tips From an Accidental Product Owner MBA200: Take Action! The Best Advice from Over 200 Episodes MBA199: The Future of the BA Profession MBA198: DevOps – What it Means for BAs MBA197: Making Change Fun MBA196: Customer Journey Treasure Hunting MBA195: Example Mapping MBA194: Start Your Project Off Right MBA193: About Your Career Lightning Cast: Story Estimation – What’s the Point? Lightning Cast: Requirements Rot MBA192: The Blight of Product Debt Lightning Cast: The Power to Get Things Done MBA191: Use Cases in Agile Lightning Cast: AI – Can you be replaced by a machin

In this episode, we revisit Theory of Constraints, an approach to improving organizational performance by accelerating delivery. Author Clarke Ching shares his FOCCCUS Formula to address the system’s bottleneck. Show Notes In every process or value delivery system, there’s one constraint (bottleneck) that limits the flow of value of the entire system.  If you want to deliver faster, you must identify and address the bottleneck.  To improve the flow of value, we can apply the Theory of Constraints, a process improvement methodology that focuses on addressing the bottleneck. Eli Goldratt’s famous book, The Goal, introduced readers to the Theory of Constraints and how to apply Goldratt’s Five Focusing Steps to address your constraint.  However, many people are unaware of or confused by the Five Focusing Steps. In you’re confused about how to address the bottleneck in your process, you can use Clarke Ching’s FOCCCUS Formula instead.  FOCCCUS is an acronym that stands for the steps you can take to address the constraint and improve the system. FOCCCUS The first step in the FOCCCUS Formula is “F” for find the bottleneck.  You can’t improve the bottleneck if you don’t know where it is.  To find the bottleneck, look for work piling up of long queues in front of a step in the process.  Work typically builds up in front of the constraint. Once you find the bottleneck, the next step is “O” for optimize. You want to optimize the bottleneck so that it can get work done faster.  You can do this by making sure the work that goes to the bottleneck resource is ready (has everything they need) and the bottleneck is focused only on value added work. After you optimize, the next step is collaborate.  Collaboration helps the bottleneck deliver faster because non-bottleneck resources may be able to off-load work that the bottleneck is doing. In addition to collaboration, you can apply the second “C”, which is coordinate.  This step involves finding ways to coordinate activities of both bottleneck and non-bottleneck resources to optimize delivery.  This can include rearranging process steps or changing the timing of certain pieces of work to smooth the flow. The third “C” in the FOCCCUS Formula is curate.  When you curate, you decide what to put in a limited amount of space.  Essentially, you prioritize work to maximize the value that can be delivered. The “U” in the FOCCCUS Formula stands for upgrade.  This can mean buying faster equipment, holding training to improve skills associated with the constrained task, or hiring more people.  Upgrading can be expensive and you should only upgrade after completing the other steps. The final step is “S”, which stands for start again.  The FOCCCUS Formula is a continuous process.  After you complete each step, you should validate that the bottleneck hasn’t moved.  If it has, continuing to the next step with the same bottleneck won’t improve the flow of value through the system. Check each time to ensure that you know where the bottleneck is and start with the simplest, cheapest intervention. Listen to the full episode to understand how to use the FOCCCUS Formula to improve your process and accelerate value delivery. Clarke Ching Clarke has been powered by the Theory of Constraints for over 20 years and Agile since 2003.  He wrote Rolling Rocks Downhill (the Agile business novel that never mentions Agile) and The Bottleneck Rules (which was featured in The Guardian newspaper, and was briefly the #2 best-selling leadership book on Amazon.com, just behind Steven Covey). Latest Episodes MBA228: Software Development PearlsKarl Wiegers shares his lessons on requirements, project management, design, quality and more. Karl’s advice can make you significantly better at what you do. Show Notes Karl Wiegers started programming in 1970 and has collected 60 lessons he has learned in several areas of software development including requirements, design, project management, culture, teamwork, quality, and… Read more: MBA228: Software Development Pearls MBA227: The Minimum Viable BusinessIan Reynolds discusses how to discover the right solutions for your customers and then deliver them quickly. MBALC: Elon Musk’s 5-Step Design ProcessIn this lightning cast, we explore the 5-step design process Elon Musk uses for SpaceX to innovate and get better results. MBA226: The FOCCCUS FormulaThe Theory of Constraints is an approach to improving organizational performance by accelerating delivery. Author Clarke Ching shares his FOCCCUS Formula to address the system’s bottleneck. MBA225: The Value of Business ModelsDavid Mantica helps us understand business models and helps us understand how to find new opportunities to create greater value. MBA224: Corkscrew ThinkingClarke Ching shares an innovative problem solving approach to help us solve tricky problems. MBA223: The Human

David Mantica helps us understand business models and helps us understand how to find new opportunities to create greater value. Show Notes Creating product requirements and delivering features is one thing. Understanding the business context and business models associated with your product and identifying different avenues to drive value is quite another. Understanding your business model can help drive value for your organization and increase the value that you contribute as a Business Analyst, Product Owner, or Project Manager. A business model incorporates how you package a product, how you sell it, how you market it, how you deliver it, and how you get paid for it.  The packaging refers to the offer itself, not the box it comes in. Your business model gives you insight into how you extract money or time from somebody for the product and understand the expense necessary that actually deliver it and the margins associated with it.  You then tie in how you fit in the value chain of your organization and where you fit from a competitive standpoint. Business Models for Internal Products The first thing we have to remember with internal products is that revenue is considered with use and adoption of the product. Instead of revenue being much somebody paid for something, your internal customers pay for what you build based on their time; if they’re using it more, they’re paying a lot of money for it.  Once you understand the use, you could tie value back to productivity. We need to consider that there are different ways that you can deliver; all the different ways you can sell, all the different ways that you could generate revenue, ways that people engage with your product are different.  You can commoditize the same solution but within two different business models and get two totally different results.  You can understand the business model from an internal perspective by digging into how you deliver something. How do you package that delivery?  What’s the value proposition?  What’s the internal marketing associated with it?  How you judge success? Increasing Value To validate the value of a product, service, or feature, we don’t just need to test ideas. We also have to test how the idea is delivered, the information that is given, and how we monetize its use. As Business Analysts, we’re a lynchpin between what can happen and who uses it. We have to start influencing the groups in the middle that deliver elements of the product to help them see the fact that their scale and repeat model is in need of an adjustment or needs to be replaced by something else. By serving as internal management consultants, we can work to understand the changes in the business model and educate people on potential failures and view the business model together to enhance the product value. One of the failures could be how we support someone when they have a problem or not delivering the service appropriately.  Perhaps it’s the wrong platform.  Perhaps there’s an external impact based on use that we have to incorporate because all of our customers are using a different software system and they have different experiences. Understanding how business models change due to a digital transformation is critically important. Looking at options associated with the business model may help you to see different options.  Perhaps you can license the product. You can sell the software, sell the data, or provide information online. Understanding the concept of how a digital transformation starts to impact some of these production environments that we’ve been working on for quite some time is a good educational step to start getting yourself a better understanding of what may occur and then also being able to truly understand the market. Listen to the full episode to get more advice and insights on using business models to bring more value to your organization and your customers. HOMEWORKReview some case studies about different types of business models and take time out to thing about your business models and how you can apply what you’ve learned. David Mantica David Mantica believes leaders should be servants to their organizations and people.  He is the Vice President and General Manager at SoftEd, a consultancy that offers advisory and education services to help organizations discover new ways of working for better business outcomes.  David is a frequent speaker on Project Management, Business Analysis, and leadership. Thank you for listening to the program To get more valuable content to enhance your skills and advance your career, you can subscribe on iTunes and other podcatchers. Also, reviews on iTunes are highly appreciated! I read each review and it helps keep me motivated to continue to bring you valuable content each week. TrendingMBA066: Starting a BA Community of Practice Recent Episodes: MBA228: Softw

In this episode, Clarke Ching shares an innovative problem solving approach to help us solve tricky problems. Show Notes We’re often called upon to apply our problem solving skills and help organizations make better decisions.  The challenge is when we face really tricky problems.  To solve these, we need an innovating problem solving approach. Corkscrew thinking is about how to come up with clever ideas when you’re facing what seems like an impossible situation. This approach helps you to be creative and wander around to figure things out.  You’re trying to invent something or discover something new.  If you’re facing two choices and they conflict or directly oppose each other, corkscrew thinking can help you discover new solutions. When we make decisions, we often make out a pros and cons list.  What we’re trying to do with corkscrew thinking is to get the best of both options while eliminating the negative aspects.  Start with the two options that are in conflict and figure out what to get the benefits out of each of those options and then solve a different problem, which is to come up with new options. It allows you to get a better solution than the options you started with. One way of envisioning corkscrew thinking is to imagine that you’re holding two choices or options, one in each hand.  Next, think about the benefits of each option and stack those on each shoulder.  These are the requirements or the positive outcomes that each choice will help you to achieve. Now imagine the higher purpose that you’re trying to achieve related to these two options.  Imagine this overall mission on top of your head. Finally, consider the benefits on your shoulders and the higher purpose above your head and search for options that combine the benefits of both while serving your higher purpose. This exercise can best be done with a quick drawing or sticky notes. Listen to the full episode to understand how to apply corkscrew thinking to solve your tricky problems. HOMEWORKStart noticing when you have a dilemma and are torn between two choices.Every hour we’re faced with dozens of decisions and often we’re not actually making choices because we’re stuck with a dilemma and we don’t even notice it.Just start to notice when you’re torn between two options and then write them down and write the pros and cons. Then ask yourself how to get all of the pros / benefits. Links Mentioned in This Episode Connect with Clarke on LinkedInCorkscrew Solutions – Clarke’s book on Amazon Clarke Ching Clarke has been powered by the Theory of Constraints for over 20 years and Agile since 2003. He wrote Rolling Rocks Downhill (the Agile business novel that never mentions Agile) and The Bottleneck Rules (which was featured in The Guardian newspaper, and was briefly the #2 best-selling leadership book on Amazon.com, just behind Steven Covey). Thank you for listening to the program To get more valuable content to enhance your skills and advance your career, you can subscribe on iTunes and other podcatchers. Also, reviews on iTunes are highly appreciated! I read each review and it helps keep me motivated to continue to bring you valuable content each week. The post MBA224: Corkscrew Thinking appeared first on Mastering Business Analysis.

David Mantica discusses the brain science behind some of the challenges knowledge workers face and helps you shift your mindset to enable you to thrive in a complex and chaotic environment. Show Notes As knowledge workers, we rely on our brains and relationships to get things done. That’s where some of the challenges lie. The hard skills of business analysis, project management, and product ownership are relatively easy to learn. But the soft skills . . . that’s the real challenge. It’s amazing how little education knowledge workers get about how our brain impacts our ability to be successful. Our brains operate for two things; survival and efficiency. That efficiency word is very scary when it comes to complex cognition. The survival aspect can be even more difficult because it ties back into the physical survival mechanisms of our body, because we really haven’t evolved yet to understand that we are an apex predator. A lot of the initial reactions that our brain drives in our system is protecting us from a physical perspective when fear occurs. So the manifestation of fear around losing your job becomes a physical manifestation similar to being chased by a saber tooth tiger. You lose a lot of the power of cognition in that. The first step is not so much getting into the details of communication skills and emotional intelligence. It’s getting a better understanding of the fundamental workings of our brain and how you have to combat that to be healthy and to be able to thrive in constant change. Cognitive DistortionsOne thing we do a very poor job of is feeding our brain to operate with high level of cognition over an extended period of time. Since our brain wants to be efficient, it will process and gather information and look at the information using its stereotypical heuristic patterns it’s used to. This is why you see yourself having a tendency to try to solve the same problem using the same tools and getting frustrated. You’re not realizing that you have to force yourself to think deeply about a problem to get your brain processing at the cerebral cortex level and to get into something called deep literacy. And then on top of all that, it’s our society’s goal to pound this with sound bytes of information so that we’re always operating on that system. That’s important for us because the first technique you need to be thinking about is when analyzing a complex future state situation, taking a step back and doing some deep thinking and try to push away the emotional stimulus that’s around you to get your cognition going; it’s critically important because it doesn’t naturally occur. We’re bombarded with data all the time and our brains want to operate efficiently, so we ignore a lot of the data that we see in our daily lives. That can lead to snap judgments and unconscious biases, leading us to thinking down the wrong path. One such cognitive distortion is confirmation bias. It’s a tendency that we look for things that agree with what we’re thinking about and block the things that don’t agree with what we’re thinking about. It’s a preservation technique, it’s an efficiency technique, and it drives a lot of failure in the workplace. This can also lead to tensions in working relationships. Another common cognitive distortion is loss regret. The concept of the loss regret is that I would rather do nothing and not have to lose then do something and have the potential to lose, even though when I do something there’s a chance I could win. That fear of change is so scary for the brain because it wants efficiency and it wants survival. It’s going to force us to try to stay in the status quo. That’s why we all have that tendency to stay in our bubble and we don’t take certain risks. These cognitive distortions and others affect how you interact with stakeholders and could be at the root of some of the challenges you face. The Stress ResponseWhen faced with a stressful situation, our bodies release chemicals that often lead us to a freeze, fight or flight response. Our evolutionary biology predisposes us for pessimism, and that pessimism drives all of those cognitive distortions. But that pessimism also drives a lot of the emotional distortions and the emotional distortions we fear. Fear centers around two things; one is the limbic system of our brain processing that information, using the concept of the physical survival mechanism. Our bodies release adrenaline and cortisol; both are great for muscles and running fast and getting your heart pumping so you can really handle something. But it’s horrible for cognition. It makes cognition more difficult. That pessimism also leads to negative self talk, which fuels a lot of the emotional distortions that become physical. These situations can trigger a vicious cycle where get the stress response, you can’t think or behave properly, and then

David Bland discusses the importance of testing your business ideas and shares ways to dramatically reduce the risk and increase the likelihood of success for your product, initiative, or project. Show Notes Studies show that 7 out of 10 products fail to deliver on expectations. We often fall into the trap of moving forward with a project, product, or business idea without first validating it. This results in wasted time and money from solutions that don’t have a good market fit or aren’t solving the right problem. The most expensive way to find out if you’re right or wrong is to build the whole thing.David Bland The Three Lenses When testing your idea to reduce risk, look at the solution through three lenses; desirability, feasibility, and viability. Desirability implies that customers want your solution.  Feasibility means that we can build and support the solution.  This is isn’t just technical feasibility; we also look need to look at overall regulatory, policy, and governance that would prevent you from making your solution a success. While customers may want your solution (desirable) and you can build it (feasibility), perhaps there’s not enough of a market for it or people won’t pay enough for it.  This is viability. We want to unpack our risk and then test our way through it, going from no evidence to some evidence and then from some evidence to strong evidence that we’re on the right path. Process to Validate Your Idea If you have an idea that you want to validate, start by understanding the higher level risks.  Who’s your customer?  What’s your value proposition?  What’s your revenue model and the cost it’s going to take to do this? This information helps you map out desirability and viability.  Then work to understand the big activities you need to do, the resources you need to have, and anything else related to feasibility. A business model canvas may help you to understand the things that have to be true for your idea to succeed.  From there, you can identify the things that have to be true that you have no evidence to support.  You can then select experiments that would help generate evidence about those things. Listen to the full episode to understand how to sequence your experiments, discover simple yet effective ways to test your business ideas before spending a lot of time and money, and more. YOUR HOMEWORKQuite often, the biggest risk is desirability. Look for observable evidence that there are more people than just you or friends or family that have the problem you’re trying to solve with your project or product. Learn firsthand whether or not there’s a market for what you want to do.Find out if it is a problem that’s big enough to actually build something for before you spend a lot of time and money. The observable evidence in this scenario would be people searching for something.Google could show search trend analysis could help show how big of a problem you’re solving. Are people searching for it regularly? Is it seasonal? How many people are searching for it? Was a search volume look like weather related terms or to specific regions in the world where it’s popular? Links Mentioned in This Episode David’s website DavidJBland.comPrecoil – David’s companyDavid’s Book – Testing Business Ideas David J. Bland David Bland is the founder of Precoil, an organization that helps companies find product market fit using lean startup, design thinking and business model innovation. David has helped validate new products and businesses at companies such as GE, Toyota, Adobe, HP, Behr and more. David has also written several books and is the co-author of Testing Business Ideas: A Field Guide for Rapid Experimentation. Latest Episodes MBA228: Software Development Pearls MBA227: The Minimum Viable Business MBALC: Elon Musk’s 5-Step Design Process MBA226: The FOCCCUS Formula MBA225: The Value of Business Models MBA224: Corkscrew Thinking MBA223: The Human Work Machine MBA222: Testing Your Business Ideas MBA221: Systems Thinking and Business Agility MBA220: Thoughtless Design with Karl Wiegers MBA219: How To Be an Agile Business Analyst BA Toolbox – A3 Report MBA218: Customer-Centric Transformation Lightning Cast: Agile Planning MBA217: Objectives and Key Results Lightning Cast: POWER Start for Your Meetings MBA216: Outcome Based Change Lightning Cast: Resistance to Change MBA215: The Challenges with Leading in Product Management MBA214: The BA Success Path MBA213: Applying Theory of Constraints MBA212: Transforming Your Work with Modern Agile MBA211: Adaptive Leadership MBA210: Vital Communication MBA209: Visual Thinking MBA208: Facilitative Leadership MBA207: Bad Behaviors in the Workplace MBA206: Succeeding with Analytics Lightning Cast: BA Goals Revisited MBA205: Beyond Data Literacy MBA204: Top Skills for 2020 MBA203: Career Insurance Yes, Virginia,

Adrian Reed discusses systems thinking, how it enables business agility, and how it can help elevate the value you bring to your organization. Show Notes We live in a complex, rapidly changing world. In order to support our stakeholders and our organizations, we need to expand our view and adopt a systems thinking mindset. This allows you to see the whole and the interconnectedness between the parts, which in turn allows you to help stakeholders make the right decisions. Systems thinking makes business agility possible. With business agility, your organization is able to sense its external environment, really work out what’s significant, and then respond to it. To be really agile, your organization needs to see what’s changing. It needs to work out how it needs to change and then it needs to actually do it. Many organizations see that there is a strategic problem and something they really need to do, but they can’t quite configure themselves to respond to it. Business analysis is central to that because you think about sensing and seeing what’s coming. There’s a huge amount of strategic business analysis that fits into that space. You think about assessing how to change and there’s a lot of solution evaluation, problem solving, and understanding that fits in that space. Who’s Responsible for Strategic Systems Thinking? There’s often a belief that the top c-level executives should be doing this analysis. In reality, systems thinking and strategic thinking should happen at all levels. Think about what might change out in the world and how it might have an impact on how this project runs or how this product will need to incrementally change. Understanding what’s going on outside our organization or even internal – it can be “what if the priorities of this department change or what if we lose this key person” or some other event. That speaks to systems thinking; understanding the upstream and downstream impacts as well as all the pieces that are at work in a delivery system. We may write process and procedure manuals, but nobody really thinks about how they can adapt. So when something unexpected happens or some competitive threat comes along, we haven’t built variety into the processes. We lean out all of the slack and there can be times when that’s necessary. Systems thinking would encourage us to look more holistically and to recognize the complexity and to think about how the environment might change. Business analysis is a big part of that. Listen to the full episode for tools you can use to apply systems thinking and tips on providing next level value to your stakeholders and organization. Full Transcript for this episodeDownload YOUR HOMEWORKDon’t be afraid to look outside of the box that the organization has put you in.There are times when you’re busy with projects or initiatives and you’re asked to do something that doesn’t feel right. You’re under pressure and that doesn’t feel like a good time to descent. Sometimes that’s the most important time to pause, have a deep breath and think about if you need to put your attention elsewhere or look outside of the department that’s currently focusing on this change. Pick your head up and share your concerns.We’re all interested in getting to the right outcome. Bringing your observations to the attention of stakeholders lightens their load because it’s something that they probably should do and they probably want to do, but they’ve don’t have time.This is another way we elevate the reputation of our role. People start to realize that we’re strategic thinkers, and we should have a place at every part of the conversation, not just at the delivery. Links Mentioned in This Episode Adrian Reed’s Blog: https://www.adrianreed.co.uk/Blackmetric Business SolutionsSign up for the BA Digest Adrian Reed Adrian is a Principal Consultant and Director at Blackmetric Business Solutions where he provides business analysis consultancy and training solutions. He also speaks internationally on topics relating to business analysis and business change. TrendingMBA205: Beyond Data Literacy Thank you for listening to the program To get more valuable content to enhance your skills and advance your career, you can subscribe on iTunes. Also, reviews on iTunes are highly appreciated! I read each review and it helps keep me motivated to continue to bring you valuable content each week. The post MBA221: Systems Thinking and Business Agility appeared first on Mastering Business Analysis.

Author and thought leader Karl Wiegers shares principles and lessons he has learned from poor designs and what you can do to develop solutions that create a great user experience. Show Notes We’re all experienced products that are confusing, difficult to use, and cause frustration. Author Karl Wiegers has pulled together a collection of products with a thoughtless design and created a set of design principles and lessons to help us create solutions with the user in mind. If the solutions that we create aren’t usable, they’re not valuable to our customers. Design Lessons Karl’s first design lesson is to focus the design on usage, not on product features. Studies show that a high percentage of the features that are included in software packages are rarely used. Let’s think about what people want to do with the product and the environment in which they’re going to be using it. Then we can design the product to make it easier for users to get the job done. Let’s understand the disease before we come up with a cure. A second lesson is that design demands iteration. You’re not going to get the design right on your first try. You have to iterate. You have to sneak up on approaching a better design with each cycle until you have a design that’s good enough to satisfy the requirements and usability. You can iterate at multiple levels. You can iterate with each product release similar to the iPhone. When you iterate at that level, you may also get a lot of new bugs and increase complexity of the product. Making a product, marketing it, then seeing how people like it and making another try in a year is an expensive way to iterate. We want to iterate as cheaply as possible as many times as we can, and that requires doing things with prototypes and mockups. We can have an incremental growth of the level of precision and detail with the prototypes. The third lesson is we need to involve real users whenever possible. If you’re iterating on a design, how do you know what to change on your next cycle to make it better? Ideally, you’ll have some user representatives that are working with you; perhaps working with a prototype or a mockup under realistic usage conditions, as we can come up with a design. The users are going to show you things and tell you things that you just don’t get in the design lab. Sometimes you may not have real users available. You might have to work with user surrogates, but whenever possible, there’s just no substitute for having real people work with something that’s similar to the real product and tell you all the reasons why you’re not there yet. Fundamental Design Principles There are nine design principles in Karl’s book that are fundamental to good design. The design principles include: Make the product easy and obvious to use: The product should provide visual cues to the user to make the product easy and obvious to use.Make it hard to make a mistake: The product should be designed in a way that makes it hard to make a mistake, or at least have the user verify their intentions before taking a step that potentially could be a mistake. Design for the user’s convenience: Think about what the user is trying to do and create a design that allows them to get the job done. Avoid designing for the business’s convenience at the expense of the user. Remember that thoughtful design is something that makes it hard for users to make mistakes, doesn’t waste the user’s time, and is for the user’s convenience. Let’s try to detect unsatisfied preconditions and erroneous inputs as early as possible in the test sequence so the user doesn’t waste time on a task they can’t complete. Listen to the full episode to get more of Karl’s tips and advice on building products with the customer’s usability in mind. Your HomeworkAs a Business Analyst, Product Owner, or designer, let’s not make something and then have people tell us all the stuff we did wrong and why they hate it. Instead, try to satisfy the nine design principles from the outset.As a consumer, it helps us think more carefully about what features we’re looking for when we’re considering possible products that we might buy. What are the things that are important to me as a user before I buy it, take it home and saying that’s not what I was hoping was going to be? On a broader scale, we should all think more about the properties and characteristics and capabilities that we’re looking for before we put down our money. Links Mentioned in This Episode Karl’s website – https://karlwiegers.com/The Thoughtless Design of Everyday Things book site: http://thoughtless-design.com/ Karl Wiegers Karl Wiegers is an independent consultant, author, speaker, and thought leader in the project community. His books on software requirements are considered required reading for Business Analysts and Project Managers. As a consultant an

Kent McDonald shares his thoughts on what it takes to succeed as a Business Analyst in an Agile environment. Show Notes To be successful as a Business Analyst in an Agile environment, you need to apply your same traditional skills and techniques differently.  Kent McDonald characterizes an Agile Business Analyst as those who take on the perspective of product people having the five characteristics below. Understand your context and use that information to determine what kind of techniques to use (and what not to use). The context is the structure of your organization, how the team is organized, and the nature of your product. Focus on figuring out what problem you’re trying to solve and finding ways to solve that problem (your outcome) with the least amount of work (output). We want to minimize outputs (documents, lines of code, etc.) while maximizing outcomes (the business goals and objectives). Look at the traditional business analysis techniques as a way to build a shared understanding with the team and others with whom you’re working. Instead of using many of the techniques simply for your own understanding, use them to get the entire team aligned and on the same page. Making sure decisions get made.  If you are the decision maker, you need to make the right decisions at the appropriate time.  Otherwise, help decision makers make timely decisions. Always learning through short feedback cycles and use the feedback to adapt.  Shortening the feedback loop allows you to get input sooner so that you can adjust as needed and build the right solution while minimizing risk. “It’s not a thing or a methodology, it’s a way you can approach knowledge work.”Kent McDonald Being Agile is about solving a problem as quickly as we can (or at least small bits of the problem as quickly as we can) and learning from our experiences and adjusting going forward. Listen to the full episode for all of Kent’s tips and advice on being successful as a Business Analyst in an Agile environment. YOUR HOMEWORKMake sure you have a clear understand of what problem you’re trying to solve. Implementing project X isn’t the problem. What is the underlying problem that project x is intended to solve? Links mentioned in this episode Kent’s website kbp.media Get Kent’s Book and Save 15% Go to kbp.media/book and use coupon code MasteringBA and get 15% off the cover price. This book helps business analysts be an effective member of a team working in an agile fashion. It explains how to add value to your team and how to apply your business analysis skills. It will help you understand how you can use your business analysis skills to make sure your team builds the right thing. Kent McDonald Kent McDonald writes about and practices software product management. He has IT and product development experience in a variety of industries. Kent is the author of multiple books including Product Ownership in the Wild, Beyond Requirements, and his latest book, How to Be an Agile Business Analyst. He also provides just in time resources for product owners and business analysts at KBP.media. Thank you for listening to the program To get more valuable content to enhance your skills and advance your career, you can subscribe on iTunes. Also, reviews on iTunes are highly appreciated! I read each review and it helps keep me motivated to continue to bring you valuable content each week. The post MBA219: How To Be an Agile Business Analyst appeared first on Mastering Business Analysis.

In this episode of the BA Toolbox, we explore the A3 report and it’s use in problem solving. Show Notes What’s an A3 report? An A3 report has several uses including business proposals and process improvements.  However, it’s most commonly used for problem solving. If you have a tricky problem in your organization of with your project, perhaps an A3 report can help.  The name A3 refers to the European paper size, which is similar to 11 by 17 inch tabloid paper in the United States.  It’s big enough to fit a summary of the problem and solutions on a single page.There’s more than one format for an A3 report and it’s usually broken down into sections to help the team think through the problem and potential solutions.  Those sections are usually: Define the problem or needUnderstand the current stateCreate a goal statement or determine the target stateDetermine the root cause of the problemIdentify potential countermeasuresDetermine which countermeasures you will implementCheck the impact of your countermeasuresUpdate work processes These problem solving steps are similar to W. Edward Deming’s Plan-Do-Check-Act (PDCA) cycle, Six Sigma’s DMAIC process (Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, Control), and even elements from Design Thinking. Beyond taking the team through the problem solving approach, an A3 report is also a communication tool.  It helps tell a story about the problem and what you’re doing about it. To get the most out of an A3 report (or any problem solving approach for that matter), you need to start with the right mindset.  The team should view this as an opportunity to build their problem solving skills.  It’s an opportunity to bring together a group of people with diverse viewpoints and knowledge to do something that matters; to work together to solve a tricky problem. If your organization doesn’t have an open and collaborative culture or if problems are seen as something to avoid instead of something to expose and solve, it’s going to be difficult to apply creative problem solving.  If that’s the case for you, start by creating safety within the team.  Be vulnerable yourself and thank people for raising concerns and issues.  Help them shift from fear to a continuous improvement mindset. Listen to the full episode for more information on using the A3 report and click the button below for a sample A3 Report template. A3 Report TemplateDownload Thank you for listening to the program To get more valuable content to enhance your skills and advance your career, you can subscribe on iTunes. Also, reviews on iTunes are highly appreciated! I read each review and it helps keep me motivated to continue to bring you valuable content each week. The post BA Toolbox – A3 Report appeared first on Mastering Business Analysis.

Melissa Boggs discusses how the Scrum Alliance transformed into customer-centric teams and how you can have a greater customer focus. SHOW NOTES Over the past several years, many organizations have transformed the way they work and the way they’re organized.  With Digital and Agile transformations and shifting from projects to products, organizations are trying to find better ways of working and deliver more customer value. Some forward-thinking organizations have even transformed to organize around the customer.  This allows them to have greater customer focus and deliver value faster through fewer dependencies and hand-offs. The Scrum Alliance recently went through such a customer-centric transformation, which allowed them to focus on customer needs at their specific point in the journey.  This also helps that organization better align with organizational priorities. They reorganized into customer-centric, interdisciplinary teams serving different customer segments.  This allows them to discover new products and services that better meet their customers’ needs. Challenges One of the challenges faced by the Scrum Alliance when they transformed was the fear of changing the way they are working when they’re been successful.  This required understanding the value in shifting to a customer-centric focus and saying ’no’ to some things. Another challenge is in the area of alignment.  If you have a skill or discipline spread across several teams, how do you ensure alignment and consistency and avoid duplication of effort?  Creating shared guiding principles and creating communities of practice help with alignment and consistency. Enabling the Transformation To enable the customer-centric transformation, the Scrum Alliance shifted their Sprint Reviews to include real customers.  This allows them to get rapid feedback from customers, which helps them adapt to customer needs. They also created open-mic events every two weeks for teams to showcase their work to the rest of the organization.  This helps with alignment and consistency between teams. In addition, teams shared stories of success and learnings through storytelling.  The Scrum Alliance used their Slack storytelling channel to share stories about accomplishments, failures, and what they learned along the way.  Storytelling also helps create psychological safety within the organization. Listen to the full episode to discover how your organization can shift its focus on the customer and increase customer value. “It starts with you, because when you embrace your own uniqueness, so will your team. When you demonstrate self-confidence, self-worth, and your strengths, they will feel the permission to do the same. When you tell your stories, so will they. At this intersection of strength, vulnerability, and uniqueness, that’s where thriving begins.”– Melissa Boggs YOUR HOMEWORKStart by getting clarity about who the customer is and their customer’s story. Then reflect to understand yourself and your relation to that customer. Melissa Boggs Melissa Boggs offers a unique blend of coaching expertise and executive experience. She is a leadership, agility, and culture coach and executive with background in leadership, business, and product development. She has worked with executive teams, software teams, marketers, and educators in domains such as healthcare, public education, technology, and finance. She is a former nonprofit executive and board member, having served on the Board of Directors for both Scrum Alliance and Agile Denver. Thank you for listening to the program To get more valuable content to enhance your skills and advance your career, you can subscribe on iTunes. Also, reviews on iTunes are highly appreciated! I read each review and it helps keep me motivated to continue to bring you valuable content each week. The post MBA218: Customer-Centric Transformation appeared first on Mastering Business Analysis.

Understanding the different levels of Agile planning and what they mean for you will help your team stay aligned and focused on achieving the right outcomes. Show Notes Responding to change over following a plan.  This value listed in the Agile Manifesto doesn’t mean that we don’t do planning in Agile.  In fact, we plan more in Agile than in traditional methods; we just do it differently. A common metaphor for planning in Agile is an onion.  Each layer of the onion reflects another level of planning – from strategic to tactical. Let’s take a look at each of these layers and what it means to you. Strategic Planning The outermost layer of the Agile planning onion is the strategic level.  At the strategic level of planning, organizations set their direction.  It involves the mission and vision as well as long-term goals.  This is multi-year planning. If you’re a Product Manager, Business Architect, or in another strategic role, you might provide input into the strategic plan by helping organizational leaders understand where the market is going and your organization’s capabilities.  Common tools are SWOT Analysis and PEST or PESTLE Analysis. Portfolio Planning The next layer of the planning onion is the Portfolio level.  This is where the organization decides what products or initiatives to work on.  This is essentially where and how much the organization will invest. We can support this level of planning by providing input through business cases, business models, and other approaches.  You may also be involved in the ideation of new products or new initiatives.  In some cases, you may even recommend that certain initiatives be stopped due to changing market conditions or changing customer needs. Once portfolio planning is complete, the plan should serve as an input as to where we should focus effort and resources. Product Planning The next layer is Product planning.  At this level, we determine the goals and objectives of the product and how we’ll achieve those outcomes.  You’ll likely develop Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) for the product as well as a product roadmap. This level of planning provides context to the teams working on the product and is usually developed by a Product Manager in collaboration with stakeholders and subject matter experts. Remember that an Agile Roadmap isn’t just a Gannt Chart showing timing or different initiatives.  A good roadmap is outcome based and may include options to achieve those outcomes as well as certain milestones such as a contractual or compliance required date.  Your roadmap should also allow you to respond to changing market conditions. During Product Planning, you’ll also define the Product Goal and start building and ordering your product backlog. The innermost planning levels of release, iteration, and daily are considered team level planning. Release Planning At the Release level of planning, the team plans for the next major release.  Even if you deploy continuously, this level of planning looks at the next coherent set of features or pieces of functionality. This is often where you may define the Minimum Viable Product (MVP) or Minimum Marketable Features (MMF). Depending on your organization, at this level you might break down Epics into Features or help the team determine what can be achieved in the release.  In some Agile scaling frameworks, a Feature is a larger set of work that can be completed within the release time box. You’ll also want to start breaking down the higher priority features into User Stories or other backlog items. Iteration Planning The next layer of the Agile planning onion is Iteration planning.  If you’re using an iterative approach, this is where you plan for the next iteration or time box.  In Scrum, this is known as Sprint Planning. If you’re a Product Owner or Business Analyst on an Agile team, you’ll need to get the User Stories and other backlog items to a ready state.  This means they’re small, testable, well understood by the team, and meet the other definition of ready criteria. You might also be involved in helping the team refine and size the product backlog items prior to iteration planning.  This helps ensure the team can properly forecast what they can complete in the iteration. If you use Scrum, you’ll define a Sprint Goal with the team as part of Sprint Planning.  The Sprint Goal helps bring focus and alignment to the Scrum Team and encourages them to work together as a team rather than individuals. Daily Planning The final and innermost layer of the Agile planning onion is Daily planning.  On a daily bases, team members get together to discuss the progress they’ve made, where they need help, and what they’ll do next taking any needed adjustments into account. If you’re on a Scrum Team, this is the Daily Scrum.  Many teams make the mistake of turning the Daily Scrum into a status meeting.&

Paul Niven helps us to understand Objectives and Key Results (OKRs), a goal-setting tool to set ambitious goals with measurable results. Show Notes Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) is a goal-setting system to help drive strategic execution.  It’s a critical thinking framework and ongoing discipline to focus efforts to drive the company forward.  In short, OKRs help your organization align and achieve important goals. OKRs go beyond simple goal setting in that there is a build-in approach for reflection and ongoing improvement. Many organizations use a dual cadence. That means that the highest level of the organization, they have longer term OKRs (typically annual) to set context.  From there, other areas set 90-day OKRs that allow for frequent inspection and help to achieve the longer term OKRs.  Teams will often use weekly check-ins and mid-quarter reviews to ensure we’re focused and achieving results. Objectives When crafting an OKR, start with the objective.  An objective is a statement of a broad qualitative goal designed to propel the organization forward in a desired direction.  It’s what the organization aspires to be. There’s an art and science to creating a good objective.  There are three components to an effectively worded objective. Objectives should start with a verb.  By their nature, objectives are action oriented.The objective should state what we aspire to do.Effective objectives should state the ‘why’ or ‘so that’.  It explains why we want to do what we’re trying to achieve. Key Results The Key Results portion of the OKR tell us how we’ll measure progress and how we’ll know if we’ve achieved the objective.  These are quantitative statements.  There are two types of key results; metrics and milestones. When using a metric, it’s important to show the level of stretch by describing it in the format of “from X to Y”.  For example, a Key Result may be “Increase click-through rate on the website from 27% to 43%”.  Showing the amount of change in this way sets the context of the goal. Sometimes to get to a metric, we need to use a milestone Key Result.  A milestone turns a binary activity into a Key Result.  It’s an activity that will drive progress for the metric Key Result.  An example of a milestone Key Result is “Build sales page on the website”. There are two conditions for milestone key results.  They should be accompanied by a date (deadline) and it should be complimented with a metric key result. Common Challenges One of the common pitfalls with using ORKs is that the Key Results may have a lack of specificity.  The use of generic words such as “launch” or “implement”.  These vague words make it difficult for people to align because they may have different interpretations of what these words mean.  The more specific and clear you make the goal, the more likely you are to achieve it. Another problem is that people often turn their OKRs into a long, uncoordinated list.  To address this, make a story out of your OKRs.  Once you have the objective, think about what the first thing you’ll need to do or measure to achieve that outcome and then the next and the next. Alternatively, start with the metric Key Result and work backwards from that measurable outcome. Listen to the full episode to understand how to use OKRs to stay aligned and achieve ambitious goals. HomeworkLearn more about OKRs and try it yourself by using the OKR formula to set a goal either for your next project or in your personal life. Links Paul’s website OKRsTraining.com Paul Niven Paul Niven is a management consultant, author, and noted speaker on the subjects of Strategy, Strategy Execution, Objectives and Key Results (OKRs), and Balanced Scorecard. Paul is the founder of both OKRsTraining.com and The Senalosa Group. The companies have assisted over two-hundred organizations around across the globe effectively execute their strategy. Thank you for listening to the program To get more valuable content to enhance your skills and advance your career, you can subscribe on iTunes. Also, reviews on iTunes are highly appreciated! I read each review and it helps keep me motivated to continue to bring you valuable content each week. The post MBA217: Objectives and Key Results appeared first on Mastering Business Analysis.

Stop the wasted time and money from ineffective meetings by giving your next meeting a POWER Start. Show Notes According to a recent Atlassian survey, professionals waste 31 hours each month on unproductive meetings.  That’s about four full days wasted each month.  In the U.S. alone, unnecessary meetings cost businesses 37 billion dollars in just in salaries. You can help stop this madness by giving your meetings some POWER.  We’ve likely all received (or sent) meeting invitations with little more than a meeting title.  This means that attendees likely won’t be properly prepared, the meeting may not achieve its intended goal, and you’ll likely waste time in yet another unproductive meeting. The POWER Start technique was developed by the Agile Coaching Institute to address the root of unproductive meetings. POWER is an acronym for Purpose, Outcomes, What’s in it for them, Engagement, and Roles and responsibilities. As you’re planning your meetings, think about the POWER Start. Begin with the Purpose.  What’s the purpose of the meeting and why is the meeting necessary?  Are you trying to inform, persuade, or make a decision?  Perhaps it’s possible to get to this purpose by other means, such as distributing information through an email broadcast. Think about the right medium for your purpose.  If you need to collaborate to make a decision, it’s likely that email isn’t the right channel. Next, consider the desired Outcomes of the meeting.  What do you want to achieve by the end of the meeting?  What does success look like?  By considering and communicating the intended outcome of the meeting, attendees can come prepared to achieve that outcome. That might mean doing some homework before the meeting, extending the invitation to someone else, or not going at all if you’re not the right person to help get to that outcome. Once you understand the Purpose and Outcomes, think about why the attendees should come to the meeting.  What’s in it for them and why should they care?  Without the ‘what’s in it for me’, people may not be motivated to attend or help achieve the goal of the meeting. The first three pieces (Purpose, Outcomes, and What’s In It for Them) all lay the foundation for the meeting.  It ensures that the meeting is actually needed, provides a clear focus for the meeting so that you’ll stay on track, and helps ensure the right people attend.  It can also help avoid the numerous follow-ups and the meeting after the meeting that we so often see. But you’re not done yet.  Next, you’ll need to consider how you’ll engage the meeting attendees.  That engagement may span before, during, and after the meeting. Before the meeting, you may need to contact attendees individually or in a group communication to ensure that they understand the purpose and intended outcome as well as what’s expected of them in the meeting.  Is there any information they need to bring to the meeting or any work they need to do to prepare? During the meeting, you may want to have an icebreaker to get people communicating and collaborating.  Create a plan for how you’ll keep attendees interested and engaged during the entire meeting. After the meeting, you may need to engage stakeholders by sharing key decisions or following up on action items. The final piece of POWER Start is Roles and responsibilities.  Think about the different roles that may be needed to have a successful meeting.  Do you need a facilitator, a time keeper, a scribe?  If so, who will fulfil those roles?  Who will contribute what information during the meeting? Making roles clear before or at the start of the meeting helps everyone understand expectations. Taking a little time to consider the elements of the POWER Start technique and including appropriate information about the purpose and outcomes in the invitation will lead to more productive meetings.  The time, money, and headaches you save are well worth the extra effort you put into planning effective meetings. Listen to this episode to ind out how to use the POWER Start facilitation technique and what to do if you’re in the receiving end of an invitation to a possibly ineffective meeting. https://blog.feedspot.com/business_analysis_podcasts/ Thank you for listening to the program To get more valuable content to enhance your skills and advance your career, you can subscribe on iTunes. Also, reviews on iTunes are highly appreciated! I read each review and it helps keep me motivated to continue to bring you valuable content each week. The post Lightning Cast: POWER Start for Your Meetings appeared first on Mastering Business Analysis.

David Hawks shares an approach to transformations, projects, and large change initiatives by starting with the intended business outcomes. Show Notes Many transformations and large initiatives fail or don’t achieve their intended value. While the transformation, project, or large initiative may be “done”, if it doesn’t result in its intended business value, it has failed. Part of the reason for this is a lack of alignment. We often see transformations and large initiatives where the transformation or initiative itself is the goal. The effort is focused on the wrong goal or intention. Instead, we need to start with the end in mind. Understand what the outcome you’re trying to achieve is and focus on the activities that will help achieve that outcome. Begin with the end in mind. The goal is not to implement Agile practices or deliver Project X. The goal is to get the business outcome resulting from that change. Listen to the full episode to understand how to gain alignment and ensure your initiative is enabling the right outcomes. YOUR HOMEWORKChallenge yourself on your current of next initiative to think about the intended outcomes you’re trying to produce. Are why we’re undertaking this initiative if you don’t already have a clear understanding. What would success look like from a business outcome perspective? Links David’s website PathtoAgility.comAgileVelocity.com David Hawks David Hawks is the Founder and Chief Agilist of Agile Velocity. He’s a Certified Enterprise Coach and Certified Scrum Trainer who is passionate about helping organizations achieve true agility beyond the basic implementation of Agile practices. David’s primary focus is to guide leaders through their Agile transformation by helping to create successful transformation strategies and effectively manage organizational change with a focus on achieving real business results. Thank you for listening to the program To get more valuable content to enhance your skills and advance your career, you can subscribe on iTunes. Also, reviews on iTunes are highly appreciated! I read each review and it helps keep me motivated to continue to bring you valuable content each week. The post MBA216: Outcome Based Change appeared first on Mastering Business Analysis.

Are you working on a change initiative? Overcome resistance to change using Goldratt’s Four Quadrants of Change. A lot of people talk about how difficult change is and how people resist change.  People don’t actually resist change; they respond to a change by evaluating the change across four dimensions.  These four dimensions make up Goldratt’s Four Quadrant’s on Change. The reason getting someone to change is hard or we perceive that people are resisting change is because we often only look at one of those dimensions; the positive consequence associated with the change. Most of us ignore the negative consequences of the change as well as the pluses and minuses of not changing. We need to present all four sides from the other person’s perspective.  Look at the pluses and minuses of changing as well as the pluses and minuses of not changing. What’s the pot of gold or benefit for the person you’re trying to influence?What are their crutches – their risks, obstacles, and effort associated with the change?What are their alligators – their current problems that will be solved by the change?What are their mermaids – the things they consider positive today that they may lose with the change? Are there enough positives to outweigh the negatives?  Is the pot of gold is large enough, alligator is dangerous enough, the effort and risk are small enough, and is the loss of the mermaids small enough? Remember to look at each of these dimensions from the other person’s perspective.  If you’re working with a group of stakeholders, each may have different pots of gold, crutches, alligators, and mermaids. Thank you for listening to the program To get more valuable content to enhance your skills and advance your career, you can subscribe on iTunes. Also, reviews on iTunes are highly appreciated! I read each review and it helps keep me motivated to continue to bring you valuable content each week. The post Lightning Cast: Resistance to Change appeared first on Mastering Business Analysis.

Roman Pichler discusses the challenges associated with leading in a Product Management role and what you can do to overcome those challenges. Listen to the full episode to discover the challenges associated with leading as a Product Manager and what you can do to overcome those challenges. Your HomeworkConsider slowing things down once in a while and make time to step away from your day-to-day work. Use that time to check-in with yourself and reflect on how your week is going and the challenges you face. Hold a personal retrospective. Without taking time out to reflect, we’ll never really improve. Links: RomanPichler.com – Roman’s websiteHow to Lead in Product Management – Roman’s bookListen to Roman’s podcast Roman Pichler, Pichler Consulting Roman Pichler is a leading agile product management and Scrum expert.  Roman is the author of several books including “Agile Product Management with Scrum“, “Strategize“ and his latest book, “How to Lead in Product Management“. Roman is an active contributor to the London product management community and a regular speaker at international conferences. Roman was named one of the 20 most influential agile people in April 2012. Thank you for listening to the program To get more valuable content to enhance your skills and advance your career, you can subscribe on iTunes. Also, reviews on iTunes are highly appreciated! I read each review and it helps keep me motivated to continue to bring you valuable content each week. The post MBA215: The Challenges with Leading in Product Management appeared first on Mastering Business Analysis.

Laura Brandenburg shares her framework for career development; the Business Analyst Success Path.  Show Notes Many Business Analysts struggle to understand how to get to the next step in their career. The way to advance in your career depends on where you are now. Charting your career path includes defining the “as is” and “to be” of your career. Laura’s Business Analyst Success Path framework highlights six stages. Explorer – This is when you’re first exploring the Business Analysis profession. You’re not yet committed to the BA role as a career. Intentional – You’ve made the decision to commit to being a Business Analyst. Official – You’re in an official Business Analyst role either with or without the actual title and you’re performing business analysis activities. Proven – You have a solid track record as a Business Analyst. Your experience may be within one specific area. Super Hero – You are confident that you can succeed in any project situation and you’re often sought after because people trust you and your work. Champion – You’re an expert in business analysis and a champion for the role. You can mentor, lead, train, and manage others. You may also establish frameworks that enable others to be successful. Listen to the full episode to understand how to progress from one stage to the next and grow in your career as a Business Analyst. https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/masteringbusinessanalysis/MBA214.mp3   Z Your Homework First, be clear on where you are now and where you want to be. From there, determine the specific action steps you must take to move towards your desired state. After three to six months, reevaluate where you are and where you want to go in your career.   Links mentioned in this episode: Laura’s website, Bridging the Gap Laura’s Quick Start Program: https://training.bridging-the-gap.com/quick-w Episode 31: Starting a Career in Business Analysis Laura Brandenburg Bridging The Gap Laura Brandenburg is an internationally-recognized leader known for helping mid-career professionals start business analysis careers. Laura brings more than a decade of experience as a full-time business analyst to help you find transferable BA skills, expand your experience, and start your business analyst career with confidence. Laura is also the author of How to Start a Business Analyst Career. TwitterLinkedIn Thank you for listening to the program To get more valuable content to enhance your skills and advance your career, you can subscribe on iTunes and other podcatchers. Also, reviews on iTunes are highly appreciated! I read each review and it helps keep me motivated to continue to bring you valuable content each week. . The post MBA214: The BA Success Path appeared first on Mastering Business Analysis.

If you want to accelerate and deliver with greater speed and flexibility that’s critical to serving your customers, combine Agile with Theory of Constraints. Clarke Ching shows us how. Show Notes Perhaps you have Agile teams that are doing everything right; they’re limiting work in progress, communicating well, and delivering with quality. But maybe you want to accelerate and deliver with greater speed and flexibility that’s critical to serving your customers. Theory of Constraints is an approach to helping organizations achieve their goals by identifying bottlenecks. Listen to the full episode to understand how to combine Theory of Constraints and Agile practices to accelerate delivery. The post MBA213: Applying Theory of Constraints appeared first on Mastering Business Analysis.

Joshua Kerievsky shares the four principles of Modern Agile and how they can help you find better ways of working and achieve better business outcomes. Show Notes Agile is about finding better ways of working.  To continuously improve and achieve the right outcomes for your organization and your customers, we need understand foundational concepts that allow teams to make great products. Modern Agile methods are comprised of four guiding principles that can help you uncover better ways of working and get better results. Make Safety a Prerequisite Safety is a key principle in any team or organization.  Without safety, there won’t be much innovation and there won’t be a lot of high performance. Making safety a prerequisite is about safety in all aspects.  It includes physical safety, financial safety, psychological safety, reputational safety, and anything else that contributes to a safe environment. Note that safety is not the same as playing it safe.  We want an environment and culture in which you’re able to take reasonable risks and make mistakes. Beyond creating a safe to fail environment, safety also includes working in a way in which we’re experimenting and learning so that we don’t waste time and money building things no one wants. Experiment & Learn Rapidly We often don’t really know how good our work is.  Without trying new things and getting rapid feedback, we are at risk of creating the wrong solution.  Instead, we want to experiment rapidly and learn rapidly. To do that, we need to create an environment in which we can quickly and cheaply experiment and get rapid feedback.  This allows us to innovate and build products people love. Make People Awesome It’s important to know what you’re trying to achieve; what success looks like.  Making people awesome is about understanding where you want to go and giving people super powers. Give people the ability to do something amazing, something they couldn’t so before. This applies not only to your customers, but to your team members as well.  Create an environment where we can make each other awesome through support, psychological safety, and radical candor. Deliver Value Continuously Finding ways to deliver value sooner is a key principle that enables the organization and customers to get value quickly (through revenue or through the value that the solution provides to users).  It also allows us to get feedback from customers sooner so that we can adapt quickly. We need to invest in ways that allow us to create in smaller pieces.  Don’t try to deliver the fanciest thing, try to figure out where the value is and deliver that value sooner. Listen to the full episode to understand how to apply these principles on your team and in your organization. YOUR HOMEWORKThe Product Owner role is best filled by someone who isn’t fully controlling what gets build. Instead, create an environment where everyone (developers and other people on the team) can experiment with their ideas.A good Product Owner needs to be a good facilitative leader and encourage everyone to think about what we can do to make people awesome.Help the team to understand the customer and their needs and then create space to experiment with new ideas. Links Mentioned in this Episode Modern Agile websiteThe Modern Agile Show on YouTubeIndustrial Logic Joshua Kerievsky Joshua is the CEO of Industrial Logic, one of the oldest and most well-respected agile consultancies on the planet. Since 1996, Joshua and his global network of experts have helped people in teams across many industries leverage the wisdom and power of modern development methods. Joshua most recently created Modern Agile to help people and organizations benefit from a principle-based approach to agility. Modern Agile graphical assets are property of Joshua Kerievsky and licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Thank you for listening to the program To get more valuable content to enhance your skills and advance your career, you can subscribe on iTunes and other podcatchers. Also, reviews on iTunes are highly appreciated! I read each review and it helps keep me motivated to continue to bring you valuable content in each episode. The post MBA212: Transforming Your Work with Modern Agile appeared first on Mastering Business Analysis.

In this time of unrelenting change, we need leadership at all levels. Here’s what you need to help your team succeed.   HOW NOTES We live in a time of unrelenting change. To enable teams and organizations to deal with this new reality, we need a different approach to leadership at all levels. Adaptive Leadership is a practice developed by a Harvard Psychiatrist that allows us to better adapt to change. This is even more important as more and more organizations embrace Agile ways of working. When people experience change, there’s often emotional and cognitive distortions. Change impacts your emotional state by causing under stress and triggering the fight, flight, or freeze response. At a cognitive level, change also causes loss regret, which means that people would rather do nothing because they fear doing the wrong thing. It also causes us to overestimate the impact and duration of a change. Adaptive leadership is much different from the heroic leader standing on top of a mountain. It’s more of a leadership lattice with everyone playing the part of a leader. We’re all leading, all talking responsibility, and all mobilizing with the understanding that we need to adapt. Adaptive leadership is about empowering people. Listen to the full episode to understand how you can apply the principles of Adaptive Leadership. https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/masteringbusinessanalysis/MBA211.mp3   YOUR HOMEWORK Find a thought leader and start absorbing information. That will help train your mind to think in a different way. Hold a weekly self-retrospective. Write down 2-5 things you did that week and reflect on what you could have done better. Links Mentioned in This Episode SoftEd.com Purchase one training class, get one free David Mantica VP and General Manager at SoftEd David Mantica believes leaders should be servants to their organizations and people. He is the Vice President and General Manager at SoftEd, a consultancy that offers advisory and education services to help organizations discover new ways of working for better business outcomes. David is a frequent speaker on Project Management, Business Analysis, and leadership. LinkedIn Thank you for listening to the program To get more valuable content to enhance your skills and advance your career, you can subscribe on iTunes and other podcatchers. Also, reviews on iTunes are highly appreciated! I read each review and it helps keep me motivated to continue to bring you valuable content each week. . The post MBA211: Adaptive Leadership appeared first on Mastering Business Analysis.

Communication is vital to success on teams and in organizations. In this episode, Tommy Re shows us how to dramatically improve communication. Show Notes One of the issues holding organizations back is the development of their leaders.  A lot of what it takes to develop as leaders are the communication skills necessary for them to work effectively with other people.  According to one survey, 86% of employees cited poor communication as a leading cause of workplace failures.  Poor communication is also a leading cause of project failures. With changes in the way we work in today’s environment such as working in teams and Agile approaches, there’s often less hierarchy.  People need to be able to work effectively in teams and one of the most important things in that context is communication.  That includes being able to persuade others and candle conflict. What You Can Do to Improve Your Communication To improve your communication, start by building your emotional intelligence.  Understanding your feelings and how you’re perceived by others is a critical step in better communication. From there, you also need to notice and recognize the preferred communication style of others.  Do they speak very directly in short bullets or do they prefer a lot of detail?  Without an understanding of how your emotions influence your communication and awareness of your communication preferences and those of others, you’ll experience clashes around how to work well together. Communication is VITAL To improve your communication and get your point across, use the acronym VITAL.  Make your message Visual, Interesting, Time sensitive, Action oriented, and Logical. About 75% of the neurons in our brains that process sensory information are dedicated to vision.  Using visuals in your communication reduces complexity and evokes emotion.  You can also use descriptive words and metaphors to allow people to create pictures in their minds. With all of the data coming at us today, to compete for people’s attention, we need to make our communication interesting.  One way to do that is to break a pattern.  Change the context and style of your communication to make it interesting. Everyone in organizations is very busy.  Because of that, we need to be time sensitive and get to the essence of our message.  To be concise and still get your message across, you need to know your audience, understand their communication preferences, and adapt your communication style. Making your communication action oriented is all about helping your audience understand what to do with the information.  Using verbs in your message will help make it more action oriented. Finally, we want to make sure our communication is logical.  Is our message well structures, organized, and are we using sound reasoning? Listen to the full episode to understand how to apply these principles to your emails and in group settings to improve your communication. YOUR HOMEWORKKnow your audience.For your next meeting or communication opportunity, think about their perspective and what’s in it for them.  Also consider their communication preferences and adapt the way you present information.Once you’ve thought it through, take time to plan your communication.  Consider the most important aspects on your communication and plan out your approach and structure. Links Mentioned in this Episode Tommy’s website: www.TalentIsVital.comConnect with Tommy on LinkedIn Tommy Re is the founder and principal of Vital Talent. Tommy is passionate about helping organizations thrive by working with them to identify and develop the talents of individual contributors, leaders and teams. He works with executives and business leaders to diagnose barriers to high performance and design appropriate talent solutions that lead to individual and organizational success. Thank you for listening to the program To get more valuable content to enhance your skills and advance your career, you can subscribe on iTunes and other podcatchers. Also, reviews on iTunes are highly appreciated! I read each review and it helps keep me motivated to continue to bring you valuable content in each episode. The post MBA210: Vital Communication appeared first on Mastering Business Analysis.

Grant Wright Shares simple Visual Thinking tools and practices to help your team get aligned and retain information. Show Notes Do you want to increase retention of information, ensure alignment and a shared understanding, and increase creativity? Visual Thinking can help get everyone on the same page, increase the team’s ability to solve problems, and help everyone remember what was discussed. Listen to the full episode to understand the tools and techniques of Visual Thinking and how they can benefit you on your next initiative. Additional Resources Useful books on Visual Thinking: The Sketchnote Handbook by Mike RohdeThe Sketchnote Workbook by Mike RohdeVisual Thinking by Willemien BrandThe Non-Designer’s Design Book – Design and Typographic Principles for the Visual Novice by Robin WilliamsThinking With Your Pen by Martin Haussmann Other related books: The Art of Explanation – Making your ideas, products & services easier to understand by Lee LefeverResonate – Present Visual Stories that Transform Audiences by Nancy Duarte Other useful resources: Www.verbaltovisual.com – Doug Neil – great videos on sketch noting, suitable for beginnersWww.gamestorming.com – Dave Gray’s co-creation tools with lots of great visual facilitation ideas Www.xplane.com – Dave Gray’s consulting company – useful blog & other infoWww.innovationgames.com – Luke Hoffman YOUR HOMEWORKDon’t be intimidated by visual thinking. Start small with doodles in your own notebook or add a few hand-drawn visuals in your next PowerPoint deck.Don’t forget that using colored Post-It Notes is a form of visualization too. Get inspired by searching Instagram for #VisualThinking.Finally, start building your own hand-drawn icon library by having several pre-defined shapes and images that you practice and can draw. Links Mentioned in this Episode Grant’s website: scarlettsolutions.co.uk Grant Wright has over 20 years’ experience of delivering and leading enterprise-scale transformation and digital service design across government and financial services sectors. He is a Principal Consultant and Director of Scarlett Solutions, a UK based consultancy specializing in business analysis/architecture, agile product management and business transformation. He actively practices Visual Thinking throughout his work and is passionate about its ability to create alignment, improve understanding and generate creative ideas. Thank you for listening to the program To get more valuable content to enhance your skills and advance your career, you can subscribe on iTunes and other podcatchers. Also, reviews on iTunes are highly appreciated! I read each review and it helps keep me motivated to continue to bring you valuable content in each episode. The post MBA209: Visual Thinking appeared first on Mastering Business Analysis.

Author Michael Levine helps us unleash the power of large, diverse teams of smart, experienced individuals to deliver positive business results. Show Notes How can you unleash the power of large, diverse groups of smart, experienced individuals to deliver positive business results through software development? Large-scale software development is a complex endeavor, especially in today’s volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous world.  While groups of people have come together in the past to achieve great things (build the pyramids, send humans to the moon), the complexity and scale of software development requires a different type of leadership, especially in an Agile environment. For large, diverse teams to successfully develop software solutions, we need people who can both lead those teams to the right outcomes and create the type of environment within the organization where teams can succeed. Facilitative Leadership  Command and control or directive leadership styles don’t create the environment where Agile software development teams can succeed.  A Facilitative Leader uses a different style of leadership.  They use the elements of rigor, alignment, and efficiency to achieve better outcomes. Rigor leads to better decision-making by establishing an approach to decision-making.  Defining the decision to be made and using meaningful data removes bias and leads to better decisions.  To overcome the complexity of many individuals creating a large software solution, the Facilitative Leader must ensure alignment by setting a vision and common goals.  Alignment towards a compelling goal leads to everyone’s engagement and the entire team contributing their diverse skills and thinking to achieving that goal. By developing a rigorous approach to decision making and gaining alignment within the team, the Facilitative Leader can create efficiency by eliminating waste.  Ensuring that the team is able to focus on achieving the goal is critical.  Meetings need to have goals and agendas that bring the team members closer to developing the right software solution. Listen to the full episode to understand how to put people first and become a facilitative leader. YOUR HOMEWORKGo on a Gemba Walk.Go see real users and observe how they use the system. This gives you insights to better and more valuable solutions for your customers. Links Mentioned in this Episode Michael’s website: ThriveGlobal.comGet Michael’s book, People Over Process Michael Levine is an expert on lean and agile software development and the author of three books. His previous books are Tale of Two Systems: Lean and Agile Software Development for Business Leaders, and Tale of Two Transformations: Bringing Lean and Agile Software Development to Life. His third book is People Over Process: Leadership for Agility. Thank you for listening to the program To get more valuable content to enhance your skills and advance your career, you can subscribe on iTunes and other podcatchers. Also, reviews on iTunes are highly appreciated! I read each review and it helps keep me motivated to continue to bring you valuable content in each episode. The post MBA208: Facilitative Leadership appeared first on Mastering Business Analysis.

Paul Pelletier helps us to understand the root causes of disrespectful behaviors at work and how to address them. Show Notes Have you ever witnessed toxic behaviors that bring down a team or lead to project failures? Bad behaviors can come in a variety of forms; from rolling your eyes when someone is talking to outright bullying. These disrespectful behaviors disrupt meetings, lead to a lack of collaboration, and cost organizations millions of dollars each year in failed projects and employee turnover. But what can we do about these bad behaviors? Paul Pelletier provides some tips and advice on how to approach these issues and address them before they have a negative effect on the team. Listen to the full episode to understand the root cause of these disrespectful behaviors and how to address them. Addressing Bad Behaviors at Work YOUR HOMEWORKSpend a few minutes creating rules of engagement or ground rules with the team so that you can refer back to what was agreed when bad behaviors start. Links Mentioned in this Episode Paul’s website: PushingPastImpossible.com Paul Pelletier has been a corporate lawyer, an executive, a project manager, and is frequent keynote speaker. He’s a ground breaking expert in bullying, workplace respect & conflict management and the author of “The Workplace Bullying Handbook”. Thank you for listening to the program To get more valuable content to enhance your skills and advance your career, you can subscribe on iTunes and other podcatchers. Also, reviews on iTunes are highly appreciated! I read each review and it helps keep me motivated to continue to bring you valuable content in each episode. The post MBA207: Bad Behaviors in the Workplace appeared first on Mastering Business Analysis.

Jim Rushton helps us to understand why 80% of analytics projects fail and what you can do to make sure yours succeeds. Show Notes Many organizations are implementing analytics programs. Unfortunately, four out of five analytics projects fail. Listen to the full episode to understand why analytics projects fail and what you can do to ensure success on your next analytics initiative. Make your analytics projects successful YOUR HOMEWORKStart with developing a lexicon and defining terms so that everyone is speaking the same language and there’s a common understanding of terms. Links Mentioned in this Episode Armera AnalyticsJim’s book, Guaranteed Analytics: A Prescriptive Approach to Monetizing All Your Data  Jim Rushton began his career in analytics working with some of the biggest consulting companies in the world, including Accenture, Deloitte Consulting, and IBM Global Services. Leveraging his experience, he helped found Armeta Analytics where he and his team have helped Fortune 1000 companies learn how to get the most out of their analytics programs. Jim is also the author of Guaranteed Analytics: A Prescriptive Approach to Monetizing All Your Data Thank you for listening to the program To get more valuable content to enhance your skills and advance your career, you can subscribe on iTunes and other podcatchers. Also, reviews on iTunes are highly appreciated! I read each review and it helps keep me motivated to continue to bring you valuable content in each episode. The post MBA206: Succeeding with Analytics appeared first on Mastering Business Analysis.

Building on last year’s episode about BA performance goals, we discuss how to choose the right goals and achieve them. Business Analyst Goals Revisited The post Lightning Cast: BA Goals Revisited appeared first on Mastering Business Analysis.

Lori Silverman helps us get real value from data by developing core competence and creating the culture needed to support collaborative data-informed decision making. Show Notes Many organizations are trying to use data for better decision making. Unfortunately, most aren’t getting the value they expected. Recent research suggests that people and process are impediments to seeing value from data efforts. To get to collaborative informed decision making and getting real business value from data, we need to change our culture and develop core competencies across the organization. What’s missing from most organizations is an understanding of the decision making process that we’re using. What is the model or framework you’re going to use in a collaborative way to get the right parties involved and for the right data to be collected to make the right decision? We need people who can shepherd organizations from data to decisions to actions to real business results. Listen to the full episode to understand how to help your organization make this shift and the role you can play to promote collaborative informed decision making. Beyond Data Literacy: Shepherd your organization from data to results YOUR HOMEWORKStart asking questions related to metrics and data. How will the data be used? What question are we trying to answer? What actions will we take based on the data? Links Mentioned in this Episode Partners for Progress website For almost 30 years, Lori Silverman has helped firms develop and implement successful long-term strategies. Lori was the Program Director for the Project Management Master’s Certificate at UW-Madison and taught in UW-Milwaukee’s Project Management Certificate Program. She is an author and keynoted at several industry conferences. Lori’s LinkedIn Profile Thank you for listening to the program To get more valuable content to enhance your skills and advance your career, you can subscribe on iTunes and other podcatchers. Also, reviews on iTunes are highly appreciated! I read each review and it helps keep me motivated to continue to bring you valuable content in each episode. The post MBA205: Beyond Data Literacy appeared first on Mastering Business Analysis.

LinkedIn’s list of the 15 most in-demand skills includes business analysis and many skills that are critical to your success. Show Notes Earlier this month, LinkedIn came out with their list of skills companies need most in 2020.  The article lists the most in-demand soft and hard skills organizations will be looking for this year. Not surprisingly, skills needed for success as a Business Analyst topped the list and the hard skill of Business Analysis jumped forward to the number 6 spot on the list. Whether you’re looking for a new job or trying to boost your career, having several of the skills on the list will help you succeed. Let’s look at these skills that companies are looking for this year. Hard Skills The LinkedIn article mentions the 10 hard skills that companies are looking for most.  Many of the top skills are in the area of data-driven decision making. Top Hard Skills for 2020: Blockchain Cloud ComputingAnalytical ReasoningArtificial IntelligenceUX DesignBusiness AnalysisAffiliate MarketingSalesScientific ComputingVideo Production While some of these like Blockchain, Artificial Intelligence, affiliate marketing, scientific computing, and video production depend on your role and the type of company you work for, these are growing areas and you may want to develop at least a passing knowledge about these concepts. Certainly some level of knowledge about cloud computing, AI, and scientific computing are important because they all involve using and maintaining information in a way that it can be used to perform processes or make better decisions.  Scientific computing relates to data and machine learning, which many organizations are using to drive better decision making.  If you’re working with an organization using or exploring these approaches, you’ll need to build your skills and knowledge to be able to be effective regardless of your role title. Number three on the list is analytical reasoning.  This skill includes strategic thinking and using data to discover new insights.  This is a key skill for Business Analysts as we should base our recommendations on data think strategically to see the big picture and all of the moving parts. At number five is UX design.  We’ve discussed the need for UX design and its value as a skill for Business Analysts in prior episodes.  This skill gives us the tools to develop solutions that customers will love.  When we take a human-centric approach, we discover the right problem to solve and then create a product that’s easy to use and is the right fit for our customers. As I mentioned earlier, the skill of business analysis jumped up 10 spots to number 6 on the list.  It made the most significant leap of all of the skills and it’s a skill that LinkedIn says is a skill all professionals should have.  Good business analysis leads to better decision making and when organizations make better decisions, they develop better solutions and increase their revenues. You can develop your business analysis skills through training, joining a professional organization such as the IIBA, reading and listening to podcasts, and by sharing ideas with others in your network.  It’s a skill that’s valuable to everyone from the individual software engineer up to C level executives. There’s one more hard skill on the list that I didn’t mention and that’s number eight, sales.  While your role might not be in sales, this skill is essential because we all need to be able to sell.  We sell our ideas when we influence decision making.  We sell ourselves when we’re looking for a new job.  Sales is all about presenting a compelling offer, and that’s critical to persuade others to make the right decisions. Soft Skills In addition to the 10 hard skills, the LinkedIn article lists five soft skills that are in-demand.  Like the hard skills, these soft skills are crucial for your success and all of them are needed for Business Analysts.  The top five soft skills are: CreativityPersuasionCollaborationAdaptabilityEmotional Intelligence Creativity is important because it allow us to solve problems more effectively and come up with novel solutions.  Without creativity, there would be no innovation and the flow of great products would be severely limited.  Denise Jacobs discussed the importance of creativity and how to unleash your creativity in episode 143. Next up is persuasion.  We need this skill to be able to influence decision making and lead lasting change in our organizations.  This skill involves effective communication and the ability to influence without authority.  It’s critical for all change agents to have this skill. The third soft skill is collaboration; our ability to work well with others.  To me, collaboration goes beyond teamwork.  It’s about forming high functioning teams and aligning people toward a common goal.  It requires facilitation, good list

David Mantica shares ways to protect yourself from layoffs and prepare for career advancement opportunities. Show Notes The unfortunate reality is that many of us will experience unexpected (and undesired) career changes. Companies may merge, the economy may slow down, your organization may need to make budget cuts, or you just may be stuck in a toxic environment. While some of these job losses are the result of performance issues, many may be unexpected, are out of our control, and may happen to even high performing individuals. What You Can do to Protect Yourself Early planning and preparation is the key. Often people are caught by surprise and haven’t prepared. Most of us don’t update our resumes until we need to. This prevents us from being able to quickly recover from an unexpected job loss or even take advantage of a new opportunity. You can prepare for both positive and negative surprise career changes by building your network and talking to recruiters. Your network will work with you for who you are; your potential. Recruiters will work with you for what you’ve done. The potential problem with recruiters is that you may end up in a similar role and face similar issues because they’re focusing on the work you’ve done and finding a good fit with a new organization. Your network may be able to help you find new opportunities in different fields or different roles because they understand your potential and they understand that other skills can be taught. From there, there are three elements of career insurance; insuring your current role, preparing for a future possible job loss, and insurance against negative carer changes (that doesn’t actually exist today). Listen to the full episode to understand how to protect your current role through influence, impact, and likability as well as how to prepare for future career changes. Career Insurance: Protect Your Career YOUR HOMEWORK1. Join a trade association or user group such as the IIBA or PMI. You can also look for meetup groups in your field. This allows you to build your network and develop your skills and knowledge.2. Have a cadence to update your resume and think of it in terms of outcomes of the things you did.3. Build your personal brand. Think of ways you can share your knowledge and be seen as an expert. Some potential ways are speaking at industry events or writing on topics related to your industry. Links Mentioned in this Episode SoftEd website- https://www.softed.com/ Meetup.com David Mantica is VP and General Manager at SoftEd, where they help organisations to adopt new ways of working for better business outcomes. David is also a frequent speaker at meetups, professional organizations, and conferences. David’s LinkedIn Profile Thank you for listening to the program To get more valuable content to enhance your skills and advance your career, you can subscribe on iTunes and other podcatchers. Also, reviews on iTunes are highly appreciated! I read each review and it helps keep me motivated to continue to bring you valuable content in each episode. The post MBA203: Career Insurance appeared first on Mastering Business Analysis.

Holiday Episode: In the style of the New York Sun editorial in which an 8 year old Virginia asks if there’s a Santa Clause, grown up Virginia asks if there are Business Analysts in Agile. DEAR EDITOR: I am 30 years old.Some of my coworkers say there is no Business Analyst in Agile; especially with Scrum.My boss says, ‘If you hear it on Mastering Business Analysis, it’s so.’Please tell me the truth; is there a Business Analyst in Agile? VIRGINIA O’HANLON. Virginia, your coworkers are wrong. They have been affected by things they’ve heard about Agile and Scrum without understanding the mindset, values, and principles behind the practices. They do not believe except what they read about Scrum. They think that nothing can be which is beyond the Scrum Guide. All minds, Virginia, whether they be men’s, women’s or children’s, are not fixed. In many organizations our knowledge is a mere speck, a crumb as compared with the boundless and ever changing world around us as measured by the potential growth of the growth mindset capable of grasping the whole of truth and knowledge. Yes, Virginia, there are Business Analysts in Agile.  They exist as certainly as critical thinking and problem solving and communication exists, and you know that they abound and give to your solutions its value and quality. Alas, how difficult would it be to create valuable solutions if there were no Business Analysts? It would be as difficult as if there were no Product Managers. There would be no clear communication then, no customer-centric focus, no vision to make exceptional our teams. We should have no alignment, except in micromanagement. The value with which our products bring to our customers would be diminished. No BAs in Agile! You might as well not believe in collaboration! You might get your manager to draw up an organizational chart showing Business Analysts an Agile teams, but even if it does not list the title Business Analyst, what would that show? The power of Business Analysis is not in the role title, but in the clarity, shared understanding, and value they bring to teams, organizations, and customers. Most significant things Business Analysts do are those that we cannot see, yet are critical. Did you ever see a shared understanding or alignment? Of course not, but these intangibles are there in great teams. Nobody can conceive or imagine all the wonders great teams have yet to develop. You may create a process diagram or draw a value stream map, but there is a veil covering today’s volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous world which not the smartest person, nor even the united intelligence of all the smartest people that ever lived, could draw. Only vision, innovation, experimentation, and analysis of outcomes can push aside that curtain and picture the value and quality beyond. Is it all real? Ah, Virginia, in all this world there is nothing else as real and abiding. No BAs in Agile! Thank God there are; and they may have different titles. A thousand years from now, Virginia, nay, ten times ten thousand years from now, the skill of business analysis will continue to help teams and organizations create high quality, valuable solutions. Yes Virginia, there are Business Analysts in Agile. Merry Christmas, happy Hanukkah, and happy holidays however you celebrate. I wish you a joyous and prosperous 2020. Thank you for listening to the program To get more valuable content to enhance your skills and advance your career, you can subscribe on iTunes and other podcatchers. Also, reviews on iTunes are highly appreciated! I read each review and it helps keep me motivated to continue to bring you valuable content each week. The post Yes, Virginia, There Are BAs in Agile appeared first on Mastering Business Analysis.

Find out what you can do to ensure a successful product launch. Show Notes Disney recently launched its Disney+ streaming service.  Unfortunately, the launch was met with some problems as many of their 10 million subscribers couldn’t log in or couldn’t stream videos. After the launch, I read an article about how Disney representatives said the outages of their streaming service were due to the way their engineers architected the application. That got me thinking . . . Is it really an architecture problem? While the outages were a direct result of the tooling choices and the inability of the architecture to handle 10 million people all trying to log in at once, I think there’s a deeper root cause here.  To me, the root cause is a failure to accurately forecast demand and understand the limitations of the architecture. This is where we as Business Analysts, project professionals, and change agents can help our organizations discover some of the risks with a product launch and take steps to make it successful. Let’s first focus on understanding potential demand. When I first heard about the outage, I immediately thought “Where are the business analysts?   What kind of nonfunctional requirements did this initiative have?  Was their business case?  What assumptions did Disney make it as far as volume?” Disney must have made some type of forecast related to demand and I suspect that their forecast was off. Disney has the money and people skills to be able to develop a solution to meet the needs for 10 million customers.  The problem is if they only predict 2 million customers, the architect the solution in a way to meet that need instead of the true demand. I want to note that this type of demand and this product is new territory for Disney.  There are a lot of unknowns and I’m certainly not faulting Disney for the outages.  I’m using this as a case study for how we could help our organizations. What could Disney have done to better understand the real demand?  There are a few approaches that other organizations have used that may or may not apply to Disney’s context. One thing I would recommend for any type of product launch is to make your assumptions transparent. You can use an approach such as assumptions mapping to understand what assumptions are making and then run experiments to validate or invalidate those assumptions. I discussed assumptions mapping with David Bland in episode 99. Depending on the type of product, another approach would be to use a beta launch or pre-sell.  A beta launch involves launching the product to a limited group or limited area.  This approach allows you to better understand demand and discover any issues prior to a full-scale launch. A pre-sell allows your customers to sign up for your service or purchase your product before the actual launch.  Services like Kickstarter help entrepreneurs and organizations to understand customer preferences and demand. Now let’s look at the other root cause; the need to understand the limitations of the architecture. Limitations in the architecture, tools, and skills within an organization are all organizational constraints. Before we determine how we will develop a solution, we need to understand those organizational constraints. We may be able to build a solution, but if we don’t have the organizational capabilities to service that product, we won’t be successful. As the launch of Disney plus was new territory for Disney, it’s unclear whether they truly knew the limitations of their architecture. I’m sure they load tested their software and performed many other checks. As business analysts, product managers, and other professionals, we need to understand our organizational capabilities and limitations. We need to know how much volume our systems can handle. We need to know how much volume our call center can handle. We need to understand all of the constraints of our organization. Making the constraints of the architecture visible and using different techniques to understand the true demand may have helped Disney put changes in place that would have avoided the outages.  To Disney’s credit, they were able to quickly adapt and change their application for the high volume of customers. What are you doing in your organization to understand constraints and validate your assumptions? Launching a New Product Thank you for listening to the program To get more valuable content to enhance your skills and advance your career, you can subscribe on iTunes and other podcatchers. Also, reviews on iTunes are highly appreciated! I read each review and it helps keep me motivated to continue to bring you valuable content each week. The post Lightning Cast: Failure to Launch (a new product) appeared first on Mastering Business Analysis.

David Mantica helps us overcome one of the biggest challenges facing organizations today – understanding value and building the right solution. Show Notes We’re doing things . . . but are they the right things?  This is a common challenge for many organizations. It all comes down to value such as business value or customer value.  The problem is that value can be difficult to define. When we discuss value, we’re really talking about utility.  Utility is what you believe is important for what you’re doing in your life.  The challenge comes when we can’t put ourselves in the position of the customer to understand their utility. We often have preconceived notions about the value of what we’re building and we push that on to the customer. Product Management is the Key To address this challenge, we need to shift our thinking to a Product Management focus.  When designing a solution, we need to think in terms of value (utility), cost, and competition or what’s happening in the marketplace. Understanding your organization’s goals and capabilities is another critical component.  You may dream up a fantastic solution, but it’s only a dream if your organization can’t build or support it and it doesn’t align to your organization’s vision. Ultimately, it comes down to one of two desired outcomes: those that lead to making money or those that lead to saving money. As change agents, we can help our organizations define the right outcomes that align to the organization’s capabilities and maximize utility. Listen to the full episode to discover how to define value and outcomes to build the right solution. Business Value Analysis YOUR HOMEWORKFirst, start asking questions about why we need the solution, how it will perform better and help us/our customers to perform better. Ask the person using the system about what they value. Second, look into Product Management. Discover how product managers operate, identify value propositions, and validate ideas. Finally, learn more about the Lean Startup model and how it works. Links Mentioned in this Episode SoftEd website- https://www.softed.com/ The Great Courses – Questions of Value David Mantica is VP and General Manager at SoftEd, where they help organisations to adopt new ways of working for better business outcomes. David is also a frequent speaker at meetups, professional organizations, and conferences. David’s LinkedIn Profile Thank you for listening to the program To get more valuable content to enhance your skills and advance your career, you can subscribe on iTunes and other podcatchers. Also, reviews on iTunes are highly appreciated! I read each review and it helps keep me motivated to continue to bring you valuable content in each episode. The post MBA202: Business Value Analysis appeared first on Mastering Business Analysis.

Richard Larson shares his experiences as an accidental Product Owner and provides tips and advice for others moving toward a role in Product Ownership. Show Notes It’s tough to play two roles at once.  If you’re expected to perform your normal business analysis activities and also function as a Product Owner, those two things sometimes pull at each other. If you’re forced to do both, make sure that you and others are aware of the role you’re playing. This leads to several other lessons learned including focusing too much on the “how” and not on the “what” and how to avoid the curse of knowledge. Listen to the full episode to hear Richard’s story and get tips and advice for moving into a Product Owner role. Tips and Advice for Accidental Product Owners Your HomeworkUnderstand in your organization and on your team how far your authority goes. Are you authorized to make decisions? Do you make recommendations and help others decide?Also, be aware of the need to balance out the more detailed nature of being a Business Analyst versus the bigger picture, business oriented aspects of the Product Owner. Links Mentioned in this Episode Building Business Capability ConferenceConnect with Richard Larson on LinkedInWatermark Learning Richard Larson is a successful entrepreneur with over 30 years of experience in business analysis, project management, training, and consulting. He has presented workshops and seminars on BA and PM topics to over 10,000 participants on five different continents. He has contributed as a lead author to the BA Body of Knowledge version 2.0 and 3.0 and other publications and co-authored five books on business analysis. Thank you for listening to the program To get more valuable content to enhance your skills and advance your career, you can subscribe on iTunes and other podcatchers. Also, reviews on iTunes are highly appreciated! I read each review and it helps keep me motivated to continue to bring you valuable content each week. The post MBA201: Tips From an Accidental Product Owner appeared first on Mastering Business Analysis.

Here’s the best tips and advice from industry experts in over 200 episodes. Now take action! Show Notes As long-time listeners know, I ask guests for one action that we can take to start seeing some positive results.  In this episode, I have gathered the best advice from over 200 episodes (199 full length episodes and 39 lightning casts). THEME: Build the Right Thing Episode 025: Advice from Gojko Adzic Whenever you receive a requirement that is actually a solution, inquire about the behavior change that the solution is going to create. If we have a behavior change that allows us to monitor progress in a meaningful way, we will get more rapid feedback. Additionally, this helps guard against scope creep and makes sure we are aligning to organizational goals. Episode 071: Advice from Jonathan Babcock When we create something, be it a document or a visual, think of who is going to use it as our customer.  Focus on their needs and afterwards, get their feedback on how you could have done better or how you could have helped them to be more successful.  This kind of mindset builds trust and allows you to reach higher levels of performance. Episode 091: Advice from Elizabeth Larson When you’re provided with a solution to implement, practice asking the right kind of questions to better understand the intent of the solution and the current environment.  Take the time to gather the facts and statistics about the current state so that you’ll be better prepared for conversations and make appropriate recommendations.  Finally, don’t ask leading questions.  Leading questions limit conversations and present a solution.  Eliminate the phrase ‘have you thought about’.  That phrase breaks trust. Episode 185: Advice from James Robertson Challenge the next solution you’re presented with to make sure you’re solving the right problem.  Also, try to generate solutions to address the real business problem. THEME: Use a Hypothesis Episode 042: Advice from Jim Benson Take a few User Stories (especially those that the team is doubtful about) and rewrite them as hypotheses.  Treat it like a guess that you can prove or disprove and learn something. Episode 081: Advice from David Hussman When you decide to take on a user story or requirement, understand how you’ll measure the impact, not just how you’ll get it done.  Stories need to include analytics.  That helps you build less of the wrong thing by measuring the impact. THEME: Iterate Episode 130: Advice from Jerry Weinberg Start talking requirements seriously.  Explore options and impacts to understand your requirements.  Finally, iterate on your requirements.  You can’t know everything upfront. Episode 133: Advice from Kent McDonald In your current role, look for ways to do your work iteratively and incrementally. Ideally, get feedback after ever iteration and use that feedback to adjust not only the product, but also your approach. THEME: Talk To Customers Episode 016: Advice from Jeff Patton Go to where your users are and talk to them.  Also, stop writing stories and start telling stories. Have conversations . . . get to the whiteboard and start drawing pictures. Episode 076: Advice from Roman Pichler The single most important action you can take to make sure your requirements, backlog, and roadmap are aligned to user needs is to talk with your customers.  Talking with customers gives you insights into what your customer needs are, how they use your product, and features that they don’t use.  Use these insights to adapt your roadmap and requirements. THEME: Build Relationship and Trust Episode 080: Advice from Fay Thompson Learn to say “I don’t know enough yet”.  While we want to move projects forward quickly, get comfortable with the need to go back and investigate more to ensure you have a solid understanding of the problem you’re solving and the intended value.  Also, adopt a servant leadership mindset and put the team’s and organization’s needs first. Episode 019: Advice from Steve Shedletsky Trust is the human currency.  It takes time to build and an instant to break.  We develop trust when we feel that someone else has our best interest in mind – that they are there to serve us instead of their own self-service.   So what can we do to increase trust? Show up to serve.  If you want to feel more engaged in the projects that you’re working on, figure out how you can help the people around you feel more engaged.  In turn, you will feel more engaged.  Above all, don’t forget to show up to commit and serve others. Episode 079: Advice from Paula Bell Start building relationships.  Whether it’s a coffee break, lunch, or a walk around the building with someone, take time to learn about the people on your team.  Building relationships creates a better understanding and increases collaboration. Episode 037: Advice from Jim Tamm Focus on b

In this episode, Kevin Brennan discusses how the world of work is changing and how Business Analysts need to adapt. Shot Notes With changes in working environments from Agile and digital transformations, Business Analysts need to adapt to stay relevant. With this change. business analysis professionals are going to diverge into two major roles; product management and value stream management. What this means is that business analysis skills will still be critical, but will apply with a more management level approach. Business analysis professionals will be responsible for real business outcomes and bottom line results. Listen to the full episode to understand what the future holds for Business Analysts and how you can thrive in the new world of work. The Future of the Business Analysis Profession Your HomeworkGet out into the world and see what real people are trying to do with your product. No matter how well you think you know the space, you’ll find things that are different than you expected. Once you have that knowledge, improve your product to meet that need. Links Mentioned in This Episode NewBA.comJobs to Be Done Podcast Episode Kevin Brennan is an executive and business analysis consultant who helps companies create new business models, develop new products and services, and improve their business processes. Kevin helped to launch IIBA and the Canadian Federation of Library Associations (CFLA-FCAB), led the creation and development of the Guide to the Business Analysis Body of Knowledge and has written and spoken about business analysis on every continent (except Antarctica). Thank you for listening to the program To get more valuable content to enhance your skills and advance your career, you can subscribe on iTunes and other podcatchers. Also, reviews on iTunes are highly appreciated! I read each review and it helps keep me motivated to continue to bring you valuable content each week. The post MBA199: The Future of the BA Profession appeared first on Mastering Business Analysis.

Michael Roberts helps us understand what DevOps is and how it affects the role of Business Analysts. Show Notes Many organizations are using DevOps to benefit their customers.  But what is DevOps and what role do Business Analysts play?  Is DevOps a tool set, a practice, or a way of working? With DevOps, you try to work with smaller batches of software that can be deployed more frequently with less effort by people working together.  As much as it is a technology shift, it’s about people working better together. If you’re already operating in an Agile environment, DevOps doesn’t change a lot of the things you’re doing.  The core business analysis skills, core capabilities, and practices still apply.  What may change is your stakeholders and your interaction with them. DevOps helps teams deliver value quickly, so it’s important to interact with and listen to stakeholders from downstream environments. There’s often a conflict in DevOps between the development team and the operations team. The development team’s job is to create change by delivering new code.  For the operations team, change is bad in that it will disrupt their system and processes.  The operations team wants stability. Business Analysts need to understand those opposing desires and how to navigate the resulting conflict. Periodic Table of DevOps Tools Listen to the full episode to understand what you need to know about DevOps and why BAs play a critical role. What DevOps Means for Business Analysts Your HomeworkRead up on DevOps practices. Some book recommendations are:• The Phoenix Project• Leading the Transformation• Continuous DeliveryYou can also explore an internal Center of Excellence for DevOps in your organization that will allow you to learn the tools. Links Mentioned in this Episode ASPE Training Save 25% on classes from ASPE Training https://masteringbusinessanalysis.com/resources/aspe/ Michael Roberts is an IT industry professional with more than 20 years of experience in project management. Michael speaks publicly at many events and user groups on subjects including organizational change management, project management, Agile development process, and DevOps transformations. Thank you for listening to the program To get more valuable content to enhance your skills and advance your career, you can subscribe on iTunes and other podcatchers. Also, reviews on iTunes are highly appreciated! I read each review and it helps keep me motivated to continue to bring you valuable content each week. The post MBA198: DevOps – What it Means for BAs appeared first on Mastering Business Analysis.

Lora McCoy discusses how to shift the psychological response to change and help stakeholders adapt and adopt the change. Show Notes When it comes to change, often the only one who isn’t afraid is the person driving the change. Sometimes a person’s response to change seems irrational. That response is driven by a fear of the unknown.  We fear what we don’t understand. Standard practices of implementing change fail because they don’t address this underlying fear and the psychology of change. We can move people out of the fear based fight or flight response by involving them in the change and even making it fun. When we try to take people from fear to acceptance using logic, it frequently doesn’t work because you’re taking them from a negative limbic brain focus to the front of the brain where logic resides.  It’s much easier to move people from the fight or flight response to excitement or fun and then into logic. Listen to the full episode to understand techniques you can use to make change more fun. How to overcome fear of change with fun and excitement Your HomeworkBefore your next change initiative, check out the Kübler-Ross change curve. That will allow you to connect with the emotional and psychological experience people go through during change. That will help you understand where people are in the change process and know how to respond with the way you communicate and the techniques you use.Also, go to GameStorming.com and explore exercises such as Flip It to help people adapt to change. Links Mentioned in this Episode Lora’s LinkedIn ProfileEmail Lora’s at: [email protected] Gamestorming website Information about the Kübler-Ross change curve Lora McCoy is a Certified Business Analysis Professional with over 20 years of experience performing Business Analysis activities as well as Quality Assurance, and Project Management. She currently engages daily in BA consulting efforts, educates for IIBA certification internationally and serves as the Director of Americas Central Region for the IIBA where she applies that passion through mentorship and knowledge sharing. Thank you for listening to the program To get more valuable content to enhance your skills and advance your career, you can subscribe on iTunes and other podcatchers. Also, reviews on iTunes are highly appreciated! I read each review and it helps keep me motivated to continue to bring you valuable content each week. The post MBA197: Making Change Fun appeared first on Mastering Business Analysis.

Vince Mirabelli shares some practical, how-to approaches to developing empathy, mapping the customer journey, and finding business process improvement opportunities along the way. Show Notes An Empathy Map is a tool you can use to understand who your customer is, their pain points, and what they think and feel about the problem you’re trying to solve.  Ultimately, it helps us understand what customers want from us. Empathy Maps give us insight into who and the why.  Who are our customers, what do they need and why is it important to them? Once you understand your customer and their needs, you can move on to a Customer Journey Map. You can think of a Customer Journey Map as an outside in process map.  It’s a process map from the customer’s perspective. You can use a Customer Journey Map to better understand the customer’s interactions with your organization and make working with you easier.  It can also help you to understand high and low interaction points to discover ways to improve. Armed with the information from your Empathy Map and Journey Map, you can now prioritize opportunities to benefit your customers. Listen to the full episode to understand how to use these tools and more to find the right opportunities to bring more value to your customers. Customer Journey Treasure Hunting with Vince Mirabelli Use coupon Code MBABBC to save 15% Your HomeworkUnderstand who your customer is and go and talk to them. Find out what it is that they need and why it’s important. Be on the lookout for both stated needs and unstated needs. Links Mentioned in this Episode Vince’s website: https://www.vincentmirabelli.com/ Get Vince’s Newsletter Vincent MirabelliVince is a leader in the fields of Business Process Improvement, Business Analysis and Lean Six Sigma, is a frequent speaker and workshop facilitator, and host of the podcast, “In Process”. He is a certified Project Management Professional (PMP®), Certified Business Analysis Professional (CBAP®), Certified Customer Experience Professional (CCXP), and a Lean Six Sigma Master Black Belt. Thank you for listening to the program To get more valuable content to enhance your skills and advance your career, you can subscribe on iTunes and other podcatchers. Also, reviews on iTunes are highly appreciated! I read each review and it helps keep me motivated to continue to bring you valuable content each week. The post MBA196: Customer Journey Treasure Hunting appeared first on Mastering Business Analysis.

Kent McDonald shares his thoughts about what you need to know about Agile and how to use Example Mapping; a technique to create a shared understanding. Show Notes In addition to participating on the Product Ownership Panel during the Building Business Capability conference, Kent is also leading a workshop, 7 Things You Need to Know About Agile. One of the big challenges in organizations transforming to Agile ways of working is shifting from doing Agile (following certain practices and events) and bring Agile (adopting an Agile mindset and living the values). Without the right mindset, your team and organization will never reap all of the benefits of Agile. In addition to dispelling some of the myths and misconceptions about Agile, Kent will share a great technique in his session, How to Build Shared Understanding with Example Mapping. Example mapping is a great way to structure a conversation in a way that people with diverse knowledge can develop a shared understanding.  You can use this powerful approach before you build anything; when you’re fleshing out features and stories. Example Mapping: Create a shared understanding Use coupon Code MBABBC to save 15% Your HomeworkTip #1: If you have the chance to work with a UX person, take advantage of that opportunity as much as possible. You’ll improve the discovery and elicitation process as well as learn new things.Tip #2: If you need to understand the business rules that apply to your project, don’t ask stakeholders for the business rules. Instead, ask them to provide some examples. From those examples, you can infer the business rules and get feedback from the stakeholder. Links Mentioned in This Episode 7 Things you need to know about agile: https://www.kbp.media/portfolio/7-things-agile-business-analyst/How to build shared understanding with example mapping: https://www.kbp.media/portfolio/example-mapping/ Kent’s website: https://www.kbp.media Kent McDonald Kent McDonald writes about and practices software product management. He has IT and product development experience in a variety of industries. Kent currently practices his craft for a leading agriscience company and provides just in time resources for product owners and business analysts at KBP.media and Product Collective. Kent is writing a new book: How to be an Agile Business Analyst. A pre-publication version is available for sale on Leanpub, and if you buy it now, you’ll get the current version and all subsequent updates. Podcast listeners can get the book for the special price of $15.99 (normally $29.99) and this special price will be good until the start of BBC (November 10): https://leanpub.com/agile-business-analyst/c/mba Thank you for listening to the program To get more valuable content to enhance your skills and advance your career, you can subscribe on iTunes and other podcatchers. Also, reviews on iTunes are highly appreciated! I read each review and it helps keep me motivated to continue to bring you valuable content each week. The post MBA195: Example Mapping appeared first on Mastering Business Analysis.

In this episode, Adrian Reed shares his advice for successfully initiating projects and stakeholder management. Show Notes If you’ve ever been thrown into a messy project where the goal and scope aren’t well defined, Adrian Reed’s session at this year’s BBC conference can help. In Navigating the Mess, Adrian blends some traditional business analysis techniques with systems thinking approaches. In addition to helping you sort out the mess and gail clarity and alignment on your project, Adrian will take you beyond stakeholder engagement. The typical two-by-two influence and impact grid for stakeholder analysis leads to under representation of key stakeholders. Often, these are ghe people who will be using your solution. Listen to the full episode to get more information about engaging with the right stakeholders and starting your project the right way. Start your project the right way – with Adrian Reed Use coupon Code MBABBC to save 15% on your conference registration. Your HomeworkDon’t be surprised by an unknown or underrepresented stakeholder. On your next project, reflect on the following question.Who is the stakeholder that we’re missing? Who’s voice isn’t being heard?Make sure everyone who needs to have a voice has one. Links Mentioned in this Episode Adrian’s Blog: http://www.adrianreed.co.uk Blackmetric WebinarsBBC – the Building Business Capability Conference Adrian Reed Adrian is a Principal Consultant and Director at Blackmetric Business Solutions where he provides business analysis consultancy and training solutions.  He also speaks internationally on topics relating to business analysis and business change. Thank you for listening to the program To get more valuable content to enhance your skills and advance your career, you can subscribe on iTunes and other podcatchers. Also, reviews on iTunes are highly appreciated! I read each review and it helps keep me motivated to continue to bring you valuable content each week. Latest Posts MBA228: Software Development Pearls MBA227: The Minimum Viable Business MBALC: Elon Musk’s 5-Step Design Process MBA226: The FOCCCUS Formula MBA225: The Value of Business Models MBA224: Corkscrew Thinking MBA223: The Human Work Machine MBA222: Testing Your Business Ideas MBA221: Systems Thinking and Business Agility MBA220: Thoughtless Design with Karl Wiegers MBA219: How To Be an Agile Business Analyst BA Toolbox – A3 Report MBA218: Customer-Centric Transformation Lightning Cast: Agile Planning MBA217: Objectives and Key Results Lightning Cast: POWER Start for Your Meetings MBA216: Outcome Based Change Lightning Cast: Resistance to Change MBA215: The Challenges with Leading in Product Management MBA214: The BA Success Path MBA213: Applying Theory of Constraints MBA212: Transforming Your Work with Modern Agile MBA211: Adaptive Leadership MBA210: Vital Communication MBA209: Visual Thinking MBA208: Facilitative Leadership MBA207: Bad Behaviors in the Workplace MBA206: Succeeding with Analytics Lightning Cast: BA Goals Revisited MBA205: Beyond Data Literacy MBA204: Top Skills for 2020 MBA203: Career Insurance Yes, Virginia, There Are BAs in Agile Lightning Cast: Failure to Launch (a new product) MBA202: Business Value Analysis MBA201: Tips From an Accidental Product Owner MBA200: Take Action! The Best Advice from Over 200 Episodes MBA199: The Future of the BA Profession MBA198: DevOps – What it Means for BAs MBA197: Making Change Fun MBA196: Customer Journey Treasure Hunting MBA195: Example Mapping MBA194: Start Your Project Off Right MBA193: About Your Career Lightning Cast: Story Estimation – What’s the Point? Lightning Cast: Requirements Rot MBA192: The Blight of Product Debt Lightning Cast: The Power to Get Things Done MBA191: Use Cases in Agile Lightning Cast: AI – Can you be replaced by a machine? MBA190: Business Data Analytics Lightning Cast: You Are a Facilitator MBA189: Adventures in Product Ownership Lightning Cast: Simplified Value Stream Mapping MBA188: The Four Ps of Product Ownership Lightning Cast: Product Debt MBA187: Transitioning to a Scrum Master Role Lightning Cast: Business Agility MBA186: Exploring Product Ownership Lightning Cast: Don’t Throw it Over the Wall MBA185: Business Analysis in Agile Lightning Cast: Non-Functional Requirements in Agile MBA184: Discover What Customers Want with JTBD Lightning Cast: We Are the Business MBA183: The BA Role on a Scrum Team MBA182: BA in the Service Industry Lightning Cast: Death, Taxes, and Missed Requirements MBA181: The Three BA Archetypes MBA180: Socratic Questioning Lightning Cast: BA Performance Goals MBA179: The Power of Prototyping MBA178: Career Options for BAs MBA177: Product Backlog Refinement MBA176: Predictions for 2019 Lightning Cast: A Visit From the Business Analyst MBA175: Product Management is the New Business Analysis – Part 2 MBA174: Product Management

In this episode, Ryland Leyton shares tips and advice from his new book to help you find the right job and grow in your career. Links Mentioned in This Episode http://rylandleyton.com/ Ryland’s book om Amazon It’s About Your Career Ryland Leyton Ryland Leyton is a Certified Business Analysis Professional, agile coach, and author of The Agile Business Analyst: Moving from Waterfall to Agile. Thank you for listening to the program To get more valuable content to enhance your skills and advance your career, you can subscribe on iTunes. Also, reviews on iTunes are highly appreciated! I read each review and it helps keep me motivated to continue to bring you valuable content each week. The post MBA193: About Your Career appeared first on Mastering Business Analysis.

In this episode, we explore the use (and misuse) of story point estimation. Lightning Casts are shorter episodes, sharing valuable information in 8 minutes or less. Show Notes Many Agile teams estimate their User Stories using story points.  When using this approach, many teams also apply story points incorrectly. A story point is a relative estimation of effort and complexity.  Story points have no correlation to hours, days, or and other time measurement.  Instead, it’s a tool in which you estimate based on a comparison to other User Stories. Some Scrum teams use story points for planning by calculating the average number of story points completed in the last few iterations (velocity) and pulling about that many story points worth of stories for the next iteration. While velocity can be a useful heuristic, always validate the team’s confidence level in their ability to complete the planned backlog items. The more powerful use of story points is in creating a shared understanding through a discussion. Below are some dos and don’ts for story point estimation. Do Estimate as a team by providing all estimates at the same time.  This helps eliminate bias and influence of other votes.Estimate the effort and complexity of the entire story (coding and testing).Discuss the differences in votes to develop a shared understanding of the effort and complexity.Identify and use reference stories; backlog items with which the team is familiar to relatively size against.Estimate stories during backlog refinement. Don’t Use story points or velocity to compare teams.Average the team’s story points to size a story.Argue against someone’s sizing.  Instead, have a discussion about why everyone voted the way they did.Size coding and testing efforts separately.Have the team share their estimations one at a time.  This leads to influencing other team members and less discussion.Size during Sprint Planning. Listen to the full episode to discover how to properly use story point estimation. Estimating User Stories with Story Points Thank you for listening to the program To get more valuable content to enhance your skills and advance your career, you can subscribe on iTunes and other podcatchers. Also, reviews on iTunes are highly appreciated! I read each review and it helps keep me motivated to continue to bring you valuable content each week. The post Lightning Cast: Story Estimation – What’s the Point? appeared first on Mastering Business Analysis.

Requirements decay over time. Here’s how to prevent Requirements Rot. Show Notes Has your organization experienced requirements rot? A common term in software development is code rot. Code rot is a slow degradation of the performance of a software application that will eventually make it unusable. While the software doesn’t physically decay, this ever-diminishing performance is a result of not being updated to adapt to the changing environment. Like code rot, requirements decay over time until they’re unusable. When we talk about gathering requirements, imagine gathering ripe berries along a path.  Those small, valuable pieces of fruit are perfect when we pick them and are best when they’re consumed soon after they’re picked.  That’s when they’re the freshest. If we don’t eat those berries soon after they’re picked, they’ll continue to ripen, then soften, and start to decay until you can no longer eat them.  Requirements are the same way. In a typical waterfall project, we’ll spend several weeks or months eliciting, analyzing, and documenting requirements.  After that, the team will likely spend several more months writing tech specs, coding, and testing.  When the project is put into production 6-12 months later, the business environment and customer needs may have changed. You’ve served rotten requirements. Even in Agile People often make the same mistake using an Agile approach.  They create a backlog and then code and test in small chunks, get feedback, and adapt.  That sounds like a good way to prevent requirements rot. The problems occur when people do “sort of” Agile.  This Wagile or WaterScrumFall approach leads to waste and requirements rot when we dive too deep into detailed, ready User Stories too soon. Do you try to decompose an entire project or epic all up front? Is your product backlog made up of only User Stories that are ready or near ready? Does your team wait for a detailed design before they begin development? If so, you’ll likely experience requirements rot. By breaking down a project all up front, we’re wasting effort. As we create something and get feedback, it’s likely that our requirements, User Stories, and approach may change. Many of the User Stories you created will need to change or will no longer be valid. In addition, the delays waiting for a detailed design makes it difficult to quickly adapt to changing customer needs.  We’re delaying getting something in the hands of our customers, lengthening the feedback loops, and slowing our responsiveness to changing market conditions. Avoid Requirements Rot Going back to the analogy of picking ripe berries, if you wanted to prevent them from rotting you’d pick only enough berries that you would eat within a few days.  As you go back later to pick more berries, you’ll find more berries have grown and ripened and you can pick those. You can do the same with your requirements.  Understand the high level view of your project or epic, perhaps from a workflow or customer experience perspective and using a story map. Once you understand the high level, you can determine which small slices or journeys to prioritize and go into just enough detail on those.  Build something, get feedback, and adapt. Continue this process of doing just enough analysis just in time based on prioritized slices until you have achieved enough value from the project or initiative and decide to move on to something else. Remember that lower priority requirements likely have diminishing returns.  It may cost more to fulfil a requirement that the value it will bring.  Try to maximize the amount of work you don’t do looking critically at the value of some of the slices or requirements. The real question is “What are you NOT going to do today?” How to Avoid Requirements Rot Save 15% with you register for the 2019 Building Business Capabilities Conference by using code MBABBC when you register. Thank you for listening to the program To get more valuable content to enhance your skills and advance your career, you can subscribe on iTunes and other podcatchers. Also, reviews on iTunes are highly appreciated! I read each review and it helps keep me motivated to continue to bring you valuable content each week. The post Lightning Cast: Requirements Rot appeared first on Mastering Business Analysis.

In this episode, you’ll discover what Product Debt is and the impact it can have on your product and your organization. You’ll also find out how to address Product Debt and ensure you are delivering valuable solutions quickly. Show Notes Debt is what you owe because you borrowed from tomorrow for something today.  This debt needs to be repaid, often with interest. Product debt is similar to financial debt.  You’re racking up debt related to the design and features of your product.  If you don’t pay down this debt and the related interest, delivery will slow, you won’t maximize perceived customer value, and you’ll be unable to innovate. The Three Types of Product Debt There are three main types of product debt: feature bloat, low value features, and poor user experience. Feature bloat occurs when we add more and more features.  These new features add complexity to our product and make it more difficult and more expensive to maintain. A related type of product debt is adding low value features.  If we focus on implementing features instead of solving a real and valuable customer problem, we’ll add low value features. These two types of product debt are a drag on organizations.  In 2014, The Standish Group performed an analysis of feature and function usage.  They determined that 50% of features are hardly ever used.  An additional 30% are infrequently used. Think of the time and money wasted on creating all of those infrequently or hardly ever used features. The third type of product debt is a bad user experience.  This occurs when we create solutions in silos or rush to get new features out the door. The result is a product without a cohesive experience.  Because the experience of each features is different of too many items are added to a tab or new page, it’s difficult for customers to learn and use. “Product Debt comes from making rush decisions.  It comes from lazy product thinking and design.  It comes from the hope that adding just one more feature will solve all of your problems.  It comes from wanting to push features as quickly as possible.” – Ben Yoskovitz What to Do About Product Debt To address feature bloat, we need to focus on solving problems, not implementing features.  We also need to ensure that there’s a good problem/solution fit and good product/market fit.  Do your features align to your product and organizational goals and vision? Remember that each line of code we write is another line of code we need to maintain.  Be relentless in keeping everything simple and writing as few lines of code as possible. If you want to address low value features, ensure you have a meaningful product vision in place and a goal-oriented roadmap.  Those will keep the team focused on delivering functionality aligned to the product and organization. You can also use Hypothesis Driven Development, define success metrics, and test often to ensure your feature solves the right problem and achieves the right outcomes. To address debt related to your customer experience, ensure you perform usability testing.  How quickly and easily can users achieve the goal that the feature was intended to support. Prototyping and frequent workflow reviews with experienced user experience professionals will help you identify and reduce this type of debt. Learn to Build Common thinking is to build something, measure the results, and learn from those measurements before we build the next iteration.  To do this, we often create a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) to ensure we’ve created something valuable. The problem is that building an MVP is that it could take weeks or months.  Building an MVP in this way means that you’re experimenting in one of the more expensive and time consuming ways possible. Instead, let’s flip the build-measure-learn cycle. Let’s first figure out what we need to learn; our assumptions and hypotheses that we need to validate or invalidate.  Next, determine how we can measure that learning.  Finally, build the simplest possible thing that can give you the needed measurements. Instead of a Minimum Viable Product, build a Minimum Viable Prototype.  We want to learn and adapt as quickly and cheaply as possible. Pay it Down To reduce product debt, you’ll need to dedicate time to identify and pay down existing debt.  You’ll also need to ensure that you’re not adding more product debt. By working to reduce the complexity of new features, asking ‘why’, and testing early and often, you can help your organization regain speed of delivery, boost customer value, and innovate. Listen to the full episode to understand the root cause of these types of product debt, what to do about it, and discover when product debt is actually a good thing. The Blight of Product Debt Your HomeworkBefore you start your next project, ask questions.  Work to understand the problem that the feature or project is intended t

In this episode, we’ll discuss the different kinds of power you can use to get things done within your team or across your organization. Show Notes Have you ever been frustrated because things aren’t getting done?  Are others failing to do their part to move your project along? If you’ve ever wished you had the power to influence others to take action, this episode is for you. For larger, more complex initiatives (those we can’t do on our own), we need other people.  We may sometimes think that projects would be much easier if it weren’t for the people.  But we need others to get things done. Types of Power A while back, I heard an episode of the Manager Tools podcast in which they discuss three types of power people use to get things done.  Those types of power are role, expertise, and relationships. Each of these types of power allows you to influence others to take a specific action. With role power, you use your positional authority to get things done.  Using role power, you cause the people who report to you to take action.  This can range from coercion and ordering people around to leading through setting a compelling vision. People do as you ask because you’re their boss and you have the ability to affect their career. With expertise power, people look to you for answers because you’re seen as an expert or authority in a specific area.  This type of power grows as your knowledge grows. People do as you ask because you are an expert. The third type of power is relationship power.  This type of power is built up over time and you build trust with others in your organization.  Relationships and trust are like a bank account that grows as you invest time and invest in listening to others. With relationship power, people do as you ask because you’ve build trust and they believe in you. Appropriate Use of Power Many of us may not have the role power to command others.  But if you do, there are specific context in which it may be appropriate to use role power. If there is an emergency or safety is at risk, role power can be used to ensure things get done quickly or avoid certain types of risk.  However, this should only be the case in rare exceptions. Expertise power may be used if you have deep, specific knowledge in the subject matter.  When using expertise power, help people to understand the ‘why’ behind your direction so they can make better decisions themselves. In most situations, relationship power is the most powerful and sustaining approach.  Building relationships with others creates a collaborative, open environment of trust.  People may reprioritize other work if you have a strong relationship you ask them for help. Building and maintaining relationships helps your ability to influence and get things done. What relationships do you need to build in your organization? The Power to Get Things Done Thank you for listening to the program To get more valuable content to enhance your skills and advance your career, you can subscribe on iTunes and other podcatchers. Also, reviews on iTunes are highly appreciated! I read each review and it helps keep me motivated to continue to bring you valuable content each week. The post Lightning Cast: The Power to Get Things Done appeared first on Mastering Business Analysis.

In this episode, Ivar Jacobson shows us how to apply Use Cases in an Agile context and helps us discover how a Use Case approach addresses some of the problems with User Stories. Show Notes You may have used Use Cases in a waterfall environment, but can this technique work in Agile? The most common technique in Agile is User Stories. However, there are a few challenges associated with User Stories. The big picture is often missed with User Stories because they’re so small. In addition, we may need hundreds of stories for a large initiative. User Stories also cause us to lose customer focus at times. Even though User Stories are intended to focus on the customer, people often lose that focus given the small size of stories. Listen to the full episode to understand how to use Use Cases in Agile and the advantages over User Stories. Use Cases in Agile – Fill in the gap left by User Stories Your HomeworkWherever you are on your next initiative, ensure you and the team have a good understanding of the big picture as well as the customer needs and goals. Links Mentioned in This Episode Ivar’s website Ivar Jacobson InternationalUse Case Training resources Dr. Ivar Jacobson Dr. Ivar Jacobson is a father of use cases, the Unified Modeling Language, and the Rational Unified Process. He is the principal author of seven influential and best-selling books including Business Process Reengineering with Objects, Object Oriented Software Engineering: A Use Case Driven Approach, and Aspect-Oriented Software Development with Use Cases. Thank you for listening to the program To get more valuable content to enhance your skills and advance your career, you can subscribe on iTunes and other podcatchers. Also, reviews on iTunes are highly appreciated! I read each review and it helps keep me motivated to continue to bring you valuable content each week. The post MBA191: Use Cases in Agile appeared first on Mastering Business Analysis.

A Gartner study predicts that 80% of Project Management tasks will be performed by Artificial Intelligence by 2030. Will you lose your job to a machine? Lightning Casts are shorter episodes, sharing valuable information in 8 minutes or less. Show Notes Last year, CIO magazine ran an article with the title How AI Could Revolutionize Project Management.  In the article, they describe how automation can make projects more successful by reducing cost, analyzing risks, making project work more efficient, and keeping project on time and on budget. In addition, Gartner published a study earlier this year indicating that 80% of Project Management tasks may be eliminated by 2030. Instead of those tasks being done by Project Managers, Gartner suggests that Artificial Intelligence will perform that work. This means that Project Management functions such as data collection, tracking, reporting, forecasting, risk identification, and resource management may be performed by machines. Even process improvement initiatives may be better served through machine learning and Artificial Intelligence. The problem with machines managing the work is that it misses the people side; human interaction.  Machines can assign the right resources, but when we see people as resources or cogs in a machine, we don’t get the benefit of their brains . . . their creativity . . .  their whole self.  Instead, we get a pair of hands that are told what to do. Can Machines Elicit Requirements? For repeatable, “keep the lights on” projects, I could foresee machines with the ability to product requirements and even future state diagrams and tech specs. What about in a future where stakeholders can input what they want, their “requirements”, and the system spits out working, high quality code?  This isn’t fantasy.  There are systems today that can do this to a small degree, so it’s certainly something we could see in the next 10-20 years. That process could work for simple or complicated initiatives, where cause and effect are well understood.  But what about complex initiatives where the cause and effect relationship is only visible in hindsight?  Where we need to probe, sense and respond?  This is the realm of new product development and disruptive technology. Remember that AI needs data from which to learn.  But there is little or no past data for most new product discovery work.  I doubt AI could have come up with the iPad or Netflix streaming video. If keep the lights on and simple initiatives are eventually automated, I say that’s good.  Then we can focus on areas that will bring the most value to our customers and to our organizations.  Let’s use our creativity to shape the future and make our customers awesome. AI is coming. Will you be replaced? Thank you for listening to the program To get more valuable content to enhance your skills and advance your career, you can subscribe on iTunes and other podcatchers. Also, reviews on iTunes are highly appreciated! I read each review and it helps keep me motivated to continue to bring you valuable content each week. The post Lightning Cast: AI – Can you be replaced by a machine? appeared first on Mastering Business Analysis.