November IIBA Scotland Event

On the 29^th November I attended the IIBA Scottish Regional Event which was held at the very pleasant AEGON Lochside Crescent building at Edinburgh Park.

The topic was, ‘Exploring the impacts on analysis when using an offshore delivery model (IT Development, Analysis and/or Operations conducted offshore)’, which might be an emotive subject for some Business Analysts, including me.

It’s understandable to hear the word ‘offshore’ and your own job description in the same sentence and feel a few muscles clench. However as a BA I’d like to think that I can approach any topic analytically and from a healthily disinterested point of view. I have definitely had to do this in the past where offshoring is concerned and fortunately the group attending this session seemed to have equally open minds on the topic.

Presentation

The evening’s presentation was delivered by Colin Quinn and introduced by Vicky Di Ciacca of Be Positive Analysis Solutions, the IIBA Scotland event sponsors.

Colin told us that his initial interest in this topic went back a while. In 2009 he posted a comment on the ‘Modern Analyst’ forum, and was struck by the level of negativity towards the subject by the majority of fellow contributors. It was apparent that contributors had come up with lots of reasons WHY this couldn’t work rather than ideas of HOW to make it work.

Colin’s presentation split offshoring models into two distinct categories: In-house offshoring, and Outsourced offshoring.

In Colin’s experience, companies with In-house offshoring are likely to be large global organisations with multiple sites and therefore they often have an in-built need to be able to work in a more remote way, using teleconferencing, etc. These organisations would usually have a blended model of onshore and offshore resource.

Colin was quite positive about this type of offshoring and gave it a decent chance of being a success.

Outsourced offshoring can often be a source of non-tailored off-the-shelf resource, where a lot of effort has gone into producing smart contracts that protect the 3^rd party, but do not necessarily help to build longer term trusting business relationships.

Colin suggested that this could work a little better if contracts were a bit more flexible and if the relationship was based on a gut feeling of ‘can I work with these guys?’ and ‘can they deliver what we want them to deliver?’

Offshoring started with technical roles and in the past few years organisations have started to get round to BA roles. The question of whether to offshore BA roles seems to have passed and it’s a matter of HOW rather than IF.

Colin suggested that companies who want to make this work would take a longer term view of the benefits to be had from offshoring BA resource and as a result should make sure that they have strong onshore capability first. The onshore BAs could then work alongside offshore resource by bringing offshore BAs onshore, and/or onshore BAs going offshore. This would allow more understanding of the culture of the organisations, knowledge sharing, mentoring, etc. It would also put the onshore BAs in a stronger position to assess capabilities and determine the speed that specific tasks could be passed to offshore partners, etc.

What does this mean for Business Analysts? Colin feels that this makes onshore BAs critical to making offshoring of BA activities work, potentially giving BAs a higher profile and shining a spotlight on BA skills.

As organisations attempt to offshore more and more capabilities, clear and well defined requirements become ever more important.

Colin’s presentation slides are available to view below.

 

Q&A

Following on from Colin’s presentation, the group were invited to ask questions.

A question was raised about how offshore capability can support and cope with the changeability of commercial contracts.

Colin said that offshore capability should be looked at for its long-term benefits not just for short to mid-term cost saving. The flexibility of resources should also be looked at as another benefit; however, this makes trust between the organisations even more important.

The group then discussed the importance communication skills in an environment that includes offshored activities.

Colin advised that he had come into contact with lots of people attempting to use their own, sometimes limited, language to communicate to organisations and not making an attempt to learn the terms that those organisations might understand. Colin suggested that we (BAs) should improve in this area.

Vicky added that we (organisations in general) need to look at alternative forms of communication, such as Skype and IM (Instant Messaging), that we are comfortable with in our everyday lives but have not yet become common place in business. We could also use techniques that provide more visual representations and fewer words.

A member of the group volunteered an example of a break down in communication where he was invited to join a meeting in the Netherlands at half 1. Unfortunately, half 1 in Netherlands means half before 1, not half after 1 and our group member was embarrassingly a hour late for this meeting.

After a short break to network and grab a warm or cold beverage and a biscuit, it was time for a breakout session.

Breakout Session

The room was organised into three smaller groups, each using a different method to explore the impacts on analysis when using an offshore model.

I was in a group using the ‘Pestle’ technique, which identifies any external factors that need to be considered when approaching a subject. P-political, E-economic, S=sociological, T-technological, L-legal and E-environmental.

The other groups used ‘Customer Journey’ and ‘SWOT’ (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats) techniques.

I thoroughly enjoyed this session (not sure how this reflects on me) as it allowed us to get the pens, flipcharts and sticky notes out. This technique also allowed us to look at the subject from a different perspective and have a chat about some of the pros and cons of offshoring, outwith the ‘can it be done?’ argument.

As is usually the case, having a few minds looking at this topic also came up with some interesting points that we may not have thought of individually.

Each group then summarised its findings to the rest of the larger group.

All the findings can be seen below.

As this was the final session for 2012, everyone was invited to come up with ideas for topics to be covered in events next year and was encouraged to feedback any ideas in terms of venues and length of sessions, etc to Vicky Di Ciacca at Vicky@Be-Positive.co.uk.

The next event will be held in January or February 2013. Hopefully I’ll see you there.

Andy Chinery, LBA, Be Positive.