Stepping Up to Enterprise Analysis 

My own opportunity came as a former employer was dissolving. Ironically the leaders saw the need to analyze the remaining critical functions and assess the gaps in technology required to fulfill the new mission: to process legal claims against the organization and distribute the remaining assets. For four exhilarating years I contributed at this level, taking on projects that included functional forecasts, systems consolidation and streamlining, disaster recovery and business resumption planning.  I’d like to share my experiences in Enterprise Analysis with all of you in the hope that, when the opportunity strikes, you’ll have some ideas on where to start and how to approach the web of organizational complexity.

Expanding Organizational Context

IIBA’s BA Body of Knowledge describes Enterprise Analysis as a pre-project activity whose outputs “provide context to requirements analysis and to solution identification for a given initiative or for long-term planning.”  When engaged in Enterprise Analysis you may find yourself doing any number of familiar activities, simply expanded to consider the organization as a whole:

1. Documenting the Business Architecture.  Modeling the components that make up the organization, in terms of people resources and roles, information flow and transformation, application infrastructure and interdependencies, technology platforms, and security practices and constraints.
2. Defining Project Scope.  Elaborating what’s needed to move a new business opportunity forward, in terms of people, process, and technology.
3. Conducting Feasibility Studies.  Researching the cross-functional impact of solution sets to find the optimal answer for enterprise objectives.
4. Performing a Risk Assessment.  Evaluate risks, probability, and impact to the organization and its goals.
5. Preparing the Business Case.   Reporting on the benefits and costs associated with a strategic solution proposal.
6. Planning the Change Management Approach.  Defining the manner in which business change will be introduced, measured, and continuously improved upon organization-wide.

And so you see that you’ve done Enterprise Analysis all along, only within the narrower perspective of an individual project.  In upcoming posts I’ll explore each of these 6 topics in greater depth.

Your New Role in the Enterprise

It may seem a stretch to cross over into the broader sphere of providing analysis and benchmarking to the strategic planners of your organization, but with guidance you can meet the challenge.  I’d be happy to consult with you on your specific needs, whether it’s tackling those executive conversations, improving management of stakeholder concerns, or organizing the seemingly massive span of organizational information.  Today’s Business Analysts need to be able to apply their skills equally in projects that assess and improve the business domain, process components, or supporting systems.  I look forward to helping you to weave the enterprise view.  Click here to learn more.

Have you already started down the path toward Enterprise Analysis?  It would be great to hear your stories.  Please share your insights with a comment below.

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At work I recently made a confession. Despite having a couple of years BA experience and a number of projects under my belt, I had never received formal training to do my job. I didn’t actually know for certain how I should be doing my job. Looking at the people around me made me feel guilty. Dave in finance; two years of studying and still another year before he’s qualified. Ruth, just joined the sales team and immediately sent on a round of training courses to sharpen her negotiation skills. Me? Two years in, three projects delivered and not a whiff of training. I was making it up as I went along.

Time to get some qualifications. My immediate need was for some coaching on the basics; so far I felt like someone who had learnt to drive on a quiet road, fine for small simple journeys but I’d be ill-equipped for anything more challenging. Despite looking to start with the basics, I wanted this initial study to count towards something bigger if possible.

I soon discovered that there were a couple of decisions to make. CBAP or ISEB? And whether to self-study or go on a training course?

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Please let me and Oliver know if you would value this by answering this quick poll below:

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For example, if you have pursued certification you will be able to share your ‘journey’ and top tips to help others benefit from what you learned.
Conversely, if you’re pursuing certification, you’ll be able to access resources that will help you.

There could be an assessment service to decide what certification is the correct one for you and how best to pursue that certification to suit your needs.

You could meet like-minded people so you can pair up with a buddy or join a group of individuals all pursuing the same certification.

This community platform won’t be purely for certification, it will allow me, the mentors and you to share expertise and provide a place to discuss a wide variety of skills and techniques that really matter to you as business analysts.

I will start with certification but plan to identify a handful of subject areas that are of most importance to you. For each of these, I’ll provide some community tools to allow you to share expertise and learn both individually and as a group, depending on your preference.

You can expect online discussion forums and a growing list of relevant resources. You can also expect live events where some of the experts can provide some guidance and answer your questions on a particular topic.

I want to use this platform to engage directly with you and understand both what topics are of interest to you but also answer the questions that really bother you and, perhaps, don’t get answered elsewhere. Hey, if you’ve got a network of experts with a lot of experience then that should be possible, shouldn’t it?

I will always aim to provide some valuable free community tools and resources but you will also be able to access individually tailored support and the best resources and expertise as a paid service.

I’m thinking about a rebrand too. Business Analyst Mentor feels a little too narrow for the mission:

to leverage the knowledge and experience of the whole community to accelerate the professional development of all business analysts

It’s not an immediate priority and will probably be tackled later in the year. Put your thinking hats on, I’d appreciate some suggestions from you!

So, to return to the lessons I learnt from 2011:

• Individual enthusiasm and drive is critical for success
  I will be looking out for individuals who are passionate and driven to get access to my network and play an important role in growing the community. If you have particular expertise, that’s a bonus but it is not necessary.

• Build good relationships, based on mutual trust and respect
  I want us to work together and so I will work hard on building honest, open and mutually beneficial relationships with very motivated individuals.

• Allow people to play to their strengths and follow their passions.
  I want to uncover and help you play to your strengths as participant of this community. You may be surprised by the skills and resources you possess that are not necessarily related to business analysis but help grow the community.

• The growth of Business Analyst Mentor will be accelerated by allowing enthusiastic members of the community to participate.
  If you have any specific ideas or just want to play a active part in the community, just let me know. I’m happy to discuss anything!

• Listen to your customers!
  I want you to continue telling me what your challenges are. The new platform and new ideas will all provide you with an opportunity to influence where we focus our attention. Don’t wait, contact me today with your challenges. Send me an email (alex@bamentor.com) or share your thoughts as a comment below.

I’m looking forward to 2012, it’s going to be an exciting year. I would love for you to join us to make this community work for your benefit and everyone else too.

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More importantly, I will check progress against Business Analyst Mentor’s original mission.

The mission (which I haven’t always defined too clearly) is to leverage the knowledge and experience of the whole community to accelerate the professional development of all business analysts.

In order to be a highly valued business analyst, you must understand the business mission, vision and objectives and ensure your work is, in some way, contributing to delivering on those objectives. It’s surprising how often it is very difficult to understand how (or if!) your project is delivering to your organisation’s objectives. Is that something you have experienced?

Successful businesses have an inspiring mission and a set of concrete objectives for delivering on the vision (the vision describes what the business will look like at an agreed point in the future).

As you’ll discover, my report card on delivering against objectives is average at best. I will go on to explain why progress has been slow and how I will fix this.

Ok, so what were the major achievements for Business Analyst Mentor this year?

I trialled a free course for BA’s ‘Insider’s Guide to Core Techniques’ which was very popular. This course is a ‘stripped down’ course that focuses on the essentials of critical techniques. It has been available since May and hundreds of people have completed the course. Here’s one item of feedback that I received when it was first trialled:
This course is extremely beneficial to anyone wishing to put into context the key techniques that a business analyst needs to master in order to work effectively. It provides a solid platform from which to take your education further. The fact that it is free amazes me!”
- Ken Parsonage (participant in original trial of course)
You can register for the course here.

 

My Mastering Use Cases course was made available as a self-study version only so you can access it at a time to suit you and still have access to ask me questions. You can read more here.

 

I started growing the mentor team with Doug and Mike originally but it has now grown to 6 mentors. Read more about them here (Note: at the time of writing, Tom (see his Linked In profile) and Malcolm (see his Linked In profile) are not yet registered as mentors)

 

I started involving the community with guest posts from Doug and Mike and Pete Cohen (BPMN Interview, Mentee’s perspective on mentoring, History of the future – visioning for BA Mentor) providing the view from less experienced BA’s.
Most recently, Jennifer van Veen explains how she decided to take the plunge with mentoring for free!

 

I’ve discovered a handful of you want to provide mentoring for free, not as a paid service. This shows that some of you recognize that learning how to mentor benefits you as much as the mentee. That does carry a risk that the benefits will not be so great if the mentor is not a ‘professional’ mentor (i.e. does not do this on a regular basis).
I have supported this informally by pairing up mentors with BA’s I know are looking for support and are willing to ‘try out’ a mentor.

On a personal note, I spoke at the IIBA Conference in the UK and the US as well as at regional IIBA events in the UK. I feel more skilled as a public speaker and also know my areas for improvement for next time! I’ve also stepped down as President of the UK Chapter of the IIBA to focus on Business Analyst Mentor.

 

But, what are the big lessons for building Business Analyst Mentor?

1. Individual enthusiasm and drive is critical for success. Individuals who are passionate and engaged are the community members who are most valuable. This is more important even than their experience and knowledge.
   This is the fuel that drives growth.
   Pete Cohen is a great example – his enthusiasm and desire to develop himself drives him forward and has encouraged him to put himself forward to speak at a BA Conference. This is a great example of how enthusiasm can help overcome self doubt. I know Doug Goldberg’s support through mentoring has also helped Pete’s confidence and willingness to take risks.
2. Build good relationships, based on mutual trust and respect. This requires a healthy dose of open and honest debate.
   My primary focus with the new mentors is to provide an environment where relationships can build and develop as a priority. One way this can be achieved is through ‘shared endeavour’. By this I mean, working together to achieve a common goal.
   Our first goal is to explain what BA certification is about and how it can help you. This is described further in this post.
3. Allow people to play to their strengths and follow their passions. If you want people to really excel then you need to motivate them – one of the keys is to uncover their passions.
   One of the best examples of this would be actively targeting individuals who are passionate about mentoring in 2011. When I was interviewing people, my critical criteria was the desire to help and mentor others. I valued this more highly than experience, knowledge and expertise in mentoring or business analysis more broadly.
4. The growth of Business Analyst Mentor will be accelerated by allowing enthusiastic members of the community to participate. It will continue to be slow and steady if it relies on me alone. I have allowed a few people to contribute this year – new Mentors, Pete Cohen (mentee), Jennifer van Veen (free mentoring) – but this has been carefully controlled.
5. Listen to your customers! There are many ways in which I could help. I have always found it difficult to be sure I understand your priorities and focus on those. The route to success is by helping to solve a small number of very specific problems and to solve them well. I want to focus much harder on understanding the problems you face and your biggest priorities. Tackling certification is my first attempt to engage with you (so far, I have had well over 200 responses to the Certification questionnaire!).
   Let me know your views on challenges and experiences with certification by completing the questionnaire if you haven’t done so already.

Ok, so how am I doing against the mission?

leverage the knowledge and experience of the whole community to accelerate the professional development of all business analysts

Missions should always be big and ambitious so it will be impossible to achieve them fully but, having made my excuses(!), let’s look at the progress:

leverage the knowledge and experience of the whole community

How much of the community knowledge and experience am I making available? Well, it’s no longer just me, there are now 6 mentors and 1 free mentor and Pete Cohen as a mentee is making his contribution. It’s still a long way off the whole community!

accelerate the professional development of all business analysts

Again, all business analysts is a pretty lofty goal! So, how have I done? Well, the total number of business analysts who have downloaded one of the ebooks, undertaken mentoring or taken one of the free or paid courses will add up to somewhere around 3,000 people.

As a number, it’s not too shabby but let’s move on to:

accelerate the professional development

Well, the answer is I don’t know which of those individuals would claim to have accelerated their professional development. Many people are complimentary about the courses but I can’t provide any confident answer to this question.

In the next post, I will explore what these lessons tell me I should do in 2012 (and how this ties back to the Business Analyst Mentor mission).

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In this post I’ll share my perspective on the experience, and how I foresee applying what I learnt from it.

My role in the game was to represent a long term customer. Alex Papworth - the BA Mentor founder – represented himself in that capacity, and there were other ‘audience’ members listening in. The game involved us being interviewed by Joan (the facilitator) on a conference call, answering a series of questions about how Business Analyst Mentor has developed and grown. The essence of the game is that participants pretend they are 5 years in the future and talk about the period between the present day and that point in time, all in the past tense.

We were given the questions in advance and had a quick briefing discussion a couple of days beforehand to ensure we understood the process and objectives.

When the game started it took some moments to initially get into the flow, but once the headspace is established it is quite inspiring and even a bit surreal. There is a lot of freedom in being able to imagine a fictional past, rather trying to articulate an ideal future. A particular example is being able to describe how a challenge was addressed and overcome, turning a potential negative into a positive. It inspires the ‘storyteller’ voice in us which can be very engaging and entertaining.

The outcome of the exercise for BA Mentor was that we covered some really interesting ground and identified some recurring themes around the importance of the personal nature of the offering – in contrast to say what a ‘one size fits all’ professional development course would provide. I was also amazed by the alignment in some of the themes and stories I had imagined and what Alex actually said. I think this demonstrates that the vision for BA Mentor has already been quite clearly communicated and fostered. The questions from the audience prompted Alex to think and talk about aspects of the business he hadn’t really considered before.

There are a few past situations I’ve been in where I would have loved to be able to pull this game out of my toolbox, and here are a few future examples of where I think I’ll use it:

1 – A passion of mine is working with startups. It can be challenging, however, to get strong alignment amongst the founders. This exercise will be perfect to explore all aspects of not only the product or value proposition, but also the realities of the business and the lifestyles that the founders are aspiring to lead. If one founder is imagining getting the business to a certain size and then sipping piña coladas (no salt, of course) on a beach in five years, while another is expecting to be still working long days and acquiring their competitors to fuel massive ongoing growth, then best to understand that sooner than later.

2 – In a more typical BA scenario, this exercise will be very handy for understanding a proposed new feature better. It will help stakeholders articulate the real value which they expect users to get out of the feature in question, which is often less tangible and related to non-functional requirements. I can see this being useful to ensure that everyone has a common and realistic grasp on expectations.

3 – Although it would take some courage to try it, I think this exercise could be useful at the beginning of a big project. Although I enjoy that blissful state at the beginning of a project where all indicators on the status report are still ‘green’ and there have not yet been any blowups or misunderstandings, I often think that there would be benefit in discussing people’s previous experiences in projects, and what success really means to them. I am currently working in a hybrid BA/PM role, and my increased exposure to the financial side of projects has given me greater insight into the kinds of things which are important to project sponsor. This type of game would help a team discuss and workshop what is really important to tem, and how a successful outcome can be achieved.

Here are a few links to where you can find more information about this game and others like it:

Website: http://tastycupcakes.org/

Website: http://innovationgames.com/remember-the-future/

Gamestorming book: http://bit.ly/bcPrn7

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After taking the time to read my email, Alex replied with a mentee he thought would be a good fit.  Even though I was committed, I was very apprehensive at first. Doubts started to creep in and fearful thoughts quickly appeared about the new role. Do I have enough experience to truly help someone?  Have I been exposed to all of the necessary BA techniques? As the list grew, I simply had to remind myself to cast these fears aside and just do it! Nothing ventured is nothing gained. What did I have to lose, right? After the first mentoring session, my fears and doubts were instantly set aside.  The mentee was willing to learn and seemed really engaged, two key components of the mentee’s role. We were off to a good start.  After a few more sessions I reported to Alex that everything was going great! Alex replied back he was very pleased and to my surprise asked if I could return the favor of the introduction by writing a regular blog post. Just a few hundred words once a month he said.  No big deal, right?  Once again apprehension set in. I knew how to write documentation based on analysis but would I be good at writing about my own experiences? The verdict is still pending here but as evidenced by this first post, I put my hesitations aside once more and just did it!

My experiences as a mentor thus far have been excellent!  After only a few sessions with my mentee I realize I am more secure in my BA skills.  I feel confident in speaking on BA methods and I am truly happy and excited to share my knowledge.  If there are methods the mentee wants to discuss that I am not knowledgeable about, we will explore and learn them together. The journey has been very beneficial in more ways than one and I would like to encourage anyone who is considering being a mentor or a mentee to take the plunge and just do it!

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As it happens, the first piece of advice comes from me but you’ll find a rich variety of advice coming from all the mentors.

You can find the Business Analyst Mentor page here.

Please comment to add your view or ask questions for us to follow up now or in the future.

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It's an exciting time for me as this will enable me to accelerate progress for Business Analyst Mentor for your benefit.

Before I get on to certification, here's a quick roll call of the new mentors:

Joan Davis - Joan is from the US (Maine) and has extensive experience as a BA and has recently been focussing on developing her skills as a virtual facilitator. Joan can add a lot with her broad BA experience but her virtual facilitation focus will be extremely valuable when running online professional development activities with you, the community members. Read Joan's LinkedIn profile

Malcolm Eva - Malcolm is from the UK (Stroud) and has a wealth of experience which is too extensive to summarise here. He was a member of the working party that created the ISEB Business Systems Development Diploma in 2000 which was the basis for the ISEB BA Diploma and has spent many years training BA's to pass the diploma.  The ISEB BA diploma is the most successful accreditation in the UK for business analysts and (at present) is far more widely recognized than the CBAP or CCBA. Read Malcolm's LinkedIn profile

Nick de Voil - Nick is from the UK (London) and is an experienced business analyst/consultant with a particular interest in the field of User Experience. He has spoken on this subject at IIBA events and also on Customer Experience at this year's BA Conference. Read Nick's LinkedIn profile

Ian Richards - Ian is from the UK (Cardiff, Wales) and has many years of experience as a business analyst and BA career manager, specifically with Fujitsu. He also has very recent experience of passing both the ISEB BA Diploma and acquiring his CBAP accreditation. He described to me how he locked himself away for 3 days to get to grips with the CBAP - it looks like it paid off!. Read Ian's LinkedIn profile

Of course, Doug Goldberg and Mike Eckersley continue to offer mentoring and will play an active part in this new team.

What does this mean for you?

Our next objective is to make this group available for mentoring. I should have everyone's biography ready in the next two or three weeks at which point, they will be added to the mentoring service. Mike and Doug still have available slots if you think you might benefit from some mentoring.

After this, we will start considering (and are already discussing) other ways we can help the community, utilising the strengths, experience and knowledge of the team.

Our first project is to tackle the thorny issue of certification. In the UK, we plan to run a virtual webinar to answer these questions:

What are the ISEB BA Diploma and the CBAP and how can I decide which one is best for me?

I hope that we can also do something similar for the rest of the world, focussing on the CBAP.

As ever, I'd love to hear your feedback and, in particular, any specific questions/challenges you have around CBAP and/or ISEB.

Please add a comment below or email me directly at alex@bamentor.com.

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I want to share my impressions from the Conference in this post. This should help those of you who didn’t attend know what they missed out on and whether you would benefit from attend next year.

I arrived on the Saturday before the Conference to give me a few days to meet people and get some Florida sun before the Conference started (on Tuesday).

As I drove out of the airport, I was confronted with lightning storms! And on the way to the friend’s house where I was staying, I had to drive in the centre of the road as it was completely flooded.

So much for Florida sun!

Overall impressions

The overall event was on a very large scale with over 900 attendees, 4 tracks and, at some points up to six or seven sessions running in parallel! The tracks were on business analysis, business process, business rules and business architecture.

There is so much breadth of knowledge and expertise being shared that I think every business analyst will find a great deal of value in the three days.

For myself, I found most value in the business analysis and business architecture tracks.

One of my particular highlights would be Steve Erlank, President of the IIBA South African Chapter, talking on Systems Thinking. He was an amusing speaker who communicated complex concepts very clearly and simply. I had the good fortune to enjoy Steve’s company on several occasions afterwards including a lunch in London where we talked about ways to help the BA community.

I also very much enjoyed hearing Rich Larson from Watermark Learning talking on Business Analyst as Management Consultant – fantastic voyage or impossible dream?

Let me know if you would like a copy of the slides and I’ll contact Rich or Steve.

I found it interesting that in the Business Architecture stream I didn’t come away feeling there was a shared definition of business architecture.

How does it compare with other Conferences?

I can only compare with the UK Conference. My general feeling is that the BBC is still a little focused on solutions rather than the business problems. Although processes and rules are important tools, I didn’t feel they justified having two complete tracks.

How many business people tell you their problem is they they don’t have enough business processes defined or their rules strategy is incomplete?

The UK Conference is not focussed so much on the techniques. The other difference is that the UK Conference tries to ‘stretch’ the BA by looking at other approaches including creativity and, for example, borrowing from design thinking.

The BBC Conference felt a little more like their was a consistent narrative and deliberate pace to the Conference so the ‘big stuff’ was saved to the last couple of days. Also, the facilities were, inevitably, that much better – and you can’t compete with Florida in November (it was still hot even if a little wet!).

Steve Erlank has plans for a more locally focussed South African Conference in 2012 and a bigger one in 2013, drawing in international speakers and attendees. Does anyone fancy a business trip to South Africa with a safari or wine tour at the end?!

In Europe, we have conferences in Netherlands, Slovenia and Switzerland.

I am also aware many US Chapters run local conferences or development days, some of which have up to 500 attendees!

Networking benefits

I lost track of the number of people who have met or encountered online that I met in person at the Conference. For networking internationally, this Conference is without compare. I met BA’s from the US, Australia, South Africa and Europe (including the UK). Sending emails and talking over skype is no substitute for shaking someone’s hand and talking even if only for 10 minutes.

I met two people that I met when recently recruiting mentors. Kent McDonald who specialises in Agile (amongst many other things) – he has offered to help BA Mentor although to provide advice rather than as a mentor.

I also met Jennifer Van Veen who has offered to mentor for free who I was able to introduce to someone looking for guidance. She will be writing some posts documenting her experiences on this front.

I also met countless important figures from IIBA including Kathleen Barrett (CEO), Kevin Brennan (Community Development), Michael Gladstone (CIO), Tom Karasmanis, Rick Clare(outgoing VP of Chapters), Dave Bieg (COO).

The Chapters Day was invaluable for meeting many members of US and International Chapters but also getting an insight into the challenges facing the organisation.

You’ll be please to know I managed to get a few hours on the lounger by the pool after the Chapters day before I had to catch my flight back to the UK.

All in all, I’d highly recommend going to the BBC Conference if you want to:

- improve your BA skills

- get contacts in the US and internationally

- play a role in the IIBA worldwide and not just the UK

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