IIBA UK Scotland Branch Event - March 20th 2013.

Influencing when you are not the boss.

Any business analyst would agree that communicating is one of the more important attributes of the role. No requirements would be elicited or documented if business analysts all sat in dark rooms by themselves. With this in mind, the first IIBA event of 2013 organised on behalf of the Scotland branch by Be Positive Analysis Solutions focussed on this important skill with the title “Communication – Influencing when you are not the boss”.

Once again, Hudson Recruitment Services kindly offered to host the event in their Edinburgh office near Haymarket, and once again, did a tremendous job of welcoming delegates with a fine spread of appetisers. Not sure whether it was a strategic decision but the spicy chicken tortilla selection took the chill off a particularly wintery Edinburgh evening.

The evening kicked off with a welcome from Kirsteen Bell of Hudson followed by an introduction from Vicky Di Ciacca of Be Positive. Vicky then introduced the speaker for the evening, Dr David Fraser who is a leading authority on relationship skills. He regularly speaks to audiences about relationship mastery and leadership and is also the author of an award-winning book on the subject.

David started by introducing the concept of understanding value. In particular, he focussed on learning how to ask questions in order to understand what values are important to people. Inevitably, there would be some audience participation involved in a talk about communication and it wasn’t long before delegates took to looking at their feet trying to avoid eye contact with David (at least I did). There followed a series of scenario-based conversations between David and a delegate where David attempted to extract what was really important to them whilst working on a project. It was interesting to see how David persevered, even when the person conceded defeat, and then went on to reveal far more useful values; all the time without appearing forceful.

After a couple of examples, delegates were split into teams of three and were asked to perform a similar exercise on each other. This then developed into coming up with an attractive proposal that other team members could not turn down. The idea being, of course, that once you establish what values are important to people you can then use that understanding to foster better cooperation and influencing.

The time seemed to fly and David followed up by asking people to share their experiences of the exercise. This generated some useful discussion including a question as to whether this sort of exercise could benefit from taking place in a pub!

David closed the event off by mentioning some other techniques and by passing around hand-outs with further information. The Hudson hospitality continued with plenty of opportunity for delegates to chat with each other and partake in any left-over refreshments.

Feedback from the event has been really good. The subject matter was of particular relevance to a group of business analysts and I suspect there will be a few more searching questions asked in workshops this week. David delivered the subject in a manner which was easy to understand and the participative nature of the evening gave everyone a good chance to try out the ideas.

Some video footage of David’s presentation was taken and will be made available to IIBA members online. If you missed the event but would like to attend similar sessions in the future, why not join the LinkedIn UK IIBA Scotland Branch Group at:

http://www.linkedin.com/groups?home=&gid=4310089&trk=anet_ug_hm

…or follow @UKIIBA on Twitter.

Alternatively, you can join the mailing list by clicking on “Connect with us” and registering at:

http://uk.theiiba.org/index.php/home


Wynne Raymond
Business Analyst
Be Positive Analysis Solutions

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.

Work-happiness, I'm a Dolphin & Scandinavian Design...

or 2 days at The Nordic Project Zone Summit 2012...

Back in May, I was contacted by Mihaly from a company called Stamford Global to invite me to present at a Project Management conference in Denmark in November – ‘Of Course, I’d be delighted’ I said. Roll forward 6 months and I found myself on a flight to Copenhagen one Sunday afternoon. Someone had told me that Copenhagen airport has a great reputation for efficiency (more about that later)  – they were right and I zoomed through and onto the hotel!

Some dinner (biggest Caesar Salad with delicious bacon – well, I was in Denmark!) then back to my room to practice my Masterclass for the next day. Monday started with a great workout in the Gym, a healthy, hearty breakfast and conference registration. Met Mihaly and took my seat for the morning’s sessions.

First session by www.nigelrisner.com - his theme was communication and zoo keeping.  His session was very entertaining,  he’s a great speaker. Key take-away from his talk was that it doesn’t matter how you classify yourself (lion, monkey, dolphin –me, or elephant) – you need to be able to manage all the animals in the room – which really makes sense when you think about it! Then came Kevin from Airbus – another fascinating session – did you know that Airbus make 1 ½ aeroplanes a day?

When we broke for the breakout streams. I joined the BA stream – naturally. First up was Manoj who gave us a lively, interactive Masterclass on requirements on projects – lots of great examples of where requirements worked well (and lack of requirements ended in disaster!). Then time for lunch – great food at the hotel (and brilliant cakes). I quizzed the folk at my table about what makes a good session (as I was up next) and they said some hints and tips on ‘how’ to make things work really appealed to them.  So off to get ready for my session.

5 minutes to go and only 10 people in the room (phew, I thought – should be straightforward) then another 30 appeared  - crumbs, great but wow, quite a crowd. I was nervous to start but soon hit my stride. Time went really quickly and mindful of the advice from my lunch mates, I made sure that I used lots of examples in my session on ‘Building a BA Centre of Excellence’. Sharing lots of things that worked (and some things that didn’t!) I looked at clock and realised I’d been talking for 45 minutes – time really flew by.

My plan for the second half of the session was to get the guys to design their own CoE and the groups did a great job. Some fascinating discussions from ‘I’d never heard of business analysis before today’ to ‘that’s my job title and I love it!’. The time went all to quickly but I caught up with some of the delegates at the end and they had some great questions, here’s my favourite 3 (and my answers):

-          Where should a BA CoE sit in the organisation – IT, the Business or somewhere between the two? My answer – it depends!

-          Where in the lifecycle does Business Analysis sit – at the strategic level defining operating models or at the project level writing requirements? My answer – it depends J

-          What are the top 3 skills for a business analyst? Ahh – this one I did answer. For me the top 3 skills (or characteristics) are curiosity (noisiness), courage and analytical thinking.

Phew – glad my presentation was over and  I really enjoyed it. Time for tea and cake. Last session of the day was Antonio Nieto Rodriguez  - a Spanish ex-footballer programme manager who lives in Brussels. His main focus was focus! A very simple message with a very entertaining session to deliver it.

Day 2 was another great day. Started with the Gym (again) and a great breakfast (again) ready for the first session on coaching. A great re-enforcement of some of the NLP techniques that I try to master. The next session was on Agile – which was a real theme of the conference. The presenter came up with a theory about why Agile(and associated lean type techniques)   seemed to be so well received in Scandinavia. If you think about Scandinavian design – what do you think about? Sleek minimalist lines?  Functional but cool?  Does the job without shouting about it? All of which is a great foundation for agile and lean and might be why the airport is so efficient.

Some really great case studies on Agile – from Maersk Shipping (hey Wynne – thought this would be home territory for you!) and Emirates Airline (with a really cool video) before the closing speaker. Now this guy’s job title is ‘Chief Happiness Officer’ for Woo Hoo inc – which should be a clue to what he was going to talk about. He talked about ‘arbejdsglaede’ (ah-bites-gleh-the) - a Danish word for happiness at work - in the entire world; only the Scandinavian languages have a word for happiness at work.  Another high energy session and Alex had us high fiving each other, shouting awesome and talking about cool things we had done at work. A great way to close the conference.

All in all, a great couple of days with some interesting people. I learnt lots, hopefully shared lots and make some great contacts for the future. Worked out I was a dolphin, but that didn’t matter, that focus is vital for prioritisation and that happiness at work is a great recipe for success.

Business Analysis Certification:

To be or not to be certified; that is the question.

At our inaugural IIBA Scotland meeting held on 16 February 2012, ‘Business Analysis Certification’ was the most popular topic raised by Business Analysts, Business Analyst Practice Managers, Change Mangers, etc.

So, on September 20, 2012, the Who‘s Who of Scottish Business Analysis community congregated in a lovely and warm conference room of Lloyds Banking Group office in Edinburgh to elicit, analyse and evaluate - ‘Business Analysis: Skills & Certification’. At the beginning of the event there was around 20-30 minutes for networking. We had number of Business Analysts attending the events along with Business Analysis Practice Mangers and IT/Business Analysis Recruiters.

At 6:30PM, Vicky kicked off the session by introducing herself and handing self-introduction process to panellists. In our panel, we had training provider, someone questioning the value of certification and the other two panellists had neutral views. I must say the panel selection was very well thought out and really fit our purpose. This was followed by panellists and attendees’ expectations from the event. In particular, ‘value for money’ spending on training and certification was the heart of what Business Analysts practice.

Debra Paul then started with her short presentation on ‘Business Analysis: Skills & Certification‘.Personally, I found Bloom’s taxonomy quite insightful. Debra explained how the learning skills and validating learned skills are mapped with Bloom’s level of assessment. For more details you could check Wikipedia for Bloom’s Taxonomy.

Debra along with other panellists stressed on Business Analyst’s personal traits and skills along with Business Analysis professional skills such as Business Domain knowledge, Business Process Modelling, Organisational Context, etc. She highlighted that personal skills such as communication, interpersonal, influencing, negotiating, engaging, strategic thinking, etc are critical for Business Analysts to succeed and add value to Organisations.

Debra, briefly, touched upon different kinds of Business Analysis Certification available across the world today. Where do IIBA and BCS BA Certification differ? How do they differ in evaluation process? What are common features between IIBA and BCS? What is BCS doing in order to enter into international market?

Business Analysis Certification - Questions from BePositiveLtd

After Debra’s short presentation, Vicky started the panel discussion. Since our panellists came from different but complimentary backgrounds associated with Business Analysis, the whole panel discussion covered all-round aspects of BA Certification, Training and Skills. In fact, we had Business Analysis Training and Certification provider stressing the need for a Business Analysis training/certification and how it adds value to Employer and Business Analysts.

We had Business Analysis Practice Manager and some in audience questioning the value Business Analysis Certification brings to table. Is it really worth the money spent? Finally, we have IT/Business Analyst recruiters who are suggesting Certification do add weightage to Business Analysts profile, but, Business Analysts really need to communicate their experience and evidence. Finally, experienced Business Analysts suggest that certification would be very useful for Career Development and it also shows your commitment to Business Analysis.

In the end, it was quite an eventful night, with lots of agreeable disagreement. Despite the disagreement on whether Business Analyst certification adds value to Business Analyst and Employer, which certification (IIBA or ISEB or lesser known IREB, CIMA) is the best Certification and why? The panel seemed to agree that certification is not the deciding factor whether to employ or consider for employment, but, certification could be help new BA or jr. BA in starting their Business Analysis odyssey.

In terms of getting the maximum value of Business Analysis training, the panel preferred  hybrid (face to face / class room and online) was a good approach. Since personal skills are an integral part of BA skill sets, face to face training would provide a safe environment for a BA to practice what is being taught.

Last but not the least, recruiters (indeed, employers) are looking for BAs with excellent communication skills, ability to influence and negotiate, to manage stakeholders and conflicts, industry knowledge and above all the ability to demonstrate the experience of Business Analysis.

Why? (The objectives of the event)

To help you (Business Analyst) in making the right decision on Business Analysis Certification – ‘To be or not to be Certified’ by sharing and analysing with you the different views and opinions from the different key stakeholders’ perspective.

The Panel – Who’s Who?

Vicky Di Ciacca – Co-founder and co-director, Be Positive Analysis Solutions Ltd

Debra Paul - Managing Director, Assist Knowledge Development

Kate McClorey - Director, Hudson, IT Division

Susan Quinn -  BA Practice Manager, Lloyds Banking Group

Hillary Stocks - Senior Analyst, AEGON UK plc

The 3rd IIBA Scotland event...

The 3rd IIBA Scotland event, again sponsored by Be Positive, was held at the RBS Gogarburn HQ campus on the edge of Edinburgh, an amazing venue with great hospitality (lovely canapés btw), on the evening of Monday 25th June.

The session was fully booked with 50+ people from a wide variety of backgrounds attending. After a good chance for networking & chat, it was opened by Be Positive's Vicky Di Ciacca, who reminded folks about the IIBA European Conference in London this September & provided materials for the same.

Joe O'Brien, co-founder of EdgeCase, now becoming {new context}, a leading Ruby on Rails training & consulting company, gave a great wee intro on why they use "agile" & how it has helped them to manage client requirements & expectations. We were reminded to always ask "Where is the value?" when prioritising change.

Next, Paul Wilson (the UK MD & an Agile/Extreme Programming coach) spoke about Lean Business Analysis, Test-Driven Development & other Agile practices. He outlined how they can improve ability to manage client requirements. We also learned how to identify problems early and reduce the impact of failure, how to "Build the right thing" as well as "Build the thing right".

The contrast was made between Big Corporations affording to fail somewhat & Start-ups not having that luxury & there was the amusing tale of Involved vs Commited (ham & eggs from a restaurant run by a chicken & a pig).

We were reminded to always focus on what is potentially shippable - and what makes us successful - while monitoring the rythyms of change. An exploration of "Making things visible" included an interesting story about the specification failure of the orders given to the infamous Light Brigade.

Following up on these themes was Alan Gardner, one of their key developers, who gave a talk on "Specification By Example" including a brief tour of an acceptance testing tool, Cucumber, demonstrating how it can help when delivering requirements to clients. There are tools out there that can help clients, BAs & development teams to better understand each other & see concrete progress on requirements - find them & use them.

Wrapping up, Joe again emphasised development driven by "the value", where "agile" requires measured feedback at all levels. He also recommended to "Just get talking", "Release for the right reasons", "Know why you are successful", & to share success by "Telling stories about what people are doing". The need to understand the motivation behind an order, in modern military terms, so it can cope with any changes, means that "brittle interfaces" to third parties are not good.

After a short break for more chat & networking, we held three breakout workshops, facilitated by our Gillian Kilpatrick, Vicky & myself to examine how Agile impacts on Products, People & Processes. The summary results of those three discussions will be written up by us & included with the other outputs (video, slides etc) in due course.

Written up by Adrian Doherty, Business Analyst, Be Positive. Thanks also to Gillian & all the folks at RBS for organising this event so well.

The IIBA's 2nd Scottish event. How was it for you?

​​It was a real pleasure to listen to Paul Turner and Matt Andrews share their wealth of practical experience on Business Analysis. The hosts, Hudson, with their perfect venue in Edinburgh, did an amazing job of looking after everyone. The nibbles were delicious therefore it was no surprise that my colleague Adrian strategically placed himself beside them at the back of the room. The event was well attended with around forty people coming along; some familiar faces from the kick-off event and some new faces too.

I found it thoroughly entertaining to listen to Paul Turner who talked about a variety of techniques that a BA can use to help deliver successful projects. The classics like CATWOE, SWOT and Use Case Diagrams were well covered with clever anecdotes and funny stories.

Paul talked with a lot of energy about selecting certain Technique for a particular task. One of the key messages delivered was that you must use the right technique at the right time, selection is key. I could have listened to Paul all evening. It was so interesting to hear the back story of the Business Analysis Techniques book: 72 Essential Tools for Success, co-written by Paul Turner; and how in actual fact it should have been 77 Techniques. To hear about the technique that didn’t make the final cut was funny, The Zimmer Framework released on April 1st. Although Paul did point out that you would not find this covered in his presentation slides.

Paul convinced me that you really can, never have too many tools and techniques in your BA toolkit. I left wanting to have a nosy in my own toolkit, remind myself of what I have and think about how I could understand and then practice some new techniques.

On behalf of AssistKD, Paul seemed delighted to announce their association with IIBA UK Chapter and sponsorship of The Business Analyst of Year Award 2012. You can access further information about this award through the following link: http://www.assistkd.com/business-analyst-of-the-year-2012.php Surprisingly, The Business Analyst of Year Award has never been won by a Scottish person.

During the interval I had another opportunity to network with the other Business Analysts attending the event. There was even a prize draw for two books, Business Analysis Techniques: 72 Essential Tools for Success and Building Business Capability. You will never guess whose name was drawn out first, yes, mine. Such a pity I already had a copy of the 72 Essential Tools for Success; better luck next time.

Matt Andrews really did have a hard act to follow but nevertheless Matt’s presentation was also thoroughly entertaining and informative as well. Matt’s chosen topic was ‘I tried being nice……’ – Influencing Skills for the Business Analyst. Matt covered the main influencing techniques i.e. Persuading, Bridging, Attracting and Disengaging. He gave practical examples about how we could use these skills to influence the stakeholders that we work with. Not only that but how we might recognise if a stakeholder uses these influencing techniques on us. Being made aware of the different influencing techniques will no doubt make me more aware when I am helping the business to express their needs and not their wants.

Matt’s talk was also entertaining as he made us giggle with cute pictures of kittens in marshmallows, a Yoda reference and stories from his career about using the various techniques, for example the Attracting technique. A technique especially useful for building rapport with stakeholders which I believe he exercised on all of us at the event to find that common ground. Yes, we have all flirted with some Programme/Project Manager or other at some time in our careers to get what we needed from them, be it subconsciously or not.

Overall it was a fantastic event, hugely entertaining but also incredibly informative. If you did not make it along to this event you should be able to access the presentation slides through the regional IIBA website shortly. I will definitely be looking out for details of the next Scottish Regional event, currently scheduled to be held in Glasgow in June 2012.