Chapter 8

Establishing a Business Analysis Center of Excellence

In This Chapter:

• Centers of Excellence

• Business Analysis Centers of Excellence (BACoE)

• BACoE Scope Considerations

• BACoE Organizational Positioning Considerations

• BACoE Organizational Maturity Considerations

• BACoE Implementation Considerations

• BACoE Implementation Best Practices

• Final Words of Wisdom

Centers of Excellence

Centers of excellence are emerging as vital strategic assets to serve as the primary vehicle for managing complex change initiatives, and are being recognized as a business support function just as critical as accounting, marketing, finance, and human resources. A center of excellence (CoE) is a team of people that is established to promote collaboration and the application of best practices.¹

CoEs exist to bring an enterprise focus to many business issues, including data integration, project management, enterprise architecture, business and IT optimization, and enterprise-wide access to information. The concept of CoEs is quickly maturing in twenty-first century organizations because of the need to collaboratively determine solutions to complex business issues. The project management office (PMO), a type of CoE, proliferated in the 1990s as a centralized approach to managing projects.

Industry leaders are effectively using various types of CoEs.

Hewlett-Packard Service-Oriented Architecture

Hewlett-Packard (HP) uses a service-oriented architecture (SOA) as a CoE when implementing large-scale organizational change for its clients. The SOA is a breakthrough software design technique that allows the development of smaller “services” (groups of software components that perform business processes). The services are then hooked together with other services to perform larger tasks. The services are loosely coupled, have an independent interface to the core system, and are reusable. Web services, for example, constitute an SOA, and are an important strategy to increase business and reduce transaction costs.

SOA represents a transformation in how businesses and IT develop business solutions. It is an effort to drive down the total cost of ownership of IT systems, thus freeing scarce resources to develop innovative IT applications and infrastructures. HP describes its CoEs as a critical component of large-scale organizational change. It looks upon its SOA CoEs as SWAT teams that are fully focused on implementing the reusable service-oriented components and infrastructure.²

SOA CoEs provide many of the same benefits offered by business analysis centers of excellence (BACoEs):

Establish enterprise standards, procedures, governance

Standardize infrastructure, development methods, and operational procedures

Increase business agility (i.e., the ability to adapt quickly as the environment changes)

Reduce risk, complexity, and redundancy

Align business and IT units

Enable reuse and faster time-to-market

Present one face to the customer

IBM Centers of Excellence

IBM is also heavily invested in CoEs. The IBM project management CoE is dedicated to defining and executing the steps needed to strengthen IBM’s project management capabilities. The IBM project management CoE (PMCoE) strives to combine external industry trends with internal insight to develop project management policy, practices, methods, and tools.

The IBM PMCoE has experienced such success that in 2006 IBM announced the creation of new CoEs to help customers better use information. These CoEs will facilitate software and service experts in the development of six new solution portfolios: business analysis and discovery, master data management, business process innovation, risk and compliance, workforce productivity, business performance, and process management. These centers will develop products and services to better implement business analysis practices. Their goal is to help organizations transform information from utility for running the business to a competitive asset.³

Business Analysis Centers of Excellence

Centers of excellence are becoming invaluable to successful management of large-scale change. The business analysis center of excellence (BACoE) is emerging as an industry best practice, too. The BACoE is a new type of center that serves as the single point of contact for business analysis practices. In that role, the BACoE defines the business rules, processes, knowledge, skills, competencies, and tools used by organizations to perform business analysis activities throughout the business solution life cycle.

As the discipline of business analysis becomes professionalized, it is no surprise that BACoEs are now emerging. Staffed with knowledgeable business and IT teams, these centers are fulfilling a vital need in organizations today by providing a business-focused home for current business analysis practices, technologies, and emerging trends.

The BACoE serves as an internal consultant and information broker to both the project teams and the executive management team. In addition, the BACoE is responsible for continuous improvement of business analysis practices. Toward that end, the BACoE continually evaluates the maturity of business analysis and implements improvements to overall business analysis capability.

A 2006 white paper from SAP America, Inc., an enterprise software and services company that specializes in business intelligence, enterprise resource planning, customer relationship management, and supply chain management applications, describes the value of CoEs:

Best-in-class CoEs evaluate the impact of proposed changes on all areas of the business and effectively allocate resources and support services according to business priorities.

To achieve a balanced perspective, it is important to involve other groups in the design of the BACoE, including business operations, IT (e.g., enterprise architects, database managers, infrastructure support teams, service-level managers, capacity and availability managers, application developers), PMO representatives and project managers, and representatives from the project governance group.

If an organization already has one or more CoEs, consider combining them into one centralized center focused on program and project excellence. The goal is for a cross-functional team of experts (business visionary, technology expert, project manager, business analyst) to address the full solution life cycle from business case development to continuous improvement and support of the solution for all major projects.

A BACoE Success Story

One successful BACoE is at the Bank of Montreal (BMO). According to Kathleen Barret, senior business consultant at BMO Financial Group and president of the IIBA, the center’s formation began in early 2002.⁵ By October 2003 the center had conducted a current-state assessment, developed, piloted, and released its business analysis process standard, and received certification for their processes through the International Standards Organization (ISO). By 2005 its business analysis training and accreditation program had been rolled out.

Barret noted the following guidelines were critical to the successful implementation of the BMO center:

Identify specific goals and deadlines (e.g., ISO certification by a certain date).

Treat the CoE implementation effort like a project: create a formal project team with a steering committee.

Ensure senior executive support and enforcement of new practices.

Link outcomes to performance pay.

Adopt a formal approach to measure and evaluate compliance with standards.

Involve all stakeholder areas—include everyone and overlook no one.

Adopt best practices from within the organization.

Provide process training to all practitioners and team members.

Communicate at multiple levels, in words that mean something to each group.

There are many considerations that must be taken into account when establishing a new CoE, including its scope in terms of disciplines and functions, organizational alignment, placement and maturity, and the implementation approach.

BACoE Scope Considerations

BACoEs vary in their composition and scope. Some organizations are focused across the entire project life cycle, whereas others focus more narrowly on requirements engineering. A center of requirements excellence, for example, improves skills needed for requirements elicitation, analysis, specification, and validation.

A truly comprehensive BACoE, however, is broadly scoped to include the services, functions, tools, and metrics necessary to ensure that the organization invests in the most valuable projects, and that those projects deliver the expected business benefits. Figure 8-1 provides a summary of typical BACoE functions.

One of the critical BACoE functions is benefits management, a continuous process of identifying new opportunities, envisioning results, implementing, checking intermediate results, and dynamically adjusting the path leading from investments to business results. Business and technology experts typically staff BACoEs, acting as central points of contact and facilitating collaboration among business and IT groups.

The role of BACoEs is multidimensional and usually includes the following components: (1) it provides thought leadership for all initiatives to confirm that the organization’s business analysis standards are maintained and adhered to; (2) it conducts feasibility studies and prepares business cases for proposed new projects; (3) it participates in the leadership of all strategic initiatives by providing expert business analysis resources; and (4) it conducts benefits management to ensure that strategic change initiatives provide the value to the organization that was expected.

Strategic BACoE

A fully functioning BACoE is capable of providing services across the gamut of business analysis practices by training, consulting, and mentoring business analysts and project team members, providing business analysis resources to the project teams, facilitating the portfolio management process, and serving as the custodian of business analysis best practices.

Figure 8-1—BACoE Function Chart

The strategic BACoE generally performs all or a subset of the following services:

Business analysis standards.

Methods. Defines the methodology, metrics, and tools for use on all strategic projects within the organization.

Knowledge management. Maintains the central historical database of business analysis standard tools, processes, and business architecture components.

Continuous improvement. Periodically evaluates the maturity of the business analysis practices within the organization and implements improvements to policies, processes, tools, and procedures.

Business analyst development.

Business analyst career path. Along with the human resources department, designs and maintains the project manager competency model, including titles, position descriptions, and functions.

Coaching and mentoring. Provides mentoring services to business analysts and project teams to help them meet the challenges of their current project.

Training and professional development. Provides formal skills and knowledge assessments, and education and training for the professional development of business analysts.

Team building. Provides team-building experiences to project managers, business analysts, and team members.

Business analysis services. Serves as a group of facilitators and on-the-job trainers that are skilled and accomplished business analysts to provide business analysis consulting support, including:

Studies. Conducting market research, benchmark and feasibility studies

Business architecture. Developing and maintaining the business architecture

Business case. Preparing and monitoring the business case

Requirements engineering. Eliciting, analyzing, specifying, documenting, validating, and managing requirements

User acceptance. Managing requirements verification and validation activities (e.g., the user acceptance test)

Organizational readiness. Preparing the organization for deployment of a new business solution

Staff augmentation. Providing resources to augment project teams to perform business analysis activities that are under-resourced or urgent

Full-cycle governance. Promotes a full-life-cycle governance process, managing investments in business solutions from research and development to operations. Provides a home (funding and resources) for pre-project business analysis and business case development. Activities include:

Business program management. Works with management and the portfolio management team to implement a twenty-first-century model that transitions organizations from stand-alone IT project management to business program management.

Strategic project resources. Provides senior-level business analysts to lead the business analysis effort for strategic initiatives.

Enterprise analysis. Provides process coordination and meeting facilitation to the portfolio management team. Conducts enterprise analysis activities. Prepares the project investment decision package consisting of the business case, the results of studies, and other supporting information that provides senior management with a clear understanding of what business results are to be achieved through a major investment, including the contribution from IT to those results.

Benefits management. Measures the business benefits achieved by new business solutions; facilitates the adoption of a shared vision of the benefits realization process, managing the investment throughout the project life cycle and after the solution has been delivered. Ensures that the total cost of ownership (TCO) is understood and measured. TCO is the full life cycle product cost, including the cost to build or buy, deploy, support, maintain, and service the solution in both the business and the IT operations.

Although the BACoE is by definition business focused, it is of paramount importance for successful CoEs to operate in an environment where business operations and IT are aligned and in sync. It’s also important to integrate the disciplines of project management, software engineering, and business analysis.

One of the key goals of organizational change management is to combine the change efforts that affect a business process under one coordinated initiative. Consider the potential changes that most organizations are undergoing concurrently:

The executive team might be attempting to implement or improve a portfolio management process to select, prioritize, resource, and manage critical strategic projects. In addition, management might be implementing a new corporate score-card to measure organizational performance.

For enterprise-wide projects that affect several business units, some or all of the business units might be implementing improvements to the same business processes that will be modified by the larger change initiative.

The IT application development and infrastructure groups might be undergoing large-scale change, such as implementing a SOA. Or, the IT application group might be implementing a different software development life cycle methodology, such as the Rational Unified Process (RUP) or Agile development.

The IT infrastructure support team might be implementing the Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL), an internationally recognized best practice framework for the delivery of quality IT Service Management (ITSM).

The IT enterprise architects might be implementing a new framework to develop the business, information, technology, application, and security architectures.

The PMO might be implementing a new project management methodology or tool.

These change initiatives must somehow be coordinated to optimize the return on the improvement efforts. CoEs that support centralized, full-cycle governance provide the framework for the benefits realization process from project conception to benefit harvesting. Centralized governance also provides a process of progressive resource commitment in which resources are allocated to programs in small increments through stage gates. It stands to reason then, that a centralized CoE would improve the management and coordination of strategic change initiatives.

One of the biggest challenges for the BACoE is to bridge the gap that divides business and IT. To do so, the BACoE must deliver multidimensional services to diverse groups. Regardless of whether there is one CoE or several more narrowly focused models, the CoE organization should be centralized.

BACoE Organizational Positioning Considerations

Organizational positioning usually equates with organizational authority. In other words, the higher a BACoE is positioned, the more autonomy, authority, and responsibility it is likely to have. According to Dennis Bolles, PMP, in Building Project Management Centers of Excellence, positioning the BACoE at the highest level possible provides the “measure of autonomy necessary to extend the authority across the organization while substantiating the value and importance the function has in the eyes of executive management.”⁶In the absence of high-level positioning, the success and impact of the center will likely be significantly diminished.

Consider Figure 8-2, a model to centralize a CoE integrating the project management, business analysis, and quality assurance disciplines.

Understanding the business drivers behind the establishment of the CoE is of paramount importance. The motive behind establishing the center must be unambiguous because the motive will serve as the foundation to establish the purpose, objectives, scope, and functions of the center.

For example, the desire to set up a BACoE might have originated in IT, because of the number of strategic, mission-critical IT projects affecting the whole organization, or in a particular business area that is experiencing a significant level of change. Whatever the genesis, strive to place the center so that it serves the entire enterprise, not just IT or a particular business area.

Figure 8-2—Organizational Integration for CoEs

Regardless of the CoE model or organizational positioning, the center’s performance depends on the maturity of the organization’s practices.

BACoE Organizational Maturity Considerations

The centralized CoE model is important, as are the effectiveness of the strategic planning and project portfolio management practices, the business performance management processes and strategies, the maturity of the IT architecture, the maturity of development and support processes, and the strength of the business focus across the enterprise.

Higher maturity levels are directly correlated to more effective procedures, higher quality deliverables, lower project costs, higher project team morale, a better balance between cost, schedule and scope, and ultimately improved profits for the organization. Organizations that understand the value of more mature practices achieve higher levels of value from their CoEs.

BACoE Implementation Considerations

Organizations can absorb a limited amount of concurrent change while maintaining productivity at any given time. Therefore, a gradual approach to implementing the BACoE is recommended. One option is to adopt a three-phased approach moving across the BACoE maturity continuum from a project-focused structure to a strategic organizational model. Figure 8-3 depicts the BACoE Maturity Model.

Project-centric

BACoEs are almost always project-centric in their early, formative phase. The goals of the BACoE at this stage are to build the confidence of and become an indispensable resource to the project teams. During this early phase, the BACoE builds trusting relationships with business analysts, project managers, functional managers, and project teams. In addition to developing business analysis practice standards, the BACoE provides services to the project teams, as well as training and mentoring to develop business analysts and high-performing project teams.

Figure 8-3—BACoE Maturity Model

Enterprise-Focused

As the BACoE begins to win confidence across the organization, it is likely that it will evolve into an enterprise-wide resource serving the entire company. At this point, the BACoE begins to facilitate the implementation of an effective portfolio management system. It is building the foundation to serve as a strategic business asset providing management with decision-support information.

Strategic

During the third stage of development, the BACoE is considered a strategic asset serving the executive team. At this point, it is well understood that business analysis has a positive effect on profitability and that organizations achieve strategic goals through well-prioritized, well-executed projects. Emphasis at this stage is placed on achieving professionalism in business analysis through the BACoE. Strategic activities for the BACoE include: conducting research and providing the executive team with accurate competitive information, identifying and recommending viable new business opportunities, and preparing the project investment decision package to facilitate project selection and prioritization.

BACoE Implementation Best Practices

Although there are relatively few BACoEs in existence today, best practices for developing organizational CoEs to manage the business analysis function are emerging. Through a rational and defined methodology, organizations are identifying the required business analysis knowledge, skills, and abilities, assessing their current business analysis capabilities, and assembling a team to create the new entity.

Best practices for establishing CoEs combine to form a relatively standard process with four basic steps:

1. Define the center’s vision and concept.

2. Conduct organizational and individual assessments.

3. Establish implementation plans.

4. Finalize planning and form BACoE action teams to develop and implement the center’s infrastructure.

Figure 8-4 depicts the BACoE Implementation Model.

Define Vision and Concept

During the early study phase, it is important to create a vision for the new center. This is accomplished by researching the BACoEs that have already been implemented in organizations; studying their costs, benefits, strengths, and weaknesses; and determining lessons learned.

Figure 8-4—BACoE Implementation Model

Create a preliminary vision and mission statement for the center, and develop the concept in enough detail to prepare a business case for establishing the center. Vet the proposal with key stakeholders, and secure approval to form a small core team to conduct the assessment of business analysis practices and plan for the implementation of the BACoE.

Key stakeholders include: the executive enlisted as the BACoE executive sponsor, directors of existing CoEs in the organization, including the PMO if it exists, the CIO and IT management team, and executive directors and managers of business units undergoing significant change.

During meetings with the key stakeholders, secure buy-in and support for the concept. Large-scale organizational change of this nature typically involves restructuring, cultural transformation, new technologies, and forging new partnerships. Handling change well can mean the difference between success and failure of the effort.

In his book, The Heart of Change, John Kotter describes the techniques to consider during the early study and planning phase, including:⁷

Executive sponsorship. A CoE cannot exist successfully without an executive sponsor. Build a trusting, collaborative relationship with the sponsor, seeking mentoring and coaching at every turn.

Political management strategy. Conduct an analysis of key stakeholders to determine those that can influence the center, and whether they feel positively or negatively about the center. Identify the goals of the key stakeholders. Assess the political environment. Define problems, solutions, and action plans to take advantage of positive influences and to neutralize negative ones.

A sense of urgency. Work with stakeholder groups to reduce complacency, fear, and anger over the change, and to increase their sense of urgency.

The guiding team. Build a team of supporters that have the credibility, skills, connections, reputations, and formal authority to provide the necessary leadership to help shape the BACoE.

The vision. Use the guiding team to develop a clear, simple, compelling vision for the BACoE and a set of strategies to achieve the vision.

Communication for buy-in. Execute a simple, straightforward communication plan using forceful and convincing messages sent through many channels. Use the guiding team to promote the vision whenever possible.

Empowerment for action. Use the guiding team to remove barriers to change, including disempowering management styles, antiquated business processes, and inadequate information.

Short-term wins. Wins create enthusiasm and momentum. Plan the implementation to achieve early successes.

Dependency management. The success of the center is likely dependent on coordination with other groups in the organization. Assign someone from your core team as the dependency owner, to liaise with each dependent group. A best practice is for dependency owners to attend team meetings of the dependent group to demonstrate the importance of the relationship and to solicit feedback and recommendations for improvements.

Conduct Organizational and Individual Assessments

It is imperative to understand the current state of the organization before building BACoE implementation plans. Once the current state is understood and documented, it may be necessary to refine the vision and mission of the CoE to ensure alignment with cultural readiness of the organization to embrace the new CoE.

Organizational Readiness Assessment

The purpose of the organizational readiness assessment is to determine organizational expectations for the BACoE and to gauge the cultural readiness for the change. The BACoE assessment team determines where the organization is on the continuum from a stovepipe, function-centric structure to an enterprise-focused organization. Additionally, it is useful to gather information about best practices already in place in the organization that might serve as a springboard for replication across projects.

The assessment also provides the BACoE planning team with information on key challenges, gaps, and issues that the BACoE should address immediately. The ideal assessment solution is to conduct a formal organizational maturity assessment. A less formal assessment, however, may suffice at this point.

As soon as the concept has been approved and the core BACoE implementation team is in place, conduct an assessment to understand and document the current state of business analysis practices. The assessment consists of interviews with functional managers, business analysts, project managers, and IT professionals. The goal is to determine whether the organization is ready to establish such a center, and to assess the current state of the following entities:

Business analysts. The individuals currently involved in business analysis practices. Particularly, the assessment inquires about their knowledge, skills, experience, roles, responsibilities, organizational placement, training, professional development opportunities, and career path. The assessment also notes any other duties assigned to the business analysts, their measures of success, and performance evaluations.

Business analysis practices. Formal and informal business analysis methodologies and techniques, including feasibility study processes, business case development processes, business architecture development standards or framework, requirements elicitation, analysis, specification, validation, and change management processes, requirements prioritization and traceability methods, requirements verification (user acceptance test) methods, and any other business analysis tools, templates, and guidelines.

Technology. Requirements development and archiving tools, including powerful modeling tools, requirements repository and management systems, and team collaboration tools.

Governance. Oversight for project selection and prioritization, and ongoing reviews of BA practices. Quality assurance functions to ensure compliance with BA standards. A portfolio management team to select and prioritize projects. Benefits management throughout the project and after solution delivery.

Formal Organizational Maturity Assessment

If the organization is going to invest in a formal maturity assessment, we recommend conducting an assessment that determines not only the state of business analysis but also the state of project management and software engineering practices to secure a complete picture of program and project maturity. The CompassBA/PM^™ Organizational Maturity Model (CompassBA/PM^™ OMM) was developed by Management Concepts to focus on improving both project management and business analysis practices, thus ensuring compatibility and alignment with the de facto standards available in the information technology (IT) project improvement arena.

The CompassBA/PM^™ OMM is a staged maturity model similar to those used by several standard-setting bodies. The model is mapped to industry standards by establishing specific business analysis, project management, and software engineering practice goals to be achieved to reach advanced levels of the model. Refer to Figure 8-5 for a graphical depiction of the CompassBA/PM^™ OMM.

The power of the CompassBA/PM^TM OMM comes from integrating the following resources:

The project management knowledge areas described in PMI’s Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK^® Guide), 3^rd ed., including the project management areas defined by its knowledge requirements and described in terms of its component processes, practices, inputs, outputs, tools and techniques

The key practices embodied in the IIBA Business Analysis Body of Knowledge (BABOK^TM Guide) described in terms of key practices and techniques

The SEI Capability Maturity Model^® Integration (CMMI) selected software and system engineering process areas representing a group of best practices that, when performed collectively, satisfy a set of goals considered important for making significant improvement in that process area

Individual Knowledge and Skill Assessments

It is also important to determine the skill level of existing business analysts (and project managers, if appropriate). The CompassBA/PM—Individual^TM assessment, also developed by Management Concepts, is a formal capabilities assessment of business analysts and project managers. The assessment results provide the basis for determining training requirements, professional development activities, and specific mentoring and coaching needs. As with the organizational assessment, the individual assessment benchmarks an individual business analyst or project manager against the industry standards, the PMBOK^® Guide and the BABOK^™ Guide.

Figure 8-5—The CompassBA/PM^™ OMM

Establish Implementation Plans

The BACoE kickoff workshop serves as the capstone event that officially launches the BACoE. All key stakeholders should attend to participate in decision-making discussions about the new BACoE.

In preparation for the workshop, develop a preliminary charter and business plan for the center, describing the center’s key elements. Conduct a BACoE kickoff workshop session to finalize the charter and plans and to gain consensus on an implementation approach. Refer to Table 8-1 for a detailed list of planning considerations.

Table 8-1— CoE Planning Considerations

Finalize Planning and Form BACoE Teams

After the workshop session, finalize the BACoE charter and staff the center. Form action teams to develop business analysis practice standards. Provide education, training, mentoring, and consulting support. Secure the needed facilities, tools, and supplies. Figure 8-6 shows a typical BACoE organization.

Develop the BACoE Business Plan/Operations Guide, describing implementation strategy, phases, deliverables, milestones, and a detailed budget, listing salaries and training, technology, and consulting costs. The guide should also list infrastructure requirements, acquisition, installation, BACoE organization formation, initial orientation and training, and communications and risk management plans.

Final Words of Wisdom

Establishing CoEs is difficult because doing so destabilizes the sense of balance and power within the organization. Executives are required to make decisions based on benefits to the enterprise versus their specific functional areas. Functional managers are often afraid of losing their authority and control over the resources assigned to them. In addition, project team members might be unclear about their roles and responsibilities, and how they will be given assignments.

Figure 8-6—Typical BACoE Organization

These ambiguities might manifest themselves as resistance to change and will pose a risk to a successful implementation. Therefore, it is imperative that robust coordination and effective communication about how the center will affect roles and responsibilities accompany center implementation. Do not underestimate such challenges. Pay close attention to organizational change management strategies and use them liberally.

To establish a BACoE that executives love and project teams trust, make the center indispensable. Provide high-quality services and support to executives, management, and project teams rather than imposing requirements and constraints. Conduct the operations of the center and design business analysis practices using lean techniques. Follow this motto: Barely sufficient is enough to move on.

Providing Value to the Organization

To establish a BACoE that lasts, you must be able to demonstrate the value the center brings to the organization. Develop measures of success and report progress to executives to demonstrate that value. Typical measures of success include:

Project cost overrun reduction. Quantify the project time and cost overruns prior to the implementation of the BACoE and for the projects supported by the BACoE. If an organizational baseline measurement is not available, use industry standard benchmarks as a comparison. Other measures might be improvements to team member morale and reduction in project staff turnover. Be sure to include opportunity costs caused by the delayed implementation of the new solution.

Project time and cost savings. Track the number of requirements defects discovered during testing and after the solution is in production before and after the implementation of the BACoE. Quantify the value in terms of reduced rework costs and improved customer satisfaction.

Project portfolio value. Prepare reports for the executive team that provide the investment costs and expected value of the portfolio of projects; report the actual value new solutions add to the organization as compared to the expected value predicted in the business case. When calculating cost, be sure to use the total cost of ownership, including the cost to build or buy, deploy, support, maintain, and service the solution in both business and IT operations.

Building a Great Team

When staffing the BACoE, establish a small, mighty core team dedicated full-time to the center, co-located, highly trained, and multiskilled. Do not overstaff the center because the cost will seem prohibitive. Augment the core team’s efforts by bringing in subject matter experts and forming sub-teams as needed. Select team members not only because of their knowledge and skills but also because they are passionate and love to work in a challenging, collaborative environment. Develop and use a team operating agreement. Develop team-leadership skills and dedicate efforts to transition the group into a high-performing team with common values, beliefs, and a cultural foundation upon which to flourish.