Mastering Business Analysis

In this episode, you’ll find out how you can bring value in the area of business data analytics. You’ll also learn about the IIBA’s Certification in Business Data Analytics. Show Notes The field of analytics is growing by leaps and bounds.  It’s become a critical component in better decision making. As Business Analysts, we need to bring together the business knowledge and the technical math and science of analytics.  The International Institute of Business Analysis™ uses the term Business Data Analytics to describe this. Why Business Data Analytics is Important In today’s digital world, we have access to an incredible amount of data.  We can now mine that data to gain insights that are critical to business success.  We are now able to elicit requirements from data. Business Data Analytics allows us to use facts and data to make better decisions. Instead of making decisions based of expert judgment or business domain knowledge, we can provide results of analysis that we glean from the data.  From this, we can help guide decision making and help our organizations choose the right path. The data and the answers we derive from it is a valuable asset to the organization and it helps reduce the risk of bad decision making. How Business Analysts Can Work with Analytics We often see the same problems with analytics projects as we do with traditional technology projects; we miss the connection to business outcomes.  Do we really understand what we’re trying to solve? Your core BA skills of facilitation, current state analysis, communication, and root cause analysis can be applied in the new context of Business Data Analytics. As Business Analysts, we need to make sure that the analytics research being done is focused on a problem or opportunity that’s important to the business.  This allows us to tie the analytics work to a meaningful value proposition. To do this, we work with stakeholders to understand their needs and understand the current state to discover the research question we need to analyze with the analytics initiative. After this upfront work, we can support the team by analyzing the data at some level.  This may mean identifying if the data is reliable and meaningful or analyzing models. Once you have some valuable insights based on the data, we need to communicate the results to business stakeholders in their language.  To make the data meaningful, we need to use approaches such as data storytelling to ensure the information resonates with stakeholders. The Certification in Business Data Analytics (IIBA®-CBDA) The International Institute of Business Analysis™ recently launched a Certification in Business Data Analytics.  As a precursor to the certification, the IIBA developed two introductory documents describing Business Data Analytics from the practitioner’s view as well as from the organization’s view. The certification exam is comprised of 75 scenario based questions.  As an experienced based exam, you’ll apply your work experience to answer scenarios common to analytics initiatives. This is a level 2 certification intended for those with 2-3 years of experience and are experienced with core BA skills.  You may need knowledge about data visualization techniques and other activities described in the introductory documents. Listen to the full episode to understand how you can bring value to an analytics project as well as how to prepare for the IIBA’s Certification in Business Data Analytics exam. Business Data Analytics with Laura Paton YOUR HOMEWORKCheck out the IIBA’s Business Data Analysis page and seek out the referenced sources. Start getting a sense of where you fit on an analytics project and use the information to tie the skills you already have to this new space.From there, try to get on an analytics project and demonstrate the value proposition you have. Links Mentioned in this Episode: International Institute of Business Analysis (IIBA)IIBA’s page on Business Data Analytics Laura Paton – BA AcademyLaura is a Business analysis thought leader with over 30 years of in depth project management and business analysis experience across numerous industries. She has been heavily involved with industry professional organizations and had chaired and helped author several industry standards. 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 MBA190: Business Data Analytics appeared first on Mastering Business Analysis.

Facilitation means more than running a meeting. Find out how you can facilitate the the value it brings to your organization. Show Notes What you hear the word facilitation, you often think of someone running a meeting.  Once you understand the true meaning of facilitate, you’ll understand that facilitation is much more than running meetings. The word facilitate comes from the Latin word facilis, which means easy.  The current English definition of facilitate is to make an action or process easy or easier. We often hear people complain that it’s hard to get things done in organizations.  Projects take too long. What would it mean to your organization if your role was to make things easy?  That’s already your role. How You Can Facilitate If you’re a Project Manager, you can facilitate project delivery by making sure everyone understands the scope and value of the project.  You can also help break down work into smaller chunks that are easier to understand. By mitigating risks and addressing dependencies, you can facilitate and accelerate delivery. Product Owners can facilitate through good backlog management. A prioritized, well understood backlog helps the team work on the right priorities and address the right customer problems. Business Analysts can facilitate by developing a shared understanding with team members.  The written word leads to misinterpretations and delays.  Instead, be a facilitator and have discussions supplemented with diagrams and prototypes to get everyone aligned. BAs can also make things easy for the team by breaking down requirements into small pieces.  These “atomic” requirements are easier to understand and helps the team to discover problems sooner. Listen to the full episode to understand how you can make things easier for your team and your organization. You Are a Facilitator 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: You Are a Facilitator appeared first on Mastering Business Analysis.

In this episode, BriElle Bryson shares her experience stepping into a Product Owner role and helps us understand how to prepare for product ownership. Show Notes Being a Product Owner can be challenging.  You need to be both outward facing to customers and inward facing for the delivery team.  Ultimately, you’re responsible for the value delivered by your team. Filling in for a Product Owner (either temporarily or as a permanent role change) be difficult, but it can also give you a new perspective on the role. Listen to the full episode to understand the challenges associated with moving to Product Ownership and how you can better prepare. Adventures in Product Ownership Your Homework Perform a self-assessment. Are there relationship you’d like to improve? If so, take action and set up a meeting to build that relationship.Explore how you can better lean in and identify opportunities to shadow someone else. Links Mentioned in this Episode BriElle’s website BrysonPMC.comAlicia R Pruitt Foundation BriElle Bryson is passionate about people and helping them make things happen. She is the Founder and Principal Consultant of Bryson PMC, LLC, a boutique management consulting firm that combines agile project management, business operations, and professional development courses into one powerhouse punch. The post MBA189: Adventures in Product Ownership appeared first on Mastering Business Analysis.

In this Lightning Cast, you’ll discover how to eliminate waste in a process and get a holistic view of end-to-end value using a simplified Value Stream Map. A Lightning Cast is a shorter form episode modeled after lightning talks. You’ll get valuable content in 8 minutes or less. A Value Stream Map is a tool to visualize all of the steps needed to deliver end-to-end value to your customer. Being able to visualize the steps needed to deliver value helps you to discover handoffs, wait time, and non-value added activities.  This allows you to make the process more efficient so you can deliver value to customers sooner and with less waste. Listen to this episode to understand a simple approach to creating a Value Stream Map. Simplified Value Stream Mapping 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: Simplified Value Stream Mapping appeared first on Mastering Business Analysis.

In this episode, coach, consultant, and trainer Anu Smalley shares her 4Ps framework to address a major challenge organizations face today; how to build products customers want and love.    After listening to this episode, you'll understand: Why a product vision is critically important How to build better teams to deliver products Why learning from the past is often a missed element of success SHOW NOTES One of the biggest challenges facing organizations today is defining and building great products; those customers really want and will love. We’re able to build products with high quality, but are they the right products? One way to help your organization build better products is with the Four P Framework. The four Ps of product ownership are Product vision, People, Patrons, and the Past.   Product Vision The product vision is not about what you’re doing to make money. It’s an aspirational view of how you’re helping your customers. It explains why your product exists. The best product visions are sustained, brief, and clear statement that tells us what we stand for; the intention behind the product. An example is Disney’s product vision – To Make People Happy. It’s not how they will create this outcome, it’s what outcome they’re trying to achieve. The product vision is the North Star or guiding light for the team. It helps keep everyone aligned to achieving a specific outcome for our customers and make good decisions.   People The people component refers to the team that comes together to build and deliver the product. To be successful, we need to make sure we have the right people in the right roles. To build the right team, we need to provide purpose, alignment, and context. A sense of purpose provides people with a meaningful reason behind what they do. It’s something that matters to them. Alignment means that everyone on the team is focused on achieving the product vision. The people on the team must also have a shared context to march toward the same goal. Having a team with purpose, alignment, and context engages the hearts and minds of the entire team.   Patrons Our patrons refers to our customers. It’s the reason why our product exists. Your product vision needs to be based on customer needs as well. Without a focus on our customers, we’ll create products no one wants. Start with the customer and discover what problems they have and whether or not you can solve that problem.   The Past We need to understand our past and learn from it. When we ignore our past, it’s likely we’ll run into problems. Past success does not predict future success.   The job of Product Owners is to build the right products at the right time for the right people.   Listen to the full episode to understand how to apply the for Ps and build better products for your customers. http://traffic.libsyn.com/masteringbusinessanalysis/MBA188.mp3   YOUR HOMEWORK Review your product vision. Update it (or create it) with the team and stakeholders so that it’s brief, sustaining, clear, and aligned to a customer need.     Links Mentioned in This Episode Capala Consulting Group Anu Smalley Capala Consulting Group, LLC Anu Smalley is the President and Founder of Capala Consulting Group, LLC where she specializes in Executive coaching and Agile Transformations. She is also an Enterprise Agile Coach and Certified Scrum Trainer® providing education, coaching, and consulting services to clients across the United States. Anu speaks frequently at conferences both nationally and internationally on Product Ownership and Group Facilitation Techniques. 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 MBA188: The Four Ps of Product Ownership appeared first on Mastering Business Analysis.

In this Lightning Cast, you’ll discover the impact Product Debt can have on your organization and how you can help avoid it. A Lightning Cast is a shorter form episode modeled after lightning talks. You’ll get valuable content in 8 minutes or less.   There are many different types of debt. Technical debt is a conscious choice to develop in a way that will constrain future development. In essence, you’re borrowing speed from the future. If you don’t pay down that technical debt, it will become harder and harder to create or modify the code in the future. Like technical debt, you experience product debt when you make short term product decisions that can lead to expensive long term impacts. You are sacrificing opportunities and customer experience to get something out the door. Ben Yoskovitz wrote that “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.” I don’t know that it’s lazy product thinking, but it’s a failure to understand the problems your customers face, solve the right problems, and create a great, cohesive customer experience.   Types of Product Debt There are three types of product debt: Feature bloat Low value features Customer Experience debt Feature bloat happens when you keep adding features in the hope that those features will be valuable to your customers. However, adding more features slows down development. Each line of code teams write is another line of code we need to maintain. Think of all that goes into adding a new feature. You need to test the feature as well as run integration tests to ensure the new feature didn’t break existing functionality and update any system or user documentation. You may also need to train users and your internal support staff and update marketing materials and sales information. Related to this is low value features. This is when the features and functionality you add don’t satisfy a customer need. Your product may have many features, but if no one wants those features, you’ve wasted a lot of time and energy . . . and you need to maintain these features. In 2014, the Standish Group did an analysis of feature and functionality usage and they found that 50% of features are hardly ever used. An additional 30% of features are infrequently used. Think of all the wasted time and expense that went into developing these features. Cobbling together many different pieces of functionality may also lead to a poor or inconsistent user experience. Complex products confuse customers and are harder to use. This means more calls to your support center or people may just stop using your product.   What to Do About Product Debt What can we do to address product debt? The biggest thing you can do is to create awareness. For product bloat and low value features, make sure you’re solving problems and not just implementing features. Ask why a new feature is being proposed and help your organization to solve the right problems. You can also encourage testing. Are you experimenting with your product in the slowest, most expensive way by building features and putting them in production? Why not run a quick, cheap experiment to validate or invalidate your hypothesis before building the full functionality? Think of a minimum viable prototype before your minimum viable product. This allows you to learn and adapt in hours or days instead of weeks and months. For the customer experience, take a holistic view and periodically review all of the customer touchpoints to look for inconsistency. You can also perform usability testing. How quickly and easily can a user complete a goal or solve their problem? Customer interviews, prototypes, landing pages, explainer videos, and fake doors are all quick and cheap experiments you can run to ensure you’re creating something with the right problem/solution fit and product/market fit. The three keys are to dedicate time to pay down existing debt, test early and measure throughout, and reduce the complexity of your product.   Listen to the full episode to discover how you can help your organization avoid or address Product Debt. http://traffic.libsyn.com/masteringbusinessanalysis/MBALC033.mp3   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: Product Debt appeared first on Mastering Business Analysis.

In this episode, Saima Siddiqui helps us discover how to leverage your core Business Analyst skills in a different way and be successful as a Scrum Master.    After listening to this episode, you'll understand: What a Scrum Master can so for an organization How you can your your core BA competencies in a new context The challenges you may face as a Scrum Master SHOW NOTES In the past, we’ve discussed where a Business Analyst fits when an organization transitions to Agile. This may include adapting your BA practices in a different, more Agile way or transitioning to a Product Owner/Product Manager role. Because the core business analysis skills of facilitation, problem solving, and systems thinking are applicable in many roles throughout the organization, there are other opportunities beyond becoming an Agile BA or Product Owner. You can apply those same skills as a Scrum Master and help bring value to your organization.   Listen to the full episode to understand how to apply your BA skills in a different context and be successful as a Scrum Master. http://traffic.libsyn.com/masteringbusinessanalysis/MBA187.mp3   Level up your business analysis skills by going to LEARN.BA. Get the first six lessions in their BA Blocks program for free. YOUR HOMEWORK On your current team, start understanding how things are working and start seeing opportunities for improvement. Understand where the coaching opportunities lie and determine if you have the ability to make a positive change. If you don’t have the answers or ability, seek out others to help support the team and fill in your skill and knowledge gaps.   Saima Siddiqui Agile Coach Saima Siddiqui is an Agile Coach and Program Leader. Earlier in her career, she was a Business Analyst and transitioned from BA to Scrum Master. Saima was able to apply her core BA skills to be successful in the role of Scrum Master for her organization. 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 MBA187: Transitioning to a Scrum Master Role appeared first on Mastering Business Analysis.

Understand the importance of business agility and your role in helping your organization become more responsive to changing customer needs. A Lightning Cast is a shorter form episode modeled after lightning talks. You’ll get valuable content in 8 minutes or less.   As more organizations adopt Agile practices, we can’t forget that the goal isn’t to be Agile. The goal is to achieve Business Agility. Business Agility is the ability to rapidly resplnd to change. I think of Business Agility in three facets: Customer Value Time to Market Innovation No mater your title, you have a role to plan in helping your organization create high quality, valuable solutions quickly.   Customer Value Customer value implies that we’re delivering solutions that are valuable to our customers and are of high quality. This is about both doing the right thing and doing things right. To do that, we need to know and understand our customers and their problems. Get out from behind your desk and speak with your customers. To find the valuable solutions, we need a discovery process. Discovery starts with an idea or hypothesis. Then, design small, cheap experiments to validate or invalidate your hypothesis. Next, analyze the metrics and data generated from those experiments. The data may lead you to continue building the solution if your hypothesis is validated. If you’ve invalidated your hypothesis, you can pivot or move on to something else. Your analysis may also lead to new hypotheses and things to test. You can help your organization improve in the area of customer value by developing a lightweight business case to understand expected cost and value. You can also help by encouraging experimentation and hypothesis driven development.   Time to Market You may discover and build a valuable solution, but if it takes 2 years to put in production, it may no longer be valuable. It’s critical that your organization is able to deliver quickly. You can help your organization accelerate time to market by breaking work down into smaller increments. This could be phases of delivering the product or features and user stories that can be put in production early. Can you deliver a minimum viable product (MVP)? Something you can put in your customer’s hands and get rapid feedback that will allow you to adapt. You can also ensure that a shared understanding exists within the team. Misunderstandings, misalignment, and missing information delays delivery. Creating a shared understanding helps accelerate delivery of the right solution. Prioritization is another key to rapid delivery. Uncertainty in priorities or frequently changing priorities inhibits fast time to market.   Innovation The third facet of Business Agility is innovation. Without innovation, your organization will become the next Kodak or Blockbuster Video. Those organizations failed to innovate and disrupt themselves. As a result, their competitors disrupted them. To help your organization, encourage experimentation and innovation. You should also have a system view; both internally and externally. Understanding your organization’s capabilities and what’s going on in your industry will help you discover new opportunities.   Listen to the full episode to find out more ways you can help your organization achieve Business Agility. http://traffic.libsyn.com/masteringbusinessanalysis/MBALC032.mp3     Level up your business analysis skills by going to LEARN.BA. Get the first six lessions in their BA Blocks program for free.   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: Business Agility appeared first on Mastering Business Analysis.

In this episode, author and coach Bob Galen helps understand some of the challenges Product Owners face and how to fill in your Product Ownership gaps.    After listening to this episode, you'll understand: What challenges Product Owners face today How the focus for Product Owners has changed How to identify and address your skill gaps SHOW NOTES The Product Owner is a critically important role in an organization. Even though training and other materials exist to help Product Owners develop their skills, many still struggle in with product ownership. What makes product ownership so challenging is that they need to interface with external customers, discover what’s truly valuable through experimentation, interface with the team to set the vision, and maximize the value delivered by the team.   The Biggest Challenge One of the biggest challenges facing Product Owners today is the ability to be effective with crucial conversations. Having difficult conversations with organizational leaders and customers to negotiate and discuss value and what the team can deliver is a big challenge. Product Owners need to make difficult decisions and say “no” a lot. These hard conversations require courage, risk taking, and effective negotiation and communication skills.   Product Ownership in a Nutshell:   The Evolution of Product Owner Skills When the role of Product Owner was in its early stages in the early 2000s, people needed a team level lens to understand the role. Most Product Owners focused on a single team and worked with customers to identify valuable products and features. These are basic skills at a team level. As the role evolved in the following decade, multi-team planning was needed and release planning and scaling became more relevant. Roadmaps were needed to align teams and we needed better collaboration between teams to build the right products for our customers. With the speed of today’s environment, Product Owners now need to expand their focus to include large organizational scaling and planning, user experience (UX), and architectural concerns. Product Owners must effectively balance and weave together technical or architectural work, quality concerns, user experience, and customer facing features. We also need better ways of discovering the right problems to solve and finding the right product market fit.   What Makes a Great Product Owner? The Product Owner role is made up of four skill areas; Business Analysis, Project Management, Product Management, and Leadership. To be successful, a good Product Owner at least needs to be aware of these four areas and how they show up in each. They need to understand where their strengths are and where their gaps are. When they find gaps, Product Owners need to find ways to full in those gaps either through partnership with someone else or through training and practice. It’s extremely rare for someone to be strong in all four areas. Being aware of your weaknesses and forming strategic partnerships to supplement your skills is essential. You can’t go it alone. Recognizing what you don’t know requires you to be humble and honest with yourself. Remember that Agile isn’t just about learning; it’s also about doing. It takes practice.   Listen to the full episode to understand how to overcome the challenges Product Owners face and build your Product Ownership skills. http://traffic.libsyn.com/masteringbusinessanalysis/MBA186.mp3   Level up your business analysis skills by going to LEARN.BA. Get the first six lessions in their BA Blocks program for free. YOUR HOMEWORK Focus on your skills and build your experience in Backlog Refinement. This activity involves story writing, estimation, collaboration, emergent understanding, trusting the team, and more. Review how you’re showing up in the dynamics of backlog refinement and look for improvement opportunities. As a side effect, improved Backlog Refinement helps execution, delivery, team dynamics, and sprint reviews.   Links mentioned in this episode: Get a free e-copy (50 max) of Bob’s Scrum Product Ownership 3rd Edition book PO Assessment Tool Agile Reflections for Product Owners https://leanpub.com/agilereflectionsforagileproductowners Bob’s website, RGalen.com Get Bob’s book, Scrum Product Ownership, 3rd Edition on Amazon Meta-cast – Bob’s Podcast Read about Product Ownership on Bob’s blog Bob Galen Bob Galen is the President of RGCG, L.L.C., an agile methods coaching & training consultancy. He is a deeply experienced agile coach who is active in the agile community and regularly writes & teaches on all topics related to the agile methods. The new edition of his book, Scrum Product Ownership, focuses on the Product Owner role and driving value in team delivery. He is a frequent contributor to BA Times and often speaks at industry conferences. TwitterLinkedIn Thank you for listening to the program To get more valuable content to en

How can you expect someone to fully grasp the context and content of an output without a conversation? In this episode, we discuss the common behavior of creating an output and throwing it over the wall to another team. A Lightning Cast is a shorter form episode modeled after lightning talks. You’ll get valuable content in 8 minutes or less.   I’m seeing a growing tendency for people to create an output such as a requirements document and then throw it over the wall to another team. What I mean by that expression is to pass an output to another person or team without having a conversation about the true intent of that output. We often mistakenly see our role as a documenter. Someone who creates some type of output for another team to develop a solution or achieve a goal. Unfortunately, this leads to misunderstandings, miscommunication, and missed expectations. Instead of creating an output and throwing it over the wall, we need to break down that wall. Weneed to step out of organizational silos and create a shared understanding. But that’s only the first step. Where we get the real benefit is when we shift our thinking. We need to adopt a different mindset. Instead of seeing ourselves as documenters, liaisons, or translators, we need to focus on outcomes versus outputs. Past guest Kupe Kupersmith talks about #NoRequirements. Instead of requirements, work to understand the real business problem and create a shared understanding. Do what is necessary to achieve the right business outcome.   It’s Not About the Outputs Your customers don’t care if you’ve created a beautifully crafted business requirements document. What they care about is whether or not you’ve solved their problem. The right problem! Even if you have some type of outputs that help you find the right problem to solve and help others in the organization to identify the right solution, you can’t blindly pass those outputs to another team. I see this often with business requirements documents, process flows, and even user stories. We even point people to a repository to get information they request. Here again you’re missing the real value you can provide and we fail to create a shared understanding.   With business requirements documents, we sometimes write the requirements and even have a walk-through. But we fail to convey the intent of those requirements. We fail to gain alignment. We fail to create buy-in and engagement. The written word is a terrible way to convey complex information. If you’ve ever seen a slide deck from a presentation that you didn’t attend, you know that you don’t grasp the true meaning of what was trying to be shared.   With user stories, I’ve seen many teams write stories for other teams and simply assign ownership to that story in Jira. People who do this miss the point of user stories. Jeff Patton has famously said “if you’re not having a conversation, you’re not using user stories”. This is especially critical because user stories are so concise. They are merely a reminder of a conversation you’ve already had or a token to have a conversation in the future. If you’re passing user stories to another team using Jira and not having a conversation, your chances of success are zero.   Yes; you may need to create documentation. And yes; you may need to hand that documentation off to another team to create a viable solution. But if you do that without having a conversation, without creating a shared understanding, you’re not fulfilling an organizational need. In fact, you’re increasing organizational risk and increasing the odds of failure. Once you believe your goal is to create the right business outcomes, break down silos, and create a shared understanding, now you have a real team. Now you have a group of people aligned to a single goal. And now we can discover the real problem and solve it with the best solution possible.Listen to the full episode for more ways to reduce missing requirements and their impact.   Listen to the full episode to find out more. http://traffic.libsyn.com/masteringbusinessanalysis/MBALC031.mp3     Level up your business analysis skills by going to LEARN.BA. Get the first six lessions in their BA Blocks program for free.   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: Don’t Throw it Over the Wall appeared first on Mastering Business Analysis.

In this episode, James Robertson shares some of the challenges associated with an Agile transformation and how Business Analysts can provide the most value to the organization.    After listening to this episode, you'll understand: What challenges BAs face in an Agile transformation Why many projects fail to meet expected outcomes How you can discover the real problem to solve Why you shouldn’t start with a backlog SHOW NOTES One of the biggest challenges organizations face is understanding the right problem to solve and creating the right solution to solve that problem. Listen to the full episode to understand how to overcome the challenges associated with an Agile transformation and how you can provide more value to your organization. http://traffic.libsyn.com/masteringbusinessanalysis/MBA185.mp3   YOUR HOMEWORK 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.   Links mentioned in this episode: James’ website, Volere Requirements http://www.volere.co.uk/ Business Analysis Agility – James’ new book James Robertson James Robertson is a consultant, teacher, author, and project leader whose area of concern is the requirements for products and the contribution that good requirements make to successful projects. He is the author of the new book, Business Analysis Agility: Solve the Real Problem, Deliver Real Value. He also co-founded the Volere approach to requirements engineering. 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 MBA185: Business Analysis in Agile appeared first on Mastering Business Analysis.

In this Lightning Cast, you’ll discover how to make non-functional requirements visible when working on Agile projects.   A Lightning Cast is a shorter form episode modeled after lightning talks. You’ll get valuable content in 8 minutes or less. Non-functional requirements are the quality characteristics of a solution. They’re the constraints that apply to a set of functional requirements and allow you to judge the attributes of a solution rather than its functional behaviors. The non-functional requirements (NFRs) define attributes such as availability, maintainability, performance, reliability, scalability, security, and usability. They serve as constraints on the design of the solution and state which qualities are needed or valuable. As example of a non-functional requirement in a waterfall context is: The payment screen shall be available to customers within 10 seconds 97% of the time it’s requested. There are several ways we can make non-functional requirements visible in an Agile context. The most common ways of doing this are with an explicit backlog item, as Acceptance Criteria, or as part of the team’s Definition of Done.   Non-Functional Requirements as a Backlog Item We can make non-functional requirements visible by creating an independent backlog item (such as a User Story or Technical Enabler) for that requirement. This implies that the non-functional requirement would be developed and tested before that backlog item is considered “done”. Examples of non-functional requirements as User Stories include: As a shopper, I want the website to be available 98% of the time I try to access it so that I can make my purchase and don’t need to find somewhere else to purchase the product. As an online banking customer, I want my checking account balance to display within 5 seconds on my request so that I don’t get frustrated and can see if I have the funds to pay my bills.   Non-Functional Requirements as Acceptance Criteria Another way to visualize and track non-functional requirements is by adding them as Acceptance Criteria for the backlog item. Acceptance Criteria are the conditions of satisfaction that must be met for that item to be accepted. A User Story may have several Acceptance Criteria and some of those may be non-functional requirements. An example of using Acceptance Criteria for non-functional requirements is: As a Financial Analyst, I want to see the monthly transactions for my customers so that I can advise them on their financial health. Acceptance Criteria • System displays all transactions meeting the search parameters within 10 seconds of receiving the request. • Transactions for customers tagged as confidential are only displayed to users with Level 2 security   Non-Functional Requirements as part of the Definition of Done If you have certain non-functional requirements that are applicable across the entire solution, you may choose to include those requirements in the team’s Definition of Done. Think of the Definition of Done as a consistent set of Acceptance Criteria that applies to all backlog items. It’s a comprehensive checklist indicating what “Done” looks like both in terms of functionality and non-functional quality attributes. These might be requirements around accessibility, performance, security, or usability.   Which Should You Choose? When you’re trying to determine which option to use for making your non-functional requirements visible, consider how well it’s understood, the effort needed, and whether or not it applies to all backlog items. If a non-functional requirement is well understood, is of relatively low effort, and applies to most of your backlog items, it may be best to include it in your Definition of Done. Here, you need the effort to be small and well understood so that it doesn’t create a bottleneck and stop teams from developing complete solutions. If the requirement is fairly well understood and is low effort but it only applies to specific backlog items, it may be better to include it as Acceptance Criteria. Because the Acceptance Criteria are the conditions of satisfaction that must be met before a backlog item is acceptable, it needs to be small; something that we can develop and test quickly so that we can have fast feedback loops. For non-functional requirements that are a bit more complex. it may be better as an independent backlog item; either a User Story or technical enabler. Using this approach for non-functional requirements allows the team to experiment and learn. It also creates an opportunity to build incrementally.   Build Incrementally Imagine that you’re building a website to sell a product. Does your first iteration of the website need to be able to handle one million concurrent users or can you build a simpler version? Does it need 99.9% up-time availability right away or is 90% availability good enough when you’re first starting out? Perhaps you can build a simple, lightweight version of

In this episode, Brian Rhea shares his unique approach to using Jobs to be Done to discover what customers truely want and prioritize features.    After listening to this episode, you'll understand: What Jobs to be Done is and why it can be a powerful tool How to find your customer’s job to be done How to prioritize work using customer interviews The forces behind customer decisions and adopting a change SHOW NOTES One of the biggest challenges we face is discovering what our customers truly need. It’s more than separating needs from wants. Identifying unmet customer needs before a customer asks for them can lead to move valuable solutions, greater customer satisfaction, and new product development.   Jobs To Be Done A great way to discover unmet customer needs is to explore what job they’re trying to hire a solution for. People aren’t trying to buy a software package or product, they’re trying to solve a need. They want to relieve a pain or make their lives better. People don’t want to buy a drill, they want to buy a hole. They’re hiring a drill to do the job of creating the hole they want. This is the essence of Jobs to be Done (JTBD). Through meeting with users and observing customers, we can discover their jobs to be done and create a solution that they want to hire to fulfil that job.   Observing Customers to Find Gold When observing users and customers, we want to watch how they interact with their current solution and explore their current process. Understanding not only what they do but why they do it is key. Find their jobs to be done along with the pains in fulfilling that job today and you’ll discover the unmet needs that you can solve. If you discover that your customers are using a product in an unintended way or not following a typical process, you may have struck gold. Deviations from the normal process or using a product in an unusual way provides opportunities to discover new customer needs. This allows you to create valuable solutions for those customers.   Prioritizing Features Once you’ve discovered some jobs to be done, you can explore whether or not it would be valuable and appropriately prioritize it using customer interviews and surveys. For each job to be done, ask customers to rate a small piece of that job across two dimensions; importance and satisfaction. Gather data on how important it is to them and how satisfied they are with the way they meet this need today. If something is not important to them or if they are satisfied with the way they meet their need today, this is likely a low priority or something that you don’t need. However, if something that is important with customers that are unsatisfied with current solutions, that’s a great opportunity to create a valuable solution.   Listen to the full episode to understand how to use Jobs to be Done to discover unmet customer needs, prioritize solution delivery, and get your customers to switch to your product. http://traffic.libsyn.com/masteringbusinessanalysis/MBA184.mp3   YOUR HOMEWORK If you’re not doing customer interviews now on a regular basis, get started by just doing one and see what you learn. Don’t forget when speaking with your customers and stakeholders to work to discover the underlying job to be done. What unmet needs does your customer have and how do they address those needs today? Focus your efforts on fulfilling their job and solving their unmet needs.   Links mentioned in this episode: Brian’s website https://brianrhea.com/ Progress Making Forces Diagram explained: https://brianrhea.com/customer-acquisition-customer-retention/ Brian Rhea Product Strategy Consultant Brian Rhea helps organizations design and build better products through customer research and jobs to be done. He is a product designer and has years of experience navigating the competing priorities of engineering, product, sales, and customer support. Brian helps companies ship profitable software and he believes that knowing how to build something is easy compared to knowing what to build. 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 MBA184: Discover What Customers Want with JTBD appeared first on Mastering Business Analysis.

In this Lightning Cast, we discuss “us vs. them” mentality between business and technology and how to break down those silos and realize that we are the business.   A Lightning Cast is a shorter form episode modeled after lightning talks. You’ll get valuable content in 8 minutes or less. We often have silos in our organizations. The biggest silos I hear about in almost every organization is between business people and technology people. We use terms such as “the business” and “them”. Our language and mindset builds and reinforces silos instead of breaking them down. Aren’t we all working for the same organization? Aren’t we all working towards the some goals? “They” aren’t the business, we’re the business.   Listen to the full episode to understand why we have an us versus them mentality between business and technology, how to avoid local optimization, and discover that we’re all “the business”. http://traffic.libsyn.com/masteringbusinessanalysis/MBALC029.mp3   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: We Are the Business appeared first on Mastering Business Analysis.

In this episode, Anthony Mersino discusses where a Business Analyst fits on a Scrum Team and ways you can bring more value to the team and your organization.    After listening to this episode, you'll understand: Why the question about the BA role in Scrum keeps coming up The different roles a Business Analyst can take on How to overcome some of the resistance to Agile transformations What you can do to be a more valuable team member SHOW NOTES I’m often asked if there’s a place for Business Analysts on a Scrum Team. The question keeps coming up every few months even though many organizations have adopted Scrum and other Agile frameworks and their BAs continue to provide value. This keeps coming up in part because the Scrum Guide does not mention specific skills or the Business Analyst role. It also doesn’t mention UX designers, quality engineers, or other roles beyond the Scrum Master, Product Owner, and the Development Team.   The Challenges There are a few challenges Business Analysts face when their organization goes through an Agile transformation. We are told that people must be multi-skilled and BAs worry that they need to become software engineers to provide value to the team. This leads to fearing that you’ll be forced to learn something difficult or something you’re not interested in. Additionally, because the Product Owner role is close to the Business Analyst skill set, BAs are often concerned or confused about their role and how to be a valuable team member. Related to this is that while serving as a liaison between business and technology is valuable, it’s generally better if the entire team understands the customer’s problems, needs, and goals. This leaves BAs to question the value they provide. During an Agile Transformation, Business Analysts may also find themselves in the middle of a turf war as some BA managers try to retain control of the people who report to them. All of these challenges can leave Business Analysts confused and concerned about their future.   Shifting Focus To overcome some of these challenges, Business Analysts first need to realize that their role is to support achieving the team goals. With that focus, we can look for ways to bring value to the team while applying the skill of business analysis. One way to do that is to cross train your team members in business analysis concepts and techniques. This helps the entire team to understand the customer problem that they’re trying to solve and engages their creativity to find the right solution to a meaningful problem.   Listen to the full episode to understand how to overcome the other challenges and some of the antipatterns associated with an Agile Transformation. http://traffic.libsyn.com/masteringbusinessanalysis/MBA183.mp3   YOUR HOMEWORK Aggressively pursue cross training. Train your team members in Business Analysis skills and develop a shared understanding of your customers, the problems they face, and how to develop solutions that meet their needs. In addition, cross train with team members to pick up new skills in UX, development, testing, and other areas that will help the team achieve its goal.   Links mentioned in this episode: Vitality Chicago Website: https://vitalitychicago.com/ Anthony Mersino Founder, Trainer, and Coach at Vitality Chicago Inc. Anthony Mersino is an Enterprise Agile Coach who has specialized in helping project teams and organizations reach their full potential since 2001. He has deep experience in Agile frameworks such as Scrum and Kanban and also has experience leading large-scale IT projects and programs. Anthony has helped launch over 100 new Scrum teams and has helped train and coach several Fortune 500 organizations through their Agile Transformation. Anthony Mersino is the author of Agile Project Management, and Emotional Intelligence for Project Managers; the People Skills You Need to Succeed. Mr. Mersino has an MBA and holds the PMP, PMI-ACP, CSM, CSP, CAL1, and PSPO certifications. 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 MBA183: The BA Role on a Scrum Team appeared first on Mastering Business Analysis.

In this episode, we discuss the realities of being a Business Analyst in a non-technical field and how to apply your existing skills and competencies to other contexts.    After listening to this episode, you'll understand: How being a BA in the services industry differs from a technical role What a non-technical Business Analyst does to create value How to apply your existing skills to new roles SHOW NOTES Most Business Analysts deal with software development. Regardless of if they work in finance, government, medical, or another field, we commonly help design software solutions. But you can also apply the BA skillset to non-technical roles. Skills such as facilitation, problem solving, socratic questioning, and communication are needed across industries and in roles as diverse as sales, marketing, customer relations, and CEO. Listen to the full episode to understand how the Business Analyst role differs in a non-technical environment and how to apply your existing skills and competencies to a new role.   http://traffic.libsyn.com/masteringbusinessanalysis/MBA182.mp3   YOUR HOMEWORK   Create an inventory of your current skills and competencies. Then think about other roles you may be interested in and determine how you could apply your skills to different roles or identify skills you’d need to build to be successful.   Links mentioned in this episode: Elevano’s website: https://www.elevano.com/ Amir Bormand Co-founder of Elevano Amir Bormand is the Co-founder of Elevano, a California based technology recruitment company. Amir is a unique tech recruiter as he is a former developer (who could still jot out a few lines of code). In his current position as co-founder of Elevano, he is responsible for instilling a developer-centric view within every aspect of recruiting and sales. Prior to Elevano, Amir was a practice manager at a Business Intelligence consulting company. 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 MBA182: BA in the Service Industry appeared first on Mastering Business Analysis.

The only things certain in this world are death, taxes, and missed requirements. In this episode, we discuss the causes of missed requirements and what you can do to minimize the number and impact of missing requirements. A Lightning Cast is a shorter form episode modeled after lightning talks. You’ll get valuable content in 8 minutes or less. To paraphrase Benjamin Franklin, in this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes and missed requirements. According to research from the Standish Group, only about 26% of projects are considered to be successful in terms of being on time, on budget, and on target. A further 53% were considered challenged in one or more of these areas. The top reasons why there projects are challenged or fail include incomplete or changing requirements, unclear objectives, and lack of user input. These issues make up 42% of the causes of project problems and all mean missed requirements. The impact of missed requirements is far reaching and can include poor customer satisfaction, increased cost, and delivery delays.   Why We Miss Requirements Why do we have missed requirements? We have stakeholders sign off on the requirements, but that leads to a false sense of security. We live in a VUCA world; that is, a world full of volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity. Things are changing more rapidly than ever and market conditions can change daily. If we’re trying to elicit all of the requirements up front, we’ve likely to miss something because of that volatility and complexity. Clarity of vision or scope is also an issue on many projects. We’re often given a solution to implement without understanding what problem we’re trying to solve. This leads to misunderstandings and a failure to satisfy the customer. We also need to realize that the written word is a terrible way to create a shared understanding. If we document requirements and then throw them over the wall to another team to implement, that opens the requirements up to misinterpretation. Another common problem is missing stakeholders. If we don’t have the right stakeholders or if they can’t dedicate sufficient time, we will likely miss some of the required functionality of the solution.   What to Do About Missing Requirements Agile addresses some of these concerns and research shows that using an Agile approach can lead to better results. For Agile projects, 42% were considered successful compared to 26% with traditional approaches. Only about 8% of Agile projects failed compared to 21% for waterfall. Even though Agile projects have better success rates, there’s still plenty of room for improvement. 42% still means that over half of projects are challenged or fail. We need to change the way we approach projects. We need to take more of a scientific approach rather than trying to follow a recipe. Here are some things you can do to take a scientific approach to developing the right solution. Smaller is better: Slice your project into smaller chunks. The smaller chunks reduce risk and lessen both the likelihood and impact of missing requirements. Progressive elaboration & fast feedback: Instead of developing all of your requirements upfront, identify the highest priority items and define those in detail. Then take on the next highest priorities. Get frequent feedback as you progressively elaborate and adapt along the way. Use hypothesis driven development: Treat your requirements as hypotheses and create fast experiments to validate or invalidate your hypothesis. Use metrics: Define metrics that will tell you if you’ve achieved the right outcome. Using outcome based metrics will often tell you if you’ve missed something. Prototype: Use prototypes, proofs of concept, and related approaches to validate your thinking. Peer reviews: Using peer reviews can help you catch missing requirements and improve the quality. Ask better questions: Approach projects with curiosity. Ask questions such as: What problem are we trying to solve? How can we prove that that’s the right course of action? Walk me through how you envision the process working.   Create a Shared Understanding Developing a common understanding between the team members and stakeholders can also help you uncover missing requirements. Use an approach such as specifications by example. With this collaborative approach, you use realistic examples to discover and define requirements. Diagrams and visual models also help everyone to get on the same page and understand the proposed solution. Finally, frequent demonstrations of working software will allow you to get valuable feedback and help you discover things you may have missed.   Listen to the full episode for more ways to reduce missing requirements and their impact. http://traffic.libsyn.com/masteringbusinessanalysis/MBALC028.mp3   Thank you for listening to the program To get more valuable content to enhance your skills and advance your career, you can subscribe

In this episode, Emal Bariali helps us understand the three types of Business Analysts and how you can use these archetypes to find the right job or advance your career.    After listening to this episode, you'll understand: What the three different types of BA roles are The two questions you need to answer to understand your career direction How the BA archetypes can help you focus your job seach or grow in your career SHOW NOTES One of the biggest challenges people who want to start a Business Analyst career face is sifting through the job postings and trying to decipher what the company is really looking for. There’s a wide variety of skills and knowledge required across job postings. By understanding the three types of Business Analyst roles will help you to better understand the type of Business Analyst the employer is looking for in their job postings. Armed with this knowledge, you can focus your job search on roles aligned with your skills and interests. The three Business Analyst archetypes are: Business Process Analyst (BPA): Analysts focusing on the business side of things Business Systems Analyst (BSA): Analysts focusing on the system side of things Generalist BA: Analysts understanding “just enough” of business side and systems side and has the flexibility to work in varying situations To understand which of these archetypes is most aligned to your career goals, ask yourself two strategic career questions: How technical would you like to be (what is your technical aptitude)? How specialized do you want to be (what does the job market in your area demand)? These questions will help you to better understand which archetype is best for you.   Listen to the full episode to understand which archetype has the highest income potential, which is best aligned to move into a Product Owner role, and how the archetypes can help you focus your skill development to take your career to the next level. http://traffic.libsyn.com/masteringbusinessanalysis/MBA181.mp3   YOUR HOMEWORK Examine the three BA archetypes and decide which most aligns with the type of work you want to do. With this knowledge, focus your job search on only those positions matching your desired archetype. If you’re already a Business Analyst and looking to grow your career, use the archetypes to identify the type of training or skill growth you need.   Links mentioned in this episode: Blog Article – https://LEARN.BA/three-ba-archetypes/ Free Audio Lessons from BA BLOCKS program – https://LEARN.BA/podcast/ “On-The-Go” Video – https://LEARN.BA/what-are-the-three-types-of-business-analysts/ Emal Bariali Senior Business Analysis Consultant Emal is an accomplished Senior Business Analyst & Business Architect with nearly 20 projects executed over the last 14 years of his BA career. As a BA consultant, Emal has helped multiple clients clarify their visions, secure funding for their projects, and execute projects to deliver solutions. His project experience ranges from fully-waterfall to fully-agile and everything in between. 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 MBA181: The Three BA Archetypes appeared first on Mastering Business Analysis.

In this episode, Kent McDonald shares a powerful approach to eliciting information using an ancient questioning technique..  After listening to this episode, you'll understand: How to apply the Socratic method to requirements elicitation The different types of questions you should use for the situation Common pitfalls and how to avoid them  Show Notes Using questions to draw out information is a critical skill. By using the ancient technique of Socratic questioning, we can apply the right type of question to uncover needed information. Socratic questioning includes six categories of questions to use depending on the need and the context. Those categories are: Clarification questions Questions to probe assumptions Questions to probe for reasons and evidence Questions about viewpoints and perspectives Questions about implications and consequences Questions about the question   Listen to the full episode for information on how to use these types of questions (along with examples) and discover the pitfalls to avoid. http://traffic.libsyn.com/masteringbusinessanalysis/MBA180.mp3   Z Your Homework In your current role, look for ways to apply Socratic Questioning. Make a list of potential questions and truly listen to the responses. The responses will guide your next questions. Links mentioned in this episode: Kent’s website KBP.media Article on Socratic Questioning: https://www.kbp.media/socratic-questioning/ Kent’s Blog BeyondRequirements.com Kent McDonald Founder, Knowledge Bridge Partners Kent McDonald uncovers better ways of delivering value by doing it and helping others do it. His more than 20 years of experience includes work in business analysis, strategic planning, project management, and product development in a variety of industries. As the founder of Knowledge Bridge Partners, he helps organizations figure out the right things to do in their IT and product development work. He currently practices those ideas as Product Owner for the Agile Alliance. Kent is also the author of the book, Beyond Requirements. 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 MBA180: Socratic Questioning appeared first on Mastering Business Analysis.

Creating annual performance goals for Business Analysts can be a challenge. Here are tips for goal setting and some sample goals to help you achieve the right outcomes. A Lightning Cast is a shorter form episode modeled after lightning talks. You’ll get valuable content in 8 minutes or less. WHY SETTING GOALS IS IMPORTANT Annual goal setting helps you to focus on specific outcomes and achieve things that matter. The metrics related to those goals can also help you to understand what success looks like. When setting goals, think about the outcome you want for your career and for your organization. What goal, if you achieved it, would have the greatest impact on you and your organization?   GOALS AND METRICS FOR BUSINESS ANALYSTS Typical goals for Business Analysts often center around requirements quality and speed of delivery. The goal that most directly relates to performance for Business Analysts is achieving a specific stakeholder net promoter score. A net promoter score is a value between -100 and 100 based on the stakeholder response to the question: Would you recommend this Business Analyst to a colleague or for a future project? The stakeholders rate your performance on a scale of 0 to 10 (10 being very likely). To calculate the net promoter score, subtract the percentage of stakeholders who score you a 9 or 10 from those who score you a 6 or below. An example of a goal related to net promoter score is: Achieve an average net promoter score of 80 for all projects completed in 2019.   Requirements Related Goals A common goal for Business Analysts is one focused of requirements quality or speed. Sample goals include: Have no more than three project change requests due to missed requirements during 2019. Limit defects due to missed requirements to one per quarter for 2019 Produce business requirements documents in 30 days or less for 80% of my projects Maintain two sprints of ready stories throughout 2019   Goals to Benefit Your Organization Another way to elevate the impact you have on your organization is to have goals related to outcomes you drive for your team. Examples of such goals include: Recommend at least three process improvements per quarter and implement at least two improvements by November 1, 2019 Learn our new digital order system and lead requirements elicitation for an initiative involving that system by June 1, 2019 Share a new technique at the Business Analyst Community of Practice by May 1, 2019 Earn my CBAP certification by April 25, 2019   Listen to this lightning cast for more sample performance goals and tips to help you set the right goals. http://traffic.libsyn.com/masteringbusinessanalysis/MBALC027.mp3   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: BA Performance Goals appeared first on Mastering Business Analysis.

In this episode, Jennifer Kalz helps you to use prototypes effectively and create the right solutions for your customers.    After listening to this episode, you'll understand: Why you should use prototypes as part of requirements discovery How to create the right level of prototype How to identify your Minimum Viable Product (MVP) What to do after you create a prototype SHOW NOTES The biggest challenges with requirements discovery are creating a common understanding and trying to ensure we’re building the right thing. Prototyping is a powerful tool that can address both of these challenges. A prototype can be anything from a whiteboard drawing to a pixel-perfect, partially functioning model. The key is to understand why you’re creating the prototype and who the audience is. In general, you want to start with the simpliest form of prototype, typically a paper or whiteboard drawing, and increase the level of fidelity if needed. You may iterate through drawings to wireframes to mock-ups. Just remember to stop prototyping once you have the answer that you built the prorotype to address. When you have what you need, stop prototyping and start building the real product.   Listen to the full episode to understand how to get results from prototyping and the common tools you can use. http://traffic.libsyn.com/masteringbusinessanalysis/MBA179.mp3   YOUR HOMEWORK Find a question or risk that can be addressed through prototyping and create the simplest prototype that will help you answer your question. Once you’ve answered the question, stop prototyping and move on.   Links mentioned in this episode: Skyline Technologies Website Jen Kalz Managing Consultant at Skyline Jen Kalz is a Managing Consultant for Business Analysts, Quality Analysts, and Scrum Masters as well as an internal and external Agile Coach at Skyline, a consulting services organization based out of the Midwest. She holds several certifications including: Certified Business Analysis Profession (CBAP), Certified Usability Analyst (CUA), Certified Scrum Master (CSM) and Professional Scrum Master (PSM) along with training as a Six Sigma Green Belt. She has over 15 years of project, product, coaching and agile transformation experience in multiple industries. 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 MBA179: The Power of Prototyping appeared first on Mastering Business Analysis.

In this episode, we look at LinkedIn’s Most Promising Jobs for 2019 and discuss how the skills of Business Analysts are key to success in many of the roles.  After listening to this episode, you'll understand: How certain skills are transferrable to other roles Why business analysis is such an in-demand skill What hard and soft skills will help you advance your career SHOW NOTES   LinkedIn recently came out with its list of most promising jobs for 2019 and while the role of Business Analyst was not featured, the skill of business analysis was key to many of the jobs on the list. Business Analysis was also features as #16 on LinkedIn’s list of skills companies need most in 2019. These lists show the power and importance of business analysis and could give you insight into options if you’re looking to make a career move.   Honorable Mention To determine their list of the 15 most promising jobs, LinkedIn reviewed data on job listings, salaries, member profiles and other metrics. They them assigned each job a weighted score based on five areas: salary, advancement potential, year-over-year growth projections, the number of openings in the U.S., and regional availability of jobs. There were a few jobs on their list that didn’t specifically mention the skill of business analysis, but we can apply our skills and knowledge to excel in the role. Data Scientist was listed at #1 and included required skills such as data mining and data analysis. We discussed Data Analysis in episode 157 and while data science requires different skills and knowledge, this may be an option of you’re willing to learn and expand some of your skills. The roles of Product Designer (#4), Product Owner (#5), and Product Manager (#14) were also listed and surprisingly did not include the skill of business analysis. Instead, the article listed skills such as cross-functional team leadership, User Experience (UX), produce development, business analytics, process improvement, and Agile. In past episodes, we’ve discussed product ownership and product management and how those roles are related to business analysis. I think these roles are ideally suited for some Business Analysts looking to expand their skills and have a greater impact across their organizations.   Top Jobs Requiring Business Analysis Skills LinkedIn’s article lists four jobs out of 15 that require business analysis skills. Those four jobs are: Engagement Manager, Information Technology Lead, Scrum Master, and Solutions Consultant. As an engagement manager (#7 on the list), you’ll help external customers focus on their goals and drive the solution implementation towards a successful, on-time implementation. You’ll provide technical and functional expertise during the implementation process. According to LinkedIn, an Engagement Manager’s year-over-year growth is 43% and it received a career advancement score of 9 out of 10. The Engagement Manager role requires skills such as Program Management, process improvement, and relationship management in addition to business analysis.   For the Information Technology Lead role (#9), you’ll lead a team of software engineers and others in executing a strategic technology roadmap to create the right business outcomes. This job gets an 8 out of 10 for career advancement and has year-over-year growth of 141%. To be successful as an Information Technology Lead, you’ll need technical knowledge, process improvement, and troubleshooting skills in addition to business analysis.   One surprise on LinkedIn’s list is that the role of Scrum Master includes the skill of business analysis. The Scrum Master is the coach for a Scrum Team and in that role, they facilitate, teach, coach, and mentor others. They’re an organizational change agent and work to ensure the team balances speed of delivery with quality and customer value. The Scrum Master role (#10 on the list) gets a career advancement score of 8 out of 10 and has year-over-year growth of 67%. In addition to business analysis, being a Scrum Master requires knowledge and skills in Agile (specifically Scrum), software development, and the software development lifecycle.   The final job on LinkedIn’s list that specifically calls out business analysis as a required skill is Solutions Consultant (#13). A Solutions Consultant partners with sales and business consultants to design products and solutions to meet customer needs. They provide options and understand the feasibility of different solutions so that they can influence the right choices. They may also help shape the product roadmap. This job gets a career advancement score of 8 out of 10 and year-over-year growth of 73%. Being a Solutions Consultant may require special skills in addition to business analysis including knowledge of cloud computing, software-as-a-service, enterprise software, and customer relationship management.   LinkedIn’s list of most promising jobs in 2019 shows that the skill of bu

Product Backlog Refinement (grooming) is a key activity for any Agile team. In this episode, I share some tips and recommendations for successful refinement sessions.  After listening to this episode, you'll understand: Why product backlog refinement is a key activity for success The benefits of slicing work into smaller chunks Why you shouldn’t refine your entire backlog What is means for a backlog item to be ready SHOW NOTES A healthy backlog is critical to an Agile team. Without it, the team will experience confusion and delays as they struggle to undertake large initiatives with unclear goals. To create a healthy backlog, teams can undertake an activity known as Product Backlog Refinement. During refinement, the team works together to break large items (such as epics) into smaller components and develops a shared understanding of the backlog item.   Once an item is added to your team’s Product Backlog, it should be prioritized. Prioritization helps the team to focus their refinement efforts on the nearer term, higher priority items. If we focus on items farther down on the backlog, it’s likely that it will be wasted effort since those items are likely to change. During refinement, larger items are sliced to create better clarity and transparency into progress. It’s important that when we slice backlog items, we create vertical slices through the various layers of the technical stack. This allows the team to learn faster and uncover issues sooner. It also accelerates the delivery of future slices. You’ll also refine and clarify acceptance criteria, identify dependencies, and develop a shared understanding of the backlog item during refinement. Most teams also size the backlog items during refinement. Estimating backlog items helps the team to understand if items are right-sized and creates another opportunity for developing a shared understanding.   As an output of Product Backlog refinement, you should have a number of ready items. Ready implies that the backlog item is small enough, well understood, and the team is comfortable starting work on that item. Ready means that the backlog item can be planned for a future sprint (for Scrum teams). Many teams create and use a Definition of Ready to identify the criteria that should be true for a backlog item to be considered ready. Listen to the full episode to get all of the recommendations for backlog refinement, learn more about the Definition of Ready, and to find out what you shouldn’t do. http://traffic.libsyn.com/masteringbusinessanalysis/MBA177.mp3   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 MBA177: Product Backlog Refinement appeared first on Mastering Business Analysis.

In this episode, three industry thought leaders and I share our predictions for 2019 and help you understand what you can do to be successful in the new year. Adrian Reed | Blackmetric Business Solutions Prediction: We live in a fast moving, unpredictable world. As such, we’ll need to continue looking not only internally at out projects, but also using the many techniques in our toolbox to look externally to spot trends. We’ll also need to ensure our projects are aligned to organizational strategy and what’s happening in the external business environment. To do this successfully, we’ll need to shift left and get involved in pre-project strategy. We’ll continue to recognize that there isn’t a single, prefect BA role to which we should all aspire. It’s likely that in 2918 we’ll see more flavors of business analysis emerge. This will require us to become more T-shaped and borrow ideas from other disciplines. We need to constantly look for opportunities to update and enhance our skills. The world needs critical thinking now more than ever. Business Analysts are in a position to provide a lot of value to their organizations in this capacity. We need to continue to talk about and influence the use of business analysis skills so that we can get the opportunity to step up even further and provide the critical, analytical thinking skills to our organizations. Lora McCoy | LMc3 Consulting Prediction: With the importance of data and the emergence of the field of data analytics, the confusion between data analysis and data analytics is going to increase. Job descriptions will be unclear about these roles and it will take a while to sort out the differences between the two roles. Agile will continue to grow rapidly and with it, some of the challenges organizations face while adopting Agile will highlight the need for different tools and approaches. The role of the Business Analyst in Agile will become clearer as will the value that they bring. The career path of the Business Analyst will slowly start to solidify. Organizations will further recognize the value in IIBA certifications, which will lend credibility to the role and support the BA career path. With this change, more organizations will engage Business Analysts as internal consultants. Heather Mylan-Mains | President of BAs Without Borders Prediction: We’ll see an evolution in the BA role as we move past the perception of order takers. Work will become much more collaborative and BAs will apply facilitation, collaboration, and critical thinking skills to benefit their organizations. We’ll also see more of a focus on customers. Analysts will need to understand their customers in a way they never have before. The need for BAs who can think like a customer will increase and we’ll need to use new tools and approaches to be successful. Listening, empathy, and product ownership will become more and more important as we shift to focus on our customers.   Here are my predictions for 2019: There will be a greater need and focus on solving the right problem with the right solution. I expect to see a bluring between product and business analysis. To be successful, we need to have a greater customer-centric focus, apply tools and techniques to help us better understand our customers, and apply an experimentation mindset to ensure we create solutions our customers want and will love.   Listen to the full episode to hear how close I was with my 2018 predictions, learn more about our 2019 predictions, and what you can do to be successful in the future. http://traffic.libsyn.com/masteringbusinessanalysis/MBA176.mp3   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 MBA176: Predictions for 2019 appeared first on Mastering Business Analysis.

In this poem adapted from Clement Clark Moore’s “A Visit from St. Nicholas”, we get the Business Analyst version and find out what happens when the BA visits a struggling project team.    A Visit From the Business Analyst ‘Twas the night before planning and all across the floor People were in a panic; the sponsor, stakeholders, and more. The team was certainly trying their best While secretly hoping to get out of this mess. The developers at their computers, not sure what to do Because the vision was lacking – no one had a clue. The product owner was sitting, with palm against face. Nothing made sense; not even the business case. When out from the conference room there rose so much chatter I looked up from my iPhone to see what was the matter. Up from my seat to the conference room I flew And peered in the window to see what I can view. The reflection from the whiteboard lit up faces and feet While attendees were sitting at the edge of their seat. And to whom were attendees all shouting hooray? It was none other than our friend the BA. With facilitation so engaging and the way he behaved I knew in a moment that our project was saved. More rapid than eagles the diagrams he drew To get better context and collaborate too. Now process flows, scenarios, context diagrams, and rules On whiteboards, on post-its, Visio and other tools. Up from their seats and out to the hall Now together in small teams, dash away all. As ideas they strike when you’re in the shower, When inspiration hits, you waste not an hour. So out from the conference room attendees they flew With a few great ideas and the analyst too. And then at their desks they collaborated more. The goal was now clear there was a buzz ‘cross the floor. As I spun around, turning my head Past flew the business analyst with markers of red. He was dressed in a suit, how smart he did look; Carrying a laptop and markers and a leather notebook. A stack of post-its he held in his hands. He was a rock star with plenty of fans. His eyes how they twinkled giving an inspiring talk. His movements were confident from his stance to his walk. His words like a song the lyrics we all know. His network was vast, not one was a foe. The way his mind worked, he knew what to do; He saw the big picture, and details too. I went to shake his hand for all he had done; He just cocked his head saying “To me this is fun”. He had a smile on his face and a grip of my hand. I smiled when I met him; we can go on as planned. With a shared understanding and the goal so clear, Soon gave me to know I had nothing to fear. He wasted not a word but cut right to the chase; He helped adjust the backlog and cheers filled the place. I asked him candidly “how’d you pull off such a feat?” He answered quite simply “it’s easy – I cheat”. “When people collaborate and work well together We accomplish our goals. Alone? No, never.” But I heard him exclaim as he walked out of sight Let’s change projects for good . . . and to all a good night. http://traffic.libsyn.com/masteringbusinessanalysis/MBALC026.mp3   Thank you for listening to the show. Merry Christmas and happy holidays however you celebrate. I wish you, your family, and your organization a joyful and prosperous New Year!     The post Lightning Cast: A Visit From the Business Analyst appeared first on Mastering Business Analysis.

In this episode, I share excerpts from a presentation I recently gave about changes in the world of business analysis and how we can leverage our skills and competencies in a new way. This episode is part 2 of a live recording of a presentation I gave at an IIBA chapter meeting in November.  I edited out portions of the recording for time including sections that involved audience interaction and exercises.  This is part 2 of the presentation and part 1 was shared in episode 174.. The world of work is changing faster than ever. To be successful, we need to change too.   Shifting to a Product Mindset Having a customer centric focus with a product mindset is critical in shifting to a Product Manager or Product Owner role. It’s also helpful in simply being a great Business Analyst. Start with the user and understand their challenges and desires. By knowing your customers, their pain points, and what’s valuable to them, you can identify a target audience with a problem you can solve in a valuable way. Once you understand your target customers and their needs, you can start thinking about solution options. Create a vision for your product and a strategy to maximize both customer and business value. Because we don’t always know the right solution until we get feedback or data, we need to establish goals and metrics around the potential solutions and features. To support the strategy and vision, a goal oriented roadmap such as Roman Pichler’s GO Roadmap can help. Instead of a roadmap that looks like a Gantt chart, identify goals and related features that the team can work to achieve.   Product Discovery The process of identifying the right problems to solve is known as Product Discovery. It starts with ideas, options, and problems to solve gained by understanding your customer. With that information, we identify assumptions, risks, questions, and hypotheses that we want to test. To get answers quickly and cheaply, we then devise experiments and examine the results. The results help us to validate or invalidate our assumptions and adapt our approach. Some items may be added to the Product Backlog as potential solutions we’d like to build. Other items may be dropped if the experiment results invalidate our hypothesis. Our experiments may also result in new ideas to be tested.   Tools to Understand Your Users Many organizations use personas, but they often fail to get the full value out of this tool. To get the most value from personas, start with a Customer Journey Map to identify the customer interaction points and the customer’s experience with those interactions. Identifying the low points and challenges will help you to find specific scenarios around which you can develop personas. Another powerful tool to understand customers is an Empathy Map. Empathy Maps help you get inside the customer’s head and better understand their point of view and the challenges they face.   The Business Case Once you identify potential problems to solve, you need to understand if the problem is worth solving. To do this, you can use a Lean Canvas to better understand potential solutions and their cost and value. The Lean Canvas not only brings clarity to problems and solutions, it also serves as a light weight business case. It helps you understand both the problem space and the solution space. This allows you to understand whether or not you have good problem-solution fit and good product-market fit. Once you have a solution that you believe would be valuable, create a hypothesis and small, cheap experiments to validate or invalidate our assumptions. Our goal is to find out very quickly how wrong we are.   Listen to the full episode to discover new tools, techniques, and skills that will allow you to provide value to your organization in new ways. http://traffic.libsyn.com/masteringbusinessanalysis/MBA175.mp3 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 MBA175: Product Management is the New Business Analysis – Part 2 appeared first on Mastering Business Analysis.

In this episode, I share excerpts from a presentation I recently gave about changes in the world of business analysis and how we can leverage our skills and competencies in a new way. This episode is a live recording of a presentation I gave at an IIBA chapter meeting in November. I edited out portions of the recording for time including sections that involved audience interaction and exercises. This is part 1 of the presentation and part 2 will air next week. The world of work is changing faster than ever. To be successful, we need to change too. As more and more organizations transition to an Agile way of working, many organizations are changing the way they see the Business Analyst role. In some cases, those organizations are eliminating the BA role. It’s important to note that several of those organizations are hiring back BAs because they realize the need for the Business Analysis skill set. In other organizations, Business Analysts are being asked to take on the responsibilities of Product Ownership. This presents a great opportunity for Business Analysts to take the next step in their career. Business Analysts have many skills and competencies that are transferable to other roles. Skills such as communication, facilitation, critical thinking, problem solving, and the ability to break down a large effort into smaller pieces are all valuable in the role of Product Owner. Shift Left The major difference between a BA and a PO is decision making. As a Business Analyst, you help people make the right decisions. As a Product Owner, you are the decision maker. As we shift left from Business Analyst to Product Owner (or Product Manager), we need to shift our mindset from tactical to strategic. We need to change our focus . . . From To Project Product Delivery Discovery Requirements Experiments Doing things right Doing the right things Team Customer Customer needs Business value Influence Decision making Short time frame Longer horizon A Product Owner Must Be . . . To be successful as a Product Owner and support the delivery team, a PO must be available, knowledgeable, empowered, and accountable. Being available means that the Product Owner is accessible to the team when needed. When the PO isn’t available, questions go unanswered and delivery is delayed. The Product Owner must also be knowledgeable about the product and its customers. Without knowledge of the product or customers, the Product Owner will make bad decisions or need to consult with others, causing delays. Finally, a Product Owner must be empowered to make decisions and accountable for those decisions. Without empowerment or accountability, there will be delays in decision making and bad decisions will likely be made. Listen to the full episode to discover new tools, techniques, and skills that will allow you to provide value to your organization in new ways. http://traffic.libsyn.com/masteringbusinessanalysis/MBA174.mp3 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 MBA174: Product Management is the New Business Analysis appeared first on Mastering Business Analysis.

In this episode, product management expert Melissa Perri helps us to avoid waste and build products that customers truly want.  After listening to this episode, you'll understand: Why detailed requirements documents often aren’t the best approach Common reasons organizations get stuck in the build trap What you can do to avoid building solutions no one wants How to experiment and find the right solution for the right problem SHOW NOTES Not every idea is a good idea, so it’s better to take a little time to invest and learn if it’s a good idea. The Build Trap Organizations frequently get caught in the build trap. That’s when they focus more on outputs than outcomes. People believe that shipping more features is the key to satisfying customers and they don’t stop to ask if we’re building the right things. Additionally, organizations stuck in the build trap don’t consider measurements or metrics to determine what success looks like. Without considering what metrics would indicate success before deciding what to build and tracking those metrics after release, you’ll be unable to tell if you’ve had the desired outcome. There’s also often a disconnect between what the leaders in the organization consider to be important and the work the teams are doing. This lack of alignment toward organizational goals means that likely won’t achieve the right goals. People are building things to keep busy rather than to move the company forward. All of these symptoms of the build trap happen what we fail to ask why. Causes of the Build Trap There are several reasons organizations get caught in the build trap. When organizational goals and strategy is too high level and doesn’t include metrics to measure what success looks like, it’s difficult for teams to create solutions that align to that strategy. People need a clear understanding of the strategy, success metrics, and their part in supporting that strategy. Alternatively, the goals and strategy may be too detailed. The strategy may dictate how the desired outcomes will be achieved. This puts us in the build trap because we don’t always know for certain what the outcome will be without experimenting and learning. At a product level, Product Managers sometimes ask the wrong questions. They ask “what do you want?” when customers may not know what they want. Instead, you need to figure out what problems your customers have that we can solve in a valuable way. The art of Product Management is understanding deeply what would be valuable to your customers and also understanding what’s valuable to the business. From there, discover what products and services you can deliver that maximizes customer value and business value. “The customer realizes value only when their problems are resolved and their wants and needs are fulfilled.” – Melissa Perri, Escaping the Build Trap Avoiding the Build Trap To avoid getting caught in the build trap (or escaping if you’re currently in it) is to help thee product organization by setting a clear and understandable strategy. Setting clear goals and a compelling vision while allowing teams to experiment and find ways to achieve that vision is a powerful approach. At a team level, start looking at everything you do as a hypothesis instead of certainty about the solution. Start with questions rather than answers. Listen to the full episode to hear how Melissa discovered that detailed requirements documents aren’t always useful and how she escaped the build trap. http://traffic.libsyn.com/masteringbusinessanalysis/MBA173_.mp3 YOUR HOMEWORK Look at what you’re working on now and reword that initiative or whatever you’re building as a hypothesis. That will put you into the mindset of experimentation and learning. An example hypothesis format is: We believe that [by doing X], we will solve [these problems] for our customers and we will [move these metrics].   Links mentioned in this episode: Melissa’s Website: MelissaPerri.com Produx Labs website The Product Institute website: https://productinstitute.com/ Melissa’s book, Escaping the Build Trap Melissa Perri CEO of Produx Labs Melissa Perri is a Product Management coach and consultant and a keynote speaker. She’s the CEO of Produx Labs where she helps companies implement good Product Management. Melissa is also the author of the new book, Escaping the Build Trap- How Effective Product Management Creates Real Value. 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 MBA173: Avoiding the Build Trap appeared first on Mastering Business Analysis.

In this episode, Kupe Kupersmith shares a clip from his presentation, NextGen Business Competencies: Keys to Being Ready for The Future. Kupe will focus on approaches that will help you learn quickly, make good decisions, and manage risk.  After listening to this episode, you'll understand: How to make complex situations ‘solutionable’ and ‘actionable’ Why faster, better decision making is critical Amazon’s rules for making good decisions SHOW NOTES Transformation and change is everywhere. If you’re waiting to see what the future holds, it’s already here. To survive and thrive in our new and ever changing environment, you’ll need NextGen Business Competencies. The next generation business competencies are the capabilities you need to help everyone in the organization make faster, better decisions. They help to make complex situations, ‘solutionable’ and ‘actionable’. You need these skills to help your organization find new areas of research, ways to prototype and test ideas, and quickly validate, so that the enterprise has momentum for innovation and value creation. This audio clip is a portion of Kupe Kupersmith’s presentation at BA World Chicago in November, 2018. Listen to the full episode to hear all of Kupe’s tips and advice on how we can make better decisions faster. http://traffic.libsyn.com/masteringbusinessanalysis/MBA172.mp3 Links mentioned in this episode: Kupe’s website, KupeTalks.com Kupe’s previous episode on Next Generation Competencies Kupe Kupersmith As the founder of KupeTalks and Atlanta Engagement Director, Market Rate Consulting, Kupe’s main objective is to help you connect, collaborate, and be ready for the future. For the past 20 years, Kupe has been helping organizations achieve business value with an improvisational advantage. Kupe is an author, keynote speaker, coach and a trained improv actor. Kupe is a connector and has a goal in life to meet everyone! 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 MBA172: Decide Smarter Faster with Kupe Kupersmith appeared first on Mastering Business Analysis.

In this episode, I answer questions submitted from listeners. Questions about Agile, DevOps, and remote elicitation are answered. Listeners and conference attendees often send me questions. Today, I’ll share my answers to the most common questions I receive.   Q: I’m early in my BA career. Where should I focus to build my skills? A: Where to focus depends on your current skill level and the skills that Business Analysts in your organization need to be successful (assuming you are looking to stay at your organization). With that in mind, I have a few suggestions. I recommend talking to successful business analyst in your organization (or their managers) to understand the skills and characteristics of high-performing business analyst. With that information, you can see if you have those same skills or where to focus. Think of this as your personal SWOT analysis. Of course, you can always benefit from strong facilitation and communication skills regardless of your role or organization.   Q: Do you have any thoughts about how DevOps affects Business Analysts? A: It really depends on the context. For a traditional BA who focuses only on upfront opportunity identification and requirements, there’s not that much impact. For a BA who is either on an Agile team delivering software using a DevOps approach or even a BA in a waterfall environment who sees a solution through implementation, they may have a few impacts to their process. It’s important that the intent (requirements, solutions, user stories, etc.) to be delivered is created in small increments and they may be called upon to help testers or software engineers develop appropriate tests. Without small increments and a solid test suite, DevOps doesn’t work very well.   Q: What advice do you have for being successful with remote requirements elicitation? A: If your only option for eliciting requirements is a virtual meeting (via Skype or WebEx), the biggest challenge is stakeholder engagement. There’s a tendency for people to multitask and disengage in virtual meetings. To be successful, you need some upfront preparation work and use a few tactics to minimize multitasking. Prior to the meeting, work to discover the needs and context of your stakeholders. If you have an explicit set of questions, send them to your stakeholder a few days before the meeting. That will allow them to come prepared with answers or bring subject matter experts who can answer your questions. Also, be sure to share the logistics, expectations, goal, and desired outcome of the meeting in advance. During the meeting, use video. That will help minimize multitasking. Even if your stakeholders can’t use video, use video on your end. You should also use a shared whiteboard or document to display the information you’ve captured. After the meeting, send attendees a recap of key decisions made and any follow up items.   Listen to the full episode to get more answers, including where a BA fits in an Agile organization, what certifications are most valuable, and more. http://traffic.libsyn.com/masteringbusinessanalysis/MBA171.mp3   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 MBA171: Your Questions Answered – Listener Mailbag appeared first on Mastering Business Analysis.

In this episode, Mary Lynn Manns shares techniques you can use to get buy-in for your ideas and influence others to take action.  After listening to this episode, you'll understand: Why facts and data don’t motivate people to take action How to create an emotional connection to your idea The difference between influencing an individual and influencing a group How to make your ideas stick using stories SHOW NOTES You can have the best ideas in the world, but if you can’t persuade people to take action, they go nowhere. When you explain your idea and hit them with data, you can move their heads, but are you moving their hearts? We need to get people to care about what we’re saying. Facts alone can’t always do that. We can help people understand our idea, and it’s a lot more difficult to get them to care about the idea.   Getting People to Care About Your Idea Before you try to persuade someone, get a feel for what they care about. Once you understand what they care about, you can relate your idea to how it supports what they care about. This “Personal Touch” approach helps form an alignment between your idea and that which is important to the person you’re trying to persuade. The Personal Touch approach can be challenging when working with a group. One solution is to help the group understand the problem that’s causing the need for your idea. This technique is known as the “Wake Up Call”. When using the Wake Up Call, be cautious about how you discuss the underlying problem as there may be people in the room who have causes or are responsible for the problem.   Don’t Just Give Facts and Data We’re usually very good at providing facts and data. While data can be important, we often don’t connect on an emotional level with data. To enhance the way you provide information, try adding stories to your data. It doesn’t even need to be a true story. You can share a hypothetical story with a few sentences that illustrate your point. Put your data into a story to give them something they can feel and connect with on an emotional level. Stories make your idea memorable and give your audience a vehicle to retell your idea to others.   Imagine That If you find it difficult to tell a story about your idea, you can use the “Imagine That” technique to get people to make up their own story. Have them discuss the current situation and its related problems. Then have them imagine what things would look like if they adopted your idea. The Imagine That technique allows people to feel your idea and trigger an emotional response.   These strategies and techniques take extra time, but the payoff is worth the effort. Listen to the full episode to learn more strategies for getting buy-in for your ideas and how to avoid some of the pitfalls. http://traffic.libsyn.com/masteringbusinessanalysis/MBA170.mp3   YOUR HOMEWORK We work hard to get the facts and data right. We need to work a little harder to emotionally connect with people. Start at home. How can you persuade people you know well by talking about things they care about? After that, look at the data you’re using in the workplace and how you’re talking with people. Think about the strategies you can use to form an emotional connection and get people to not just understand your idea, but care about your idea.   Links mentioned in this episode: Mary Lynn’s website FearlessChangePatterns.com Fearless Change book on Amazon Get More Fearless Change on Amazon Mary Lynn Manns Author and Professor at UNC Asheville Mary Lynn Manns is a professor on the Management faculty at UNC Asheville in Asheville, North Carolina. She is the co-author of two popular books, Fearless Change: Patterns for Introducing New Ideas and More Fearless Change: Strategies for Making Your Ideas Happen, which document the successful strategies used by leaders of change in many different types and sizes of organizations throughout the world. 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 MBA170: Persuasion – Get Buy-In for Your Ideas appeared first on Mastering Business Analysis.

In this Lightning Cast, we’ll explore the practice of using stage gates and a big design up front. Why do organizations use the BDUF approach and is there a better way? A Lightning Cast is a shorter form episode modeled after lightning talks. You’ll get valuable content in 8 minutes or less.   A common practice in many organizations is to create a big design up front (BDUF), but it that the best approach? Regardless of your delivery methodology, consider the impacts and weigh your options when you choose how to deliver solutions. A big design up front approach is a stage gate process in which each stage (e.g., scoping, requirements, development, testing) is completed in its entirety and approved before moving to the next stage. As a Business Analyst, that means that you’ll finalize the complete requirements package and get stakeholder approval before the team starts building the solution. On the surface, BDUF makes sense. If we can get everything right in the beginning and resolve all issues, we can mitigate risk and be more confident that we will achieve our goal.   Reasons Organizations Use BDUF Organizations use a stage gated, big design up front approach for two main reasons: to gain a sense of control and to avoid risk. From a control aspect, they feel that if we know the scope, cost, and all of the details in the beginning, they can plan better and hold teams accountable for delivery according to that plan. Part of this may stem from a lack of trust or discomfort with the unknown. The stage gate process also helps address the needs of risk averse organizations. We know that changes made later in a project life cycle are more expensive than changes made at the beginning of a project. A change identified during the testing phase will be much more expensive than a change identified during the requirements phase. The problem is that this sense of risk reduction is only an illusion. The truth is that we can’t know everything up front. Changes will happen. What really reduces risk? Creating solutions in smaller increments reduces risk by making it easier to understand the initiative and the associated work. This also makes it easier to estimate the work (because it’s in much smaller pieces) and we can more accurately estimate. In addition, building in small increments allows us to create faster feedback loops. We can get feedback on what we’re building more frequently, learn and adjust as needed. If we get off track, we can adjust with the next increment.   Change Happens If your initiative is one that you’ve done many times before, requirements will not change, and more frequent feedback would not help, then creating all of the requirements up front may be reasonable. It’s also likely that if you’ve done this before, you can reuse the requirements from past initiatives. I would also recommend that you make the process as light weight as possible for initiatives such as this. Don’t use a lot of overhead – just do it. For all other projects, we know change will happen, so we might as well do things in small increments so that we don’t waste time full finalizing things that will change (or won’t be needed).   Evolutionary Design Instead of developing a big design up front, use an evolutionary design approach. Think about the term ‘evolution’. You start with something and it changes as it responds and adapts to conditions. To apply this concept to requirements, start with high level requirements and get feedback. Evolve your requirements by successively adding details or by adding new information. Identify which of the high level requirements are the top priority and start evolving those first. Once you get to a point where the developers can work on a slice of functionality, let them begin while you work on evolving the next highest priority item.   Shifting From BUFD Moving from a big design up front approach to more of an evolutionary approach isn’t always easy. Your organization may mandate the methodology and process. If trust or fear of losing control is an issue, I suggest calling it out as an issue and discussing it respectfully to address the issue. If it’s not safe to do so, you can try one of the approaches below. Suggest an experiment. Make a recommendation that for a small initiative, you run an experiment in which you deliver the solution in iterations. Make your work transparent and invite stakeholders to demonstrations at the end of each iteration. The transparency may make them more accepting of using this approach on more initiatives. Try splitting up a larger initiative into phases with each phase developing smaller pieces of value contribution to a larger whole. It’s important that each phase delivers end-to end value or capabilities to your customer. Use prototypes and mock-ups to create fast feedback loops. This allows you to get feedback and adapt to input and changes earlier in the project.   Listen to this lightning cast to find a better way of

In this episode, IIBA President Ken Fulmer shares eight competencies that are critical for success when working as a digital Business Analyst.    After listening to this episode, you'll understand: What a Digital Business Analyst is Why the move toward digital will change the way we work What skills and competencies are needed for success the next step in the evolution of the BA role SHOW NOTES The concept of the Digital Business Analyst has been gaining momentum as more and more organizations develop their digital fluency. This trend is going to continue and to be successful, a Business Analyst needs to have specific competencies. To address this need, the International Institute for Business Analysis (IIBA) has developed and continues to evolve a competency model for Business Analysts. There are 15 competencies for a Digital Business Analyst and many of those are new or expanded compared to the general BA competencies. Digital is a different way of working. With traditional business analysis, your stakeholder focus is generally more on people that are internal to the enterprise. With digital, you have a more outward focus external to your organization. You will need to understand the needs and experience of your external customers. Working in a digital organization is about using data and digital information technology systems as a driver. It also involves understanding what business models enable a customer-centric focus.   Competencies for the Digital Business Analyst There are a number of competencies specific to working in a digital environment that will allow you to succeed. Understanding strategic imperatives: It all starts with an understanding of what your organization’s strategic imperatives are about. This allows you to bring the strategy down to actionable initiatives and provides clarity into the outcomes we’re trying to achieve. Understanding the customer experience: Focusing on the customer experience requires adopting an outside in focus. Understanding the customer and the challenges they face (using tools such as Customer Journey Maps) allow you to take that outside in approach and create solutions your customers need, want, and love. Reimagine business processes: The digital space moves quickly. In many cases, you may not only need to improve a process, but also completely reimagine a process and create disruption in your industry. To be successful, you need to understand business processes, how to analyze processes, develop new processes, and drive organizational change. Embrace agility: Embracing agility goes beyond the frameworks such as Scrum or Kanban and includes an understanding of Lean mindset and practices. We can harness the power of Agile and Lean thinking to bring about change. Continuous stakeholder collaboration: While stakeholder engagement is core to business analysis in any environment, engagement activities need to be continuous in a digital environment. The evolutionary and experimental approach with Agile and digital will require frequent feedback and conversations with stakeholders. Strategic use of data: One way to enable better collaboration with stakeholders and understand customers is through data. We collect a lot of data about our customers; through our interactions and through social media. Using data analytics to interpret that data and better understand our customers allows us to build better solutions. It also allows us to take an evidence based approach to decision making. Understand technology: You don’t need to understand technology at a software engineer level, but understanding technology will allow you to find new ways of working and new capabilities for your organization. You need to be able to work with business leaders and help them understand what is possible. Embrace product management: More and more organizations are shifting from projects to product thinking. As Business Analysts, we need to understand how to work with Product Owners and sometimes serve as a proxy for the Product Owner. We need to be accountable for the outcomes resulting from our products and establish a deep understanding of our customer and their needs.   These competencies will allow you to drive more value to your organization and help to elevate your skills and your career. Listen to the full episode to get more details about the competencies that lead to success in a digital environment. http://traffic.libsyn.com/masteringbusinessanalysis/MBA169.mp3     YOUR HOMEWORK Reflect on these competencies and determine what skills you need to develop to be successful at the type of things you would like to do professionally. Then find resources to help build on your skills in that area.   Links mentioned in this episode: IIBA’s resources on Digital Business Analysis Discussion Paper – Business Analysis & Digital Transformation Malcolm Gladwell’s Spaghetti Sauce TED talk Get your free ticket to the Virtual PMO Summit Ken F

In this episode, consultant, speaker, and author Adrian Reed helps us explore the BA career path, career growth options, and actions you can take to grow in your career as a Business Analyst.    After listening to this episode, you'll understand: What career options exist for Business Analysts How to visualize and plan your career growth What actions you can take to prepare for the next step in your career SHOW NOTES The questions I’m most often asked are “How do I get started as a Business Analyst?” or “I’m already a BA. What’s the next step in my career?”. For those who want to start a career as a Business Analyst, the first thing to do is to understand what BA work are you already doing in your current role. Most people have more transferable skills than they realize. The question about the next step in your career is a bit more difficult. The Business Analyst career path isn’t a straight line. It has many branches and options. Where you go depends on whether or not you want to manage people and if you’re more drawn to the business or technology. There are many options and the skills you build as a Business Analyst are critical in other roles. Facilitation, problem solving, systems thinking, and other skills are just as critical in a project manager role as they are for a PMO Director or CIO. The key is to understand your options, know your current skill level, what skills are needed to get to your desired next step, and where your skill gaps are.   Listen to the full episode to understand what you need to do to own your career and take it to the next level. http://traffic.libsyn.com/masteringbusinessanalysis/MBA168.mp3   YOUR HOMEWORK Own it, network, and give. You have to own your career. If you’re not managing your career, then your manager is managing it. And they might not have the same aspirations as you. You also need to network and give back to the community by sharing your thoughts and interacting with the community.   Links mentioned in this episode: Adrian’s blog Adrian’s book – Careers in Business Analysis Lightning Cast on the BA Career Path   Get your free E-book! PMO Success – Under the Hood 20 PMO experts. 20 questions. 1 free eBook. “PMO Success: Under the Hood” is your answer to no fluff raw insights that can put you & your PMO on the path to success. Get it now. You’ll also get a free ticket to the PMO Virtual Summit on October 16-18. Join bestselling authors and seven figure PMO experts for a 3-day virtual seminar that’s devoted to giving you the skills and insights to become a professional PMO leader and help your PMO achieve better results.   Adrian Reed Author and Principal Consultant at Blackmetric Business Solutions Adrian is Principal Consultant at Blackmetric Business Solutions, providing business analysis consultancy and training solutions to a range of clients in varying industries. He is the former President of the UK chapter of the IIBA and speaks internationally on topics related to business analysis and business change. 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 MBA168: Exploring the BA Career Path appeared first on Mastering Business Analysis.

In this episode, award winning author and communications consultant Jim Signorelli shows us how to communicate in a compelling, memorable way. Through storytelling, you’ll connect with your audience at an emotional level and get your ideas to stick.    After listening to this episode, you'll understand: Why storytelling is such a powerful communications tool How storybranding can help position your product The key elements of a story How you can use business storytelling to get your ideas to stick SHOW NOTES Do you communicate facts and data, but can’t seem to get the buy-in you want? Would you like to connect with your audience on an emotional level and have them remember every word? Business storytelling is a powerful communication tool to make your message meaningful and memorable.   StoryBranding Storybranding is a process and approach to establishing a brand’s identity. It’s based on the metaphor of a story. With StoryBranding, you cast the brand or product as a character in the story. Working with leaders, marketing, and others in the organization, you work to discover the product purpose and how it helps customers overcome an obstacle. StoryBranding helps a product or brand stand out in terms of its essence and what it stands for. This contributes not only to the marketing approach, but also for alignment internally and identification with customers who ascribe to the same beliefs.   Oral Storytelling To be effective in a business setting, storytelling must be relevant, short, to the point, and give emotional energy to the facts. Stories are an emotional envelope for facts. They can create a more meaningful connection with people than with facts and charts.   The Key to Storytelling Storytelling can be deceptively simple. The key is to understand what is and is not a story. A story should have a time stamp (when) because it’s an event in time. There’s often some type of dialogue in a story or the mention of characters (people). Finally, there needs to be some kind of payoff for listeners. That payoff could be a relevant answer, a surprise, or another type of reward for listening to the story.   The Clarity Pattern One storytelling technique is known as the Clarity Pattern. This technique was often used by Apple’s Steve Jobs and tells a tale of how we arrived where we are. Through telling about the background, history, or thought process around an initiative, you create an emotional bond with listener and help to clarify the ‘why’ in a compelling way. When done correctly, the Clarity Pattern helps listeners to feel that they are part of the story or that they have gone through the journey with the presenter, which helps build an emotional bond and makes the story memorable.   Listen to the full episode to understand how to communicate in a more memorable and impactful way. http://traffic.libsyn.com/masteringbusinessanalysis/MBA167.mp3     YOUR HOMEWORK Transform a fact-based case history into a story. When you’re presenting information, try to take any facts or data and turn it into a story. Discuss how those facts came to be. Fashion the case history into a story about the people you worked with and the problem you’re solving along with the emotional impacts. Also, try to be visual with the story by using words that form images in the minds of your audience.   Links mentioned in this episode: Jim’s website: Story-lab.net Check out Jim’s book on Amazon Jim Signorelli COE of Story-Lab Chicago Jim Signorelli is an award-winning author, branding expert and communications consultant. Following a 16-year stint as CEO of ESW Partners, a major agency in Chicago, Jim’s interest in story as a business communication tool expanded. He became affiliated with Anecdote, the leading business storytelling training company based in Australia. Jim now conducts oral storytelling workshops throughout the U.S. for companies as large as Microsoft and as small as the 10-person start-up. Jim is frequently a featured speaker at conventions and events. 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 MBA167: The Power of Storytelling appeared first on Mastering Business Analysis.

In this episode, Heather Mylan-Mains helps us to be effective in giving feedback and how to receive feedback for the greatest impact.  After listening to this episode, you'll understand: The difference between effective and ineffective feedback The problem with annual performance reviews How to make your feedback actionable What to do when you receive feedback   SHOW NOTES One of the most powerful tools for improving both yourself and your team is feedback. Rich, effective feedback can mean the difference between mediocre performance and making meaningful changes for superstar performance. The impact of poor feedback habits includes frustrated employees, gaps in expectations, and lower performance than what is possible. The problem is that we often don’t know how to give good feedback. The difference between good and bad feedback is giving examples or giving opinions. Bad or ineffective feedback is simply a sharing of an opinion such as “I really like that”. That opinion alone isn’t helpful. Good feedback includes specifics or examples such as “when you showed that visual on the whiteboard it really helped me to connect to the information” or “I was a bit confused when you shared all of those numbers and didn’t connect it to the main concept”.   The Keys to Giving Effective Feedback To be effective, feedback must be timely. The longer you wait, the less effective your feedback will be and the less opportunity people have to adapt based on your feedback. Feedback given performance reviews is often problematic because it isn’t timely or sometimes things that happened recently are identified as patterns instead of isolated incidents. While it’s important to be timely with feedback, it’s also important to give feedback at the right time. In a tense or emotionally charged situation, it’s often best to wait to provide feedback. Feedback must also be specific. Telling someone that you liked or didn’t like their presentation isn’t useful. Share with them specifics about what you liked, what you didn’t like, what confused you, or the impact what they did had on you. Use observable behaviors and facts when getting feedback. Instead of saying “you got mad”, share the behaviors that can be observed such as “when you raise your voice and pounded your fist on the table”. This helps remove opinions and makes the feedback more specific and meaningful.   How to Receive Feedback To be able to improve yourself, you need to be open to feedback. We need to assume positive intent and not take things personally. If you truly believe that the person giving you feedback once to see you succeed, it’s much easier to accept their feedback. Remember that feedback is a gift and like a gift, your response should be “thank you” Be willing to listen regardless of whether or not you agree with their feedback. User active listening skills and take notes when someone is taking the time to give you feedback. You can then choose to evaluate whether the feedback you’ve been provided is an opinion or a fact you can do something with. Being accepting of feedback creates an environment where people are open to continue giving you and each other feedback. This creates a virtuous cycle of improvement.   When done properly, feedback can be an extremely powerful tool for improving yourself, your team, and your organization. Listen to the full episode to understand how to best give and receive feedback. http://traffic.libsyn.com/masteringbusinessanalysis/MBA166.mp3     YOUR HOMEWORK Be courageous and change your feedback habits. The next time you’re preparing to give feedback, think about how you can make it meaningful, factual, and actionable. Give facts, examples, and context.   Links mentioned in this episode: Heather’s website, BAs Without Borders Heather Mylan-Mains President, BAs Without Borders Heather Mylan-Mains is a speaker, blogger, thought leader, advocate, motivator, and teacher. As a business analyst, she is a professional ‘thinker’ with the ability to understand the problem, see the user perspectives, and ask the tough questions. In addition to speaking and training in the field of business analysis. Heather is also on the Board of Directors for the IIBA. 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 MBA166: Mastering the Art of Feedback appeared first on Mastering Business Analysis.

For the first time since I started the Mastering Business Analysis podcast, I have missed a release date. The episode scheduled for August 21st did not go live as planned. Unfortunately, I’m in the hospital fighting a bad infection. I’m not sure when I’ll be back home, and when I am I’ll release episode 166, Mastering the Art a Feedback with with Heather Mylan-Mains. Thank you for your patience during my road to recovery and thank you for being loyal podcast listeners.   The post Special Message appeared first on Mastering Business Analysis.

Last week, the world lost a luminary. Jerry Weinberg passed away at the age of 84. Here are some of the most important lessons from Jerry in his own words.  After listening to this episode, you'll understand: Why taking requirements seriously is so critical The problem with getting into the details too soon How to think about requirements for new product development How to work with empathy and humanity SHOW NOTES Jerry Weinberg had a tremendous impact on our world. That includes his teaching, writing over 40 books and 400 articles, and helping to send a human into orbit around Earth. Jerry joined us about a year ago in episode 130 where he talked about exploring requirements. Today’s episode includes some extras from our discussion and Jerry shares some of his thoughts about requirements.   The Reason for Requirements Never forget that we use requirements to solve a problem, not to get people to write software code. The requirement is not to write a software program. The requirement is something that satisfies a person’s need.   Cautionary Tips from Jerry We often don’t take requirements seriously until we feel the impact of a missed requirement. You must take requirements seriously or you’ll suffer the consequences. When people say “don’t worry about that”, that’s the time to worry. Explore this further and ask why we shouldn’t worry about that. It often means that there are underlying assumptions that have not been validated.   Bringing Humanity to Requirements Take the time to make sure you have the right people involved and you’re listening to them without bias. Learn to be a more accepting listener and learn to value the expertise of other people. The requirements process is an iterative process. You can’t just get it right in one shot. It’s not something you do at the beginning of a project and then forget about it. Set a reasonable goal and allow for testing and iteration. If you don’t test your requirements, there are going to be problems. The requirements process is a first step in building a team. Let people interact in a way that leads to better team building.   Requirements for New Products If you’re building requirements for something that’s entirely new, look for something that is like what you want but perhaps from another industry. To get it right, you’ll need to test. Build things incrementally. You don’t need to create all your requirements up front. You do need to determine if the requirement is needed at all. Does the product satisfy a customer need? From there, you can test using mockups or prototypes to ensure you’re on the right track. Remember that you’re building systems to satisfy people. Start by honoring that people may not be able to tell you what they want, but they’ll know what they want (or don’t want) when they see it. You need to give them something to react to.   Watch the Detail The top level of requirements is “what is it that the customer is really trying to do?” The problem is, we often work at the wrong level of detail. We need to be able to speak less precisely at the beginning of the process. As we progressed through iterations, we can get more detailed as we test and learn. When we define solutions in much detail, we take away the creativity of software engineers and those developing the solution.   Be sure to honor both sides of the equation. Customers at some level know what they want and know what they don’t want. Engineers and solution developers know how to create the solution for the customer’s problem. Listing to this episode to get Jerry’s advice on taking requirements seriously, iterative development, when to get into detail, and treating people with humanity. http://traffic.libsyn.com/masteringbusinessanalysis/MBA165.mp3 Links for this episode: Jerry’s Website GeraldMWeinberg.com Jerry’s past episode MBA130 Exploring Requirements Author page on Amazon Author page on Leanpub Jerry Weinberg Author, Teacher, Consultant, Luminary For more than half a century, Jerry Weinberg has worked on transforming software organizations, particularly emphasizing the interaction of technical and human issues. After spending between 1956 and 1969 as software developer, researcher, teacher, and designer of software curricula at IBM, formed the consulting firm of Weinberg & Weinberg to help software engineering organizations manage the change process in a more fully human way. Jerry has published more than 40 books and more than 400 articles including books on quality software management, systems thinking, and requirements. 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

In this Lightning Cast, you’ll discover how to create solutions your customers will love by thinking as a customer.   A Lightning Cast is a shorter form episode modeled after lightning talks. You’ll get valuable content in 8 minutes or less.   Do you create products and solutions that meet your customer’s needs or do you create shelfware? According to a 2014 study, 7 out of 10 products fail. That’s because they don’t solve a customer problem and don’t have a good market fit. We create products and services no one needs. The wasted and time and money from these failed initiatives is only part of the story. Once you develop the product, you need to maintain it, leading to more waste. That’s why we need to think differently about product development.   Three Lenses When we analyse potential solutions, we need to view solutions through three lenses; the Business, Technology, and Human lenses. Through the business lens, we analyse the business value associated with the solution. With the technology lens, we determine if the solution is technically feasible. We often use these two lenses to select the right solution. The problems arise when we forget the human lens. What is the expected customer experience? How can we best address a need that surprises and delights our customers? To build great products, we need to understand our customers. That understanding can change or evolve at different time horizons.   Highest Level (Strategic Horizon) At the highest time horizon, we need to maintain a strategic focus on customer value. We can do that by helping the organization set the right goals aligned to the target market. To ensure a consistent, positive customer experience, we can also look holistically across the entire customer journey to identify gaps and negative experiences. At this level, you can support your organization by helping them make the right decisions that lead to more valuable customer outcomes. Techniques to use at this level include market analysis, visioning, and product road maps.   Middle Level (Project or Initiative Horizon) At the project level, you’ll need to prioritize features and solutions by understanding what’s important and valuable to your target customers. You’ll also need to ensure that the proposed products have a good solution fit and market fit. Here, it’s critical to maximize outcomes while minimizing outputs. You’ll need to test to get data and real-world feedback. Techniques to use at this level include Kano analysis, purpose alignment models, personas, and prototypes.   Lowest Level (Solution Delivery) When you’re delivering solutions, you need to understand your customers, what’s valuable to them, and create fast feedback loops. You can keep the team focused on the customer by creating personas and customer journeys. To create feedback loops, you can schedule demonstrations of working software (or prototypes) and let customers interact with the solution before soliciting feedback. Interviews and observation can also be effective tools in getting feedback.   When you think as a customer, you’re able to quickly find out you’re wrong. That allows us to waste less time and adapt or pivot to a solution customers will truly want. Listen to the full episode to discover techniques and approaches to building products customers will love. http://traffic.libsyn.com/masteringbusinessanalysis/MBALC24.mp3 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: Think as a Customer appeared first on Mastering Business Analysis.

In this episode, IIBA President Ken Fulmer discusses the IIBA’s Agile Analysis certification; What it means for your organization and for your career.    After listening to this episode, you'll understand: What the current environment looks like for Agile BAs What the Agile Analysis certification is and its value How the IIBA developed the Agile Analysis exam What you can do to prepare for the certification exam SHOW NOTES As more organizations shift to an Agile way of working, many Business Analysts are unsure what this change means for their role. In today’s business environment, we see organizations across the full spectrum of Agile adoption. A few companies are fully Agile in both practices and mindset. However, most organizations currently operate in a bi-modal manner, applying both Agile and Waterfall approaches as they move along their Agile adoption journey. To support consistency in the use of effective practices and to establish a common language among practitioners, the International Institute for Business Analysis (IIBA) recently rolled out a new Agile Analysis certification. The certification brings credibility to the role of a Business Analyst in an Agile environment and helps show that analysis is a much needed skill, even in Agile.   Listen to the full episode to get Ken’s tips for operating in an Agile environment and preparing for the Agile Analysis exam. http://traffic.libsyn.com/masteringbusinessanalysis/MBA164.mp3     YOUR HOMEWORK Start reviewing the material in the Agile Extension to the BABOK. Not only will the information help you prepare for the Agile Analysis exam, it will also give you a new way of looking at working in an Agile environment and provide tools and techniques you can use in that context.   Links mentioned in this episode: IIBA Website IIBA.org Information about the Agile Analysis Certification Ken’s previous episode about the IIBA IIBA®, BABOK® Guide and Business Analysis Body of Knowledge® are registered trademarks owned by International Institute of Business Analysis. Ken Fulmer President and CEO of IIBA International Ken is the President and CEO of the International Institute for Business Analysis. The IIBA is a global professional association for business analysis that’s expanding its expertise to new digital and leading edge practices to continue to apply analysis to both individual practitioner capability and to assist organizations in achieving better business 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 MBA164: The Agile Analysis Certification appeared first on Mastering Business Analysis.

In this episode, you’ll discover how Lean Six Sigma can help you bring value to your organization and be a differentiator for your career.    After listening to this episode, you'll understand: What Lean Six Sigma is and how it’s different than Six Sigma Why reducing variation is critical How learning Lean Six Sigma can boost your career SHOW NOTES Lean Six Sigma is a methodology that you can use to improve performance by removing waste and reducing variation. It combines practices from lean and lean manufacturing with Six Sigma to eliminate waste and ensure quality.   Listen to the full episode to understand how to get started with Lean Six Sigma and how it may help you in your career. http://traffic.libsyn.com/masteringbusinessanalysis/MBA163.mp3     YOUR HOMEWORK Start getting familiar with the terminology and tools of Lean Six Sigma. The “Dummy” series of books is a good place to start.   Links mentioned in this episode: Vince’s website: http://www.vincentmirabelli.com/ Vince’s Lean Six Sigma training: http://www.vincentmirabelli.com/learn/training-workshops/ The first 10 people to get Vince’s training and use code MBA150 will get $150 off his new training, Lean Six Sigma for BAs and PMs. Use code MBA50 for $50 off if you’re not one of the first 10 people to use the other code. Vincent Mirabelli Vince Mirabelli is a project and process improvement speaker, trainer and coach. In addition to his speaking and training, Vince is a PMP, CBAP, Lean Six Sigma Master Black Belt certified, and holds a Masters certification in Business Analysis. You can learn more about Vince on his website, vincentmirabelli.com 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 MBA163: Lean Six Sigma – What You Should Know appeared first on Mastering Business Analysis.

In this Lightning Cast, you’ll find out how to transition to a Business Analyst role.   A Lightning Cast is a shorter form episode modeled after lightning talks. You’ll get valuable content in 8 minutes or less.   People often ask me how they can become a Business Analyst or how to transition from role X to a BA role. I have past episodes with Alex Papworth and Laura Brandenburg on this topic, but because this is such a frequently asked question, I’ve summarized some key ways you can get the skills to move to a Business Analyst role. Being successful as a BA takes knowledge and skills learned through practice and feedback. But this is a chicken or egg problem; it’s difficult to get a role as a business analyst without experience as a business analyst. Keep in mind that even if you don’t have the title of Business Analyst, you may still be doing business analysis work that’s applicable to the role.   According to the BABOK® Guide version 3.0, “A business analyst is any person who performs business analysis tasks described in the BABOK® Guide, no matter their job title or organizational role. Business Analysts are responsible for discovering, synthesizing, and analyzing information from a variety of sources within an enterprise, including tools, processes, documentation, and stakeholders.”   If your organization already has Business Analysts, start by looking at BA roles with your current employer and see if there are opportunities to shadow effective Business Analyst. Network with current BAs and offer help them. Ask if you can shadow or observe them as they work to learn more about the role. In fact, building and expanding your network is always a good idea; connecting with people in different departments, subject matter experts, and others who you may need support from in the future can help even if your career goals change. You can also review procedures and documentation from past projects within your organization. You may find outputs such as process flows, models, requirements documents, and other resources that will help you get a feel for how to perform the BA role. Look for opportunities with volunteer organizations and others that might benefit from your skills. Offering your time and services for free can allow you to build your experience and benefit organizations that need it most. If you’re in another role and want to transition to a BA role, think about the skills and experience you’ve in your current role or in your past that you can leverage. Do you have experience doing the kinds of things that a business analyst does? You may have experience in communicating with stakeholder groups, facilitating meetings, mapping business processes, or subject matter expertise developed in working with the software your organization uses. To find out what skills and experience will be relevant, it helps to look at job postings for the type of job you want. From there, you can reflect on your past experience and identify the skills and knowledge you’ve gained that aligns to business analysis. If you’re still missing some required skills, you can find ways to build your competencies and apply those skills. You can read books such as the BABOK® Guide, watch videos, listen to podcasts, and find other resources to help you fill in your skill gaps. Of course, joining local professional organizations such as the International Institute for Business Analysis (IIBA) or the Project Management Institute (PMI) gives you the opportunity to talk to other professionals to learn more about their role as well as what skills and techniques are needed to be successful.   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: Moving to a BA Role appeared first on Mastering Business Analysis.

In this episode, Glenn Brule discusses the Business Analyst role, its real value proposition, and what you can do to increase the value you provide to your organization.  After listening to this episode, you'll understand: The real value proposition of the Business Analyst role How to engage reluctant stakeholders What you can do to deliver more value SHOW NOTES While great facilitation, communication, workshops, and stakeholder engagement are important, there’s a lot more to business analysis. We need to focus on the key fundamentals that drive value to our organizations. At the end of the day, all roads lead to money. A Business Analyst drives outcomes that have a financial impact. Whether it’s revenue growth or avoiding fines and lost revenue, a BA can ensure successful outcomes that have positive impact on an organization’s finances.   The Business Analysis Value Spectrum The Guide to the Business Analysis Body of Knowledge (BABOK v3.0) includes the concept of the Business Analysis Value Spectrum. Interestingly, planning and monitoring, requirements lifecycle management, elicitation, and collaboration aren’t part of the value spectrum. While those skills and techniques are critically important in the world of business analysis, they’re not at the heart of it. The three knowledge areas that are at the heart of the Business Analysis Value Spectrum are Strategy Analysis, Requirements Analysis, and Design Definition and Solution Evaluation. Through those three knowledge areas, we’re looking at the current state, creating efficiencies, and developing valuable solutions. That translates to money for the organization. As Business Analysts, we need to pay attention to the quality of requirements and the quality of process models, business rules, and data models. Without quality, we can’t achieve the positive financial outcomes our organizations expect and need to survive.   Don’t Take on Everything Alone You need to avoid taking the weight of the world on your shoulders when it comes to projects. If you try to do everything on your own, you’ll fail every time. We can’t be experts in everything. The expectation is that you’re an expert in business analysis. If you’re not working with your subject matter experts, the business units, designers, and the development team, you’re going to miss some of the critical requirements, business rules, or other necessary pieces of information to create the desired outcome. Don’t sit at your desk writing requirements on your own. Instead, use collaborative and iterative approaches to ensure the quality of what you produce. Don’t stand in front of a room of stakeholders and act as a scribe. Engage your stakeholders and get them to do some of the heavy lifting related to requirements. Engage them in a manner that empowers them to uncover some of the problems or opportunities that we can then craft into great models and requirements.   Listen to the full episode to hear all of Glenn’s tips and advice on providing more value to your organization and find out what to do when stakeholders are disengaged or you’re given a solution to implement instead of a problem to solve. http://traffic.libsyn.com/masteringbusinessanalysis/MBA162.mp3   YOUR HOMEWORK 1. Look closely at your set of tools and techniques you use on a regular basis and ask yourself if you’re efficient in using those tools. Is there a better tool you can use to identify efficiencies in your organization? Do you understand what you are trying to accomplish and is there a tool for that? 2. Muster up the courage and find ways to engage stakeholders to the extent that they’re doing the heavy lifting when it comes to requirements. 3. Remember that the weight of the world doesn’t rest on your shoulders. Tap into other subject matter experts in your organization to help with gaining efficiencies and getting clarity around relevant data points. 4. Don’t do everything at once; do things incrementally. Start with different levels of abstraction by starting at a high level and going deep where needed iteratively.   Links mentioned in this episode: Glenn’s website – Slide21.com   Glenn Brûlé Glenn Brûlé has more than two decades of focused business analysis experience and works directly with his clients to build and mature their business analysis capabilities. As a founding board member of the IIBA® and former Vice President, Chapters, Glenn drives the advancement of the BA profession globally. Glenn is also an author, speaker, and he’s a regular contributor to Modern Analyst and BA Times as well as other industry publications. 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 MBA162: The

In this episode, you’ll discover the next step in the evolution of the role of the Business Analyst and if Agile spells the end of the BA role.    After listening to this episode, you'll understand: The origins of Business Analysis Why context is important when considering your responsibilities What to do to increase the value you provide in your current role If Agile means the end of the BA role SHOW NOTES Origins of Business Analysis The role of the Business Analyst stemmed from gaps in understanding between different groups and a need for a holistic viewpoint. In the early 80s, the role of a Systems Analyst started to become prevalent. The Systems Analyst is responsible for analyzing the technology as a whole and ensuring that all of the pieces work will together. But that’s only part of the puzzle. While the technology works well, we aren’t necessarily creating solutions that meet the needs of our organizations or our customers. As a result, a new type of analyst emerged from the business side of organizations; a Business Analyst. The Business Analyst focuses on the needs and wants of the customers and the business . . . Not just the technical aspects, but how the two pieces fit together. The problem that these first BAs were trying to solve is that there’s a gap between the different parts of an organization; usually between business and technology. The different terms and language that each area uses leads to gaps in understanding. To fill this gap, the first Business Analysts became translators between business teams and technology teams. From this role, BAs started to become a bridge. A bridge between business and technology. Between the problem and the solution. As the role continues to evolve and Business Analysts add more value, the role is starting to be seen as more of a consultant or trusted advisor; someone with subject matter expertise who people can go to for advice and who can make recommendations. This shift requires BAs to move from the tactical to the strategic. We need to be more forward-looking and understand not only needs and wants, but also our organization’s capabilities, the environment in which we operate, and what our competitors are doing.   Provide Move Value A big part of what BAs do is to find ways to bring more value to our organizations. How we do that depends on the context of our role. Are you working in a traditional environment or an Agile Environment? Are you imbedded in a project team/development team or do you operate outside the team?   Listen to the full episode to understand how you can add more value to your organization in your current contect and understand what’s next for the Business Analyst role. http://traffic.libsyn.com/masteringbusinessanalysis/MBA161.mp3   YOUR HOMEWORK Think about the immediate next step in the evolution of your current role and do one thing that will increase the value you provide to your organization and to its customers.   Links mentioned in this episode: Dude’s Law The BA Career Path   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 MBA161: Evolution of the BA Role appeared first on Mastering Business Analysis.

In this Lightning Cast, you’ll find out what you can do to increase the value of products and solutions developed by your organization by using Dude’s Law.   A Lightning Cast is a shorter form episode modeled after lightning talks. You’ll get valuable content in 8 minutes or less. How can you help increase the value of solutions that your team builds? First, let’s define value. We can represent value a simple formula created by David Hussman called Dude’s Law. Dude’s Law states that Value equals Why divided by How. ‘Why’ refers to why we’re developing this solution. What’s the problem you’re trying to solve and how critical is it? ‘How’ refers to how you’ll achieve the intended outcome. This can mean things like the technical solution, lines of code, or documentation. As you can see by the formula, we can increase value if we increase the Why or reduce the How.   Increasing Value We can increase the value of the solution by finding a bigger Why. By prioritizing what we work on, we can ensure that the most important (biggest Why) items are done first. Another way to increase the Why is to explore if the product can be applied to solve other pain points or enable opportunities to expand its use by other customers. We can reduce the How by thinking outside the box and exploring simple ways of achieving the intended outcome for the customer. Think about the simplest thing you can do to achieve the Why. Another way to reduce the How is to simplify or reduce the outputs needed to achieve the outcome. Can you reduce the amount of documentation and have a conversation instead? Does that process flow need to be in Visio or will a picture of a whiteboard drawing be sufficient?   By using Dude’s Law, we can truly do less and achieve more. What will you do to increase the value of your organization’s products and services? Listen to the full episode to understand how to increase value in your organization. http://traffic.libsyn.com/masteringbusinessanalysis/MBALC022.mp3   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: Dude’s Law appeared first on Mastering Business Analysis.

In this episode, author and consultant Alyce Reopelle challenges some of the practices and assumptions about requirements elicitation.    After listening to this episode, you'll understand: Why a subject matter expert may not be the best person to elicit requirements The impact of assumptions and how to avoid them How to overcome the curse of knowledge SHOW NOTES A tactic that organizations often use is to assign a subject matter expert (SME) to elicit requirements for a project. This approach makes sense as a SME will understand the systems and processes impacted by the project and will likely discover and refine the requirements faster. But what is this conventional wisdom is wrong? What if the best person to elicit requirements is someone who knows nothing about the current state or the processes and products? The reality is that experts often make assumptions and fail to ask crucial questions. They enter a situation with an expert’s mind; a scenario in which there are few options for a solution. Instead, we need to have a beginner’s mind. With a beginner’s mind, the options are unbound by preconceived notions. We are free to ask insightful questions and imagine new possibilities.   Listen to the full episode to find out how to approach situations with a beginner’s mind and fight some of the assumptions that lead to gaps in requirements. http://traffic.libsyn.com/masteringbusinessanalysis/MBA160.mp3     YOUR HOMEWORK Watch our for and avoid words that describe requirements but can’t be tested. When you hear words such as fast, user friendly, or big, challenge stakeholders to quantify what they mean and get a clear understanding of the need.   Links mentioned in this episode: Alyce’s article, Perfecting the Art of Better Business Requirements More articles by Alyce Reopelle Alyce Reopelle Author and Consultant Alyce is a PMP certified consultant and contributing author for Project Management for Today. She has over 20 years of project management experience with a passion for helping organizations grow their PMO, their project managers, and their teams. 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 MBA160: The Art of Better Business Requirements appeared first on Mastering Business Analysis.

In this Lightning Cast, you’ll discover what you can do to help your organization achieve business agility; the ability to quickly adapt to changes and rapidly deliver value. A Lightning Cast is a shorter form episode modeled after lightning talks. You’ll get valuable content in 8 minutes or less. Does your organization have Business Agility? Can they quickly adapt to changing conditions to meet their customer needs? Without Business Agility, your organization will struggle in today’s fast changing environment.   What is Business Agility? The concept of Business Agility goes beyond Agile practices. I describe it as the ability to quickly adapt to meet customer needs and provide the right products to customers at the right time. The elements of Business Agility are: Time to market Customer Value Innovation With these three capabilities in place, you get an organization that can quickly deliver solutions that customers need and develop new products to meet future needs.   Time to Market With a faster time to market, your organization will have a first mover advantage. You can also increase profits when you consider the time value of money (money or solutions now are more valuable than that same money/solution at a later date). This allows your organization to begin earning revenue sooner. You can help reduce time to market by accelerating requirements discovery. Actions such as breaking down organizational silos, talking directly to customers, and rapid prototyping helps to speed communication and create a shared understanding. The goal is to learn rapidly and move to delivery. Another way to reduce time to market is to accelerate delivery. We can do that by breaking things down into small, valuable, vertically-sliced chunks. We can also define the Minimum Viable Product (MVP) and Minimum Marketable Features (MFF) to help prioritize what the team should work on. DevOps practices also accelerate delivery by allowing teams to put solutions into production and into the hands of customers sooner.   Customer Value The second element of Business Agility is customer value. This implies that we understand what customers want and what they would find valuable. To find out what’s valuable to our customers, we can work to better understand customers and use some of the approaches from the Lean Startup to test, learn, and adapt. We want to rapidly discover what’s valuable and get it to our customers. Value also implies that we’re delivering with quality. Small chunks of high-quality solutions are better than full-blown solutions with a lot of bugs. To ensure quality, we also need to ensure that our requirements are testable and we consider non-functional requirements.   Innovation Even if your organization can quickly deliver solutions that customers currently find valuable, you won’t last long if you don’t experiment to discover products with may be valuable in the future. This is where innovation comes in. To innovate with purpose, we can take a scientific approach by formulating a hypothesis and running small experiments that we can test. Innovating with purpose requires a solid understanding of your customers, the current (and potential future) environment, your organizations capabilities, their competition, and industry trends. The ability see connections between these different dimensions and formulate a hypothesis about what may be valuable in the future leads to better innovation.   Listen to the full episode to discover how you can help your organization achieve Business Agility. http://traffic.libsyn.com/masteringbusinessanalysis/MBALC021.mp3   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: Business Agility appeared first on Mastering Business Analysis.

In this episode, you’ll discover how to use hypotheses and experiments to identify the right solutions that meet customer needs.    After listening to this episode, you'll understand: Why traditional approaches often lead to the wrong solution How to use hypotheses and experiments to discover the right solution How to craft experiments that are testable SHOW NOTES One of the biggest problems that we face today is that we’re often given a solution to implement. Unfortunately, that solution doesn’t always meet customer needs and results in shelfware; a product that customers won’t use. Instead of making assumptions and building an untested product, we can use the scientific method to discover the right solution for our customers. Experiment Driven Development is a more mature way of thinking about Agile methods. Traditionally in Agile, we use a backlog comprised mainly of User Stories. With Experiment Driven Development, you may still have User Stories, but that’s not where we start. Even with Agile methods, it’s entirely possible to build the wrong product. Using a scientific approach to discovering the right product for our customers allows us to ensure we’re delivering valuable solutions. Instead of starting with a User Story or epic, we start with a hypothesis. From there, the work items become experiments to prove or disprove the hypothesis. This frames solution development in the “plan, do, check, act” model and allows us to quickly validate solutions and avoid waste.   To use Experiment Driven Development, follow these three steps: Start your development with a testable hypothesis For your highest priority hypothesis, identify the smallest experiment(s) that will prove or disprove it Run the experiments This approach allows you to get rapid feedback and decide whether to pivot in a new direction or persevere on your current path.   Nordstrom Innovation Lab video: https://youtu.be/szr0ezLyQHY   Listen to the full episode to understand why Experiement Driven Development is so powerful and how to start using this approach. http://traffic.libsyn.com/masteringbusinessanalysis/MBA159.mp3     YOUR HOMEWORK For your next feature, instead of documenting that feature in a traditional way, define it as a hypothesis and perhaps a few small experiments that could validate the hypothesis.   Links mentioned in this episode: Agile Velocity website Mike Hall Senior Agile Coach/Trainer at Agile Velocity Mike Hall is an Enterprise Agile Coach/Trainer with 16 years of Agile transformation experience. In addition to holding 10 patents issued by the US Patent Office, he has practical experience in leading enterprise scaled Agile transformations for all types of organizations (including startups) and speaks at industry comferences. 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 MBA159: Experiment Driven Development appeared first on Mastering Business Analysis.

In this episode, we’ll explore Agile requirements and answer the question “Are User Stories requirements?”    After listening to this episode, you'll understand: How requirements in Agile differ from Traditional environments Why User Stories are a popular approach How to be effective with User Stories Whether or not User Stories are requirements SHOW NOTES We’ve explored the differences in approaches to requirements elicitation and management in an Agile environment compared to a traditional approach before. While you can use many of the same tools and techniques, the focus is different. In an Agile context, we adopt a Lean mindset and value outcomes over outputs. We want to achieve positive business outcomes while minimizing the amount of outputs (e.g., documents) we create. This may mean a shift from large Business Requirements Documents (that no one reads) to whiteboard drawings, conversations, pictures, and minimal documentation. Making this change requires a mindset shift and a change in our approach. Instead of eliciting all of the requirements up front, we discover thinks in small increments. This allows us to create fast feedback loops and adjust as we deliver solutions. Through progressive elaboration, we increase the level of detail of the requirements incrementally. Near term items will be more detailed and better defined than items that are farther away or lower priority. This approach avoids the waste of detailing out information that will likely change as we learn more.   Types of Agile Requirements There are many different approaches to articulating requirements in an Agile environment. Some teams use Jobs To Be Done or Job Stories, which create an understanding of your customer’s goals or purpose when using products. Other teams may use Use Case 2.0, which is a way of developing use cases to show system interactions that is well suited for an Agile environment. Hypothesis Driven Development is gaining in popularity as a way of discovering the true needs and desires of your customers. By starting with a hypothesis and crafting experiments, you are able to test assumptions about your products and customers. The most popular way to document and create a shared understanding about what you’re building and why is User Stories. However, you may also have technical stories and other enablers in your backlog as well.   User Stories User Stories are powerful because they move us from writing requirements to discussing requirements. They allow us to have a customer-centric focus and maximize outcomes while minimizing outputs. When we think about applying User Stories, we keep the Three C’s in mind. Card, Conversation, and Confirmation. Card refers to the 3×5 index card upon which you would traditionally write your User Stories. This means that User Stories are intended to be small. They are placeholders to have a conversation in the future or a reminder of a conversation you’ve already had. The second C, Conversation, is critical. We can’t write something down, hand it off to someone, and expect them to develop the solution you intended. We need to have a conversation. That’s why User Stories are intentionally small and concise. The final C is Confirmation. This refers to the acceptance criteria. The acceptance criteria (conditions of satisfaction) helps us to clarify understanding, lets us know when the User Story is done, and makes sure it’s testable. Note that although User Stories are small and conversations are key, you can still include supporting artifacts with User Stories if needed. Artifacts can include pictures of whiteboard drawings, critical specifications or design decisions, and mock-ups.   Listen to the full episode to find out more about requirements in an Agile context and whether or not User Stories are requirements. http://traffic.libsyn.com/masteringbusinessanalysis/MBA158.mp3     Links mentioned in this episode: International Institute of Business Analysis (IIBA) 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 MBA158: Agile Requirements appeared first on Mastering Business Analysis.

In this episode, Ali Cox helps us to understand the importance of good data analysis and how to get started.    After listening to this episode, you'll understand: How to use data to your organization’s advantage Why ignoring data can be detrimental to your organization Simple tools to use in data analysis How to find the right data to analyze SHOW NOTES Data analysis is not technical. While there are some technical aspects to it, it’s really about understanding your organization’s data so that you can help make good decisions and bring value by further refining those decisions based on good data. Your organization’s business processes, business rules, and use cases have associated data. If you don’t have a good understanding of that data or what data is needed bring value to that process, then the process can fail or you may make bad decisions about that process. Often as Business Analysts, sponsors hand us a product or a solution to implement. Unfortunately, we sometimes fail to ask why. How do we know that the product or solution is the right decision and the right thing to implement? Without data, our organization may be making bad decisions and wasting time and money. Within your organization, you have a lot of data and work with. You have data about your customers, data about your staff and their capabilities, data about your products, and data for metrics. Using this data can help your organization make good decisions.   Starting Your Data Analysis When you first get into a project, the first thing you should do is look for the data. Creating a data dictionary or glossary when talking to stakeholders will help you to better understand the meaning of the data. When looking at a business process, you can identify the business rules associated with that process and the data that drives those rules. What data is used in the process? What reports are people looking at, what data is on the reports, and what does it mean? Start looking for metrics especially if you are trying to improve a process. Those metrics can be included in your current state analysis as well as part of the success criteria. You can use those metrics to identify the best improvement opportunities. If you fail to identify and establish baseline metrics, you’ll be limited in your ability to understand if your efforts were successful or if you sell the right problem. When you’re using an Agile approach, you can use the iterations to get feedback and analyzes data to determine if adjustments are needed.   Applying the Data Once you have the data, Ali recommends building a data model. You can use the data and create a diagram to show the information that you elicit from the stakeholders and the relationships between the data. After you have the data and have identified the relationships, you can then determine what details you need to understand about the data. How much you need to know about the data or how much should you know? This allows you to better understand the business rules around the data and how the data impacts of business process. Consider what decisions your business needs to make. Once you understand what kind of decisions they need to make to be successful, then you can begin to determine the data you’ll need to help make better decisions.   It’s Not Technical The data needed to make good decisions isn’t technical. It’s business data. You likely won’t need special tools to capture and analyze the data. You can use something as simple as pen and paper or a white board. Often, Excel or Visio are the most complex tools you may need. If your organization has big data systems and you don’t have the technical knowledge to use them, you can always pair with data scientists and other technical experts in your organization to draw meaning from the data and ask the right questions.   The key to success in data analysis isn’t the tool. It’s about understanding what the data means to the business and what data you need to make better decisions.   Listen to the full episode to understand why data analysis is critical to success and more examples of the type of data you should analyze on your next initiative. http://traffic.libsyn.com/masteringbusinessanalysis/MBA157.mp3     YOUR HOMEWORK If you’re newer to business analysis or data analysis, start looking at your business data. On your next project, start looking at the data. Create a glossary or data dictionary and use that information to ensure that you understand the terms and acronyms that stakeholders use. If you’re a more experienced analyst, push for good analysis of the data. Make sure that the entire team understands the importance of data and try building a data model. Work to understand the relationships between the data and the underlying metadata.   Links mentioned in this episode: B2T Training website Ali Cox General Manager and Senior Instru