Introducing the Value-Based BA Practice Framework

Value-based business analysis (BA) is emerging as a critical business practice for the 21st century. A successful business analysis practice working at the enterprise/strategic level of organizations is essential if we are to break the cycle of failed and challenged projects. It is a difficult and complicated endeavor to transition from tactical, project-based business analysis to enterprise/strategic business analysis, but one we must undertake. Here we introduce a framework that provides the roadmap to successfully implementing and sustaining value-based business analysis practices.

21ST CENTURY CHALLENGES

These are tumultuous times. Businesses face unprecedented challenges in the hyperconnected 21st century global economy. Extraordinary gale-force winds of change are swirling faster than ever before, causing us to rethink our approach to business analysis and project management.

These challenges include the following:

•  Integrated economy. Everyone is feeling the effects of the global integrated economy, and business analysts are no exception. Many jobs are becoming commoditized; they can be performed by contractors or outsourced to resources located anywhere across the globe. Global wage scales have made U.S. employees too expensive to perform standard, repetitive tasks. Many U.S. jobs are gone and are not coming back. Basic BA tasks are beginning to be outsourced or performed by contractors.

•  Technology and information explosion. IT applications have also impacted U.S. jobs by automating repetitive activities, often increasing the quality and predictability of outcomes. Smart IT applications are replacing knowledge workers, including BAs, across many industries. The demand for new, innovative apps delivered quickly is making traditional requirements and development methods obsolete.

•  Convergence of digital, social, and mobile spheres. Social/mobile media are connecting us all in obvious and subtle ways, some of which we don’t yet fully understand, with new applications constantly emerging. As we have seen throughout the world, people are using social media to bring about major changes to social and political systems. BAs are using social media to enhance collaboration among key stakeholders across the globe.

•  Innovation vs. business as usual. The call to action for today’s businesses is “innovate or vanish.” For businesses to be competitive, they must be first to market with innovative, leading-edge products and services that are intuitive and easy to use and that offer surprising new features. It is no longer enough for BAs to ask their business partners what they want or need. BAs must learn to foster creativity and innovation during their working sessions, continually asking the question: “Are we truly innovating?”

•  Business value realization. Businesses cannot afford to waste project investments or precious resource time unless significant benefits in terms of innovation, value to the customer, and wealth to the bottom line will be realized. BAs understand the business value proposition and focus on value throughout the project. They work with project managers to develop release plans prioritized, based on business value, to deliver value early.

•  Project performance. With business success riding on innovation and first-to-market speed, we must be able to deliver new products and business capabilities on time and within cost and scope commitments. However, according to the CHAOS Manifesto 2013 by the Standish Group, technology-enabled business change initiatives are only 39 percent successful, as measured in terms of whether they are on time, on budget, and with the full scope of functions and features.¹

This unrelenting change is compounded by unprecedented complexity at all levels—globally, nationally, locally, and within projects. With complexity comes dynamic, unpredictable, adaptive change. Projects are complex adaptive systems operating within a complex environment; thus, typical plan-based project and requirements management practices are insufficient when attempting to bring about speed and innovation. We find ourselves in a new, data-driven world where virtually all business projects are dependent on information technology (IT). And new technologies are complex by their very nature.

BREAKTHROUGH PRACTICES FOR THE 21ST CENTURY

So what does all this have to do with business analysis?

There was a time in the not-too-distant past when no one understood what business analysts do. It was widely believed that inadequate requirements analysis work was a key cause of poor project performance and outright failure. It was also well understood that business analysis had to become more formalized: adopt new tools, techniques, methodologies, and structures to improve how BAs work. As a result, a progressive group of BAs in Canada gave birth to the International Institute of Business Analysis (IIBA), and business analysis transitioned from an informal practice to a rigorous profession.

IIBA provided us with these pioneering definitions:

On the art and science of business analysis—

On the role of the business analyst—

In today’s organizations, business analysts range from an entry-level role supporting small projects to a strategic role developing and implementing business transformation initiatives. Sometimes the role of the business analyst is viewed as a stepping stone toward becoming a project manager or business architect; however, we are seeing the growth of career paths for BAs from entry-level analysts to experienced enterprise/strategic BA consultants residing in the highest tiers or organizations.

EMERGING VIEW OF BUSINESS ANALYSIS

It’s all about value—value to the customer and value to the bottom line of your organization. The business analysis profession is changing rapidly, adopting a more complete view of change initiatives. Today’s BAs:

•  Focus on delivery of business value and innovation vs. requirements management

•  View change initiatives holistically, understanding the need to change people, processes, organizations, rules, data, applications, and technology

•  Embrace architecture and design to help ensure project success

•  Strike a balance between analysis and intuition, order and disruptive change.

Industry leaders across the globe are positioning business analysis as a critical business management discipline for the 21st century—and the cornerstone for their business transformation initiatives. BA’s ultimate value proposition extends beyond tactical, project-aligned requirements management practices and encompasses delivering business solutions that:

•  Add measurable business value

•  Capitalize on complexity

•  Innovate and differentiate business value

•  Leverage technology for competitive advantage.

According to leading technology research firms, the business analyst is one of the hottest roles in business and in IT. Business analysis is the resource that is in high demand and will play a critical role in the future—not the junior role in IT or business functions that some BAs fill today.

The value-based role of business analysis creates vast new opportunities. Tomorrow’s experienced and solution-focused BA professionals will add real value to their companies and foster innovation. These critical resources are already within your organization. Organizations that are able to harness the power of business analysis to drive value-creating change initiatives will be competitive in the 21st century.

BA PRACTICE IMPLEMENTATION AND SUSTAINABILITY FRAMEWORK

Implementing a more strategic BA practice is a formidable endeavor. Institutionalizing an enterprise-wide value-based BA practice is even more challenging. To enlist and sustain organizational support, the business value that BA practices promise needs to be fully understood across the organization, and BA benefits need to be continually demonstrated through measurement and communication programs. Leadership and sponsorship of the effort must emanate from the top and flow down to all levels of the organization. A holistic and methodical implementation approach and framework are essential for success and sustainability.

Mature BA practices have several well-oiled components: a capable BA team, organizational support, executive leadership and sponsorship, and an implementation and sustainability framework. Successful BA practices are supported by a number of integrated elements. To deal with the significant amount of change required by all stakeholders, the BA practice implementation should be managed in phases, following a disciplined framework (see Figure I-1).

FIGURE I-1. The Value-Based BA Practice Framework

A brief description of the elements of the framework is provided below, and each component is examined in detail in subsequent chapters.

THE INITIAL READINESS PHASE

The initial readiness phase answers the question, “Is our organization ready?”

Many elements must be in place for you to declare your readiness to begin to implement a BA practice. The most important tool for you to use to present your argument for a BA practice is the business case.

Unless your BA practice can demonstrate business benefits in terms of value to the customer and wealth to the bottom line, it will be a failed venture. Without a business case, you are likely steering a rudderless vessel. Developing the business case will enable you to think about all important aspects of the venture. Your BA practice business case must be convincing, compelling, and believable.

Once you have developed the business case to implement a BA practice, enlist an executive sponsor to guide the effort, to own the budget for the BA practice, and to commit to the cost and benefit projections. The executive sponsor is usually a senior-level executive, such as the chief information officer (CIO) or chief strategy officer (CSO).

It is ideal to secure the commitment of the experts who helped build the business case to serve on a BA practice steering committee. The steering committee, facilitated by the BA practice lead and chaired by the executive sponsor, will provide political cover, decision support, budget, and legitimacy to the BA practice initiative.

Building a new business process such as business analysis is a challenging endeavor. The BA practice lead is the person who is responsible for building the BA practice in an organization. This person may be a manager of BAs, but this is not always the case.

As the BA practice lead, your initial challenge is to gain executive confidence and organizational alignment up front. Do you have the power and influence skills to take a comprehensive view that is aligned with your organizational environment, culture, strategies, and decision-making practices?

THE SUBSEQUENT IMPLEMENTATION PHASE

The implementation phase answers the question, “How do we build the BA practice?”

The BA practice needs a home, a department that is accountable and responsible for building and sustaining effective BA practices. This center should be a manageable size and should be authorized to manage the BA team; the business case process; organizational BA standards and frameworks; methods, training, tools, templates, techniques, and metrics; and communication.

Today, BAs are mostly project-focused, creating and managing requirements artifacts. To become a valuable corporate asset, BAs need to become holistic thinkers who are strategically focused, concentrating on innovative solutions to complex business problems.

In days gone by, we followed the maxim, process first, then tools. The good news is that BA tools have grown up. Good BA standards are now embedded in integrated requirements management tools. So the tools help educate BAs on best practices, integrate and manage requirements knowledge and artifacts, and integrate engineering information into BA models and documents used to build the solution.

The bad news is that most BAs still use desktop tools that are difficult to maintain because they are not integrated. As a result, the BA is burdened with creating, maintaining, integrating, and synchronizing all of the business strategies, goals, models, documents, matrices, use cases, user stories, test cases, etc. You will need to adopt sophisticated tools to maintain reusable requirement artifacts, impose standards and consistency, and facilitate the education of your BA team.

Teams and organizations sometimes decline to conduct a maturity assessment because they know their capabilities are immature. The problem is, just knowing your capabilities are immature is not actionable. Assessments provide useful information about strengths to leverage and gaps that need immediate improvement to grow to the next level of maturity. Assessments shed light on exactly where you are, provide a step-by-step improvement roadmap, and target improvements based on proven maturity models.

It goes without saying that a 400-person organization with five business analysts will need much less process and structure than a 4,000-person global organization with 200 business analysts. When reviewing the individual elements of the value-based BA practice implementation framework, remember, less is more. Just enough is enough to move on. Don’t fall into the trap of over-engineering your BA practice. Just as you scale the management and analysis of projects based on the needs of the effort, do the same when implementing your BA practice.

THE ONGOING SUSTAINABILITY PHASE

The ongoing sustainability phase answers the question, “How do we institutionalize and continue to improve our BA practices?”

Make no mistake: Implementing a mature BA practice is no small endeavor. The effort is fraught with challenges. Targeted measurements and effective communications tailored to the needs of each stakeholder group are essential to gain organizational support. The messages need to convey the real business value created by improved BA practices.

Continually increase the capabilities of your BA team and the maturity of your BA practice—and boast of your progress in every corner of your organization. Measure the business benefits of your BA practice and of projects in terms of value to your customers and wealth to the bottom line. Demonstrate value through performance measures that tie to your organization’s corporate scorecard, project performance measures, and quality performance measures.

In this complex global economy, your organizational change initiatives need to result in innovative solutions; incremental changes to “business as usual” are no longer enough for organizations to remain competitive. Yet, many CEOs do not believe they have the creative leadership needed to capitalize on complexity to bring about innovation.

For BAs to reach their full potential and add the most value to their organizations, they must become creative leaders of innovative change. Traditional BA activities are still important, but a new focus on innovation is the 21st century call to action.

An organization’s culture is durable because it is “the way we do things around here.” Changing the way the organization selects projects, develops and manages requirements, and manages projects, while focusing not only on business value but also on innovation, likely represents a significant shift.

Use strategic communications as your most effective tool to ensure that you realize the full value of your BA practice. Recognizing that project sponsors seldom measure accurately and then communicate the value derived from project and program solutions, the BA practice lead ensures that these data are captured and shouted far and wide. To be taken seriously and to be looked upon as a credible leader of change, the BA practice lead must engage in strategic communications. This involves:

•  Thinking strategically, holistically, and systematically

•  Crafting powerful messages that are impactful and memorable

•  Influencing positive decision-making through intentional and targeted strategic communication.

Complex projects are challenged today because of people failing to come together with a common vision, an understanding of complexity, and the right expertise. Virtually all work today is accomplished by teams of people, sometimes even teams of teams from around the globe. Team leadership is different from traditional management, and teams are different from operational work groups. When leading high-performing, creative teams, it is no longer about command and control; instead, it is about collaboration, consensus, empowerment, confidence, and leadership.

PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER

WHAT DOES THIS MEAN FOR THE BUSINESS ANALYST?

If you are working to implement BA best practices, methodologies, frameworks, and enabling technologies on your project, don’t get discouraged. Collaborate with others outside of your project to expand your reach and build lasting momentum.

WHAT DOES THIS MEAN FOR THE BA MANAGER/PRACTICE LEAD?

Customize the framework to implement and sustain an enterprise-wide value-based BA practice that is strategically focused. Use it!

NOTES

1   The Standish Group, “CHAOS Manifesto, 2013: Think Big, Act Small,” 2013. Online at versionone.com/assets/img/files/ChaosManifesto2013.pdf. (accessed January 2014).

2   International Institute of Business Analysis, A Guide to the Business Analysis Body of Knowledge^® (BABOK Guide^®), 2009.