Tuesday, April 30, 2013

Top Business Analysis Trends of 2013: BA and Product Owner Roles are Solidified


Today, businesses require effective business analysis in order to be successful in a competitive business world. Business analysis involves taking information gathered from a variety of sources and analyzing to forecast future trends, find ways to make improvements in business strategies, improve businesses operations, and make smart business decisions to improve the bottom line. Understanding key marketing areas is essential to helping a business generate revenue and cut down on excess waste. 

According to Nancy Yee, vice president of Global Product Strategy, ESI International, there are some key business analysis trends that will be prominent in 2013. The first significant business analysis trend of 2013 is the roles of the BA and product owner will be solidified and respected.

In an Agile environment, the BA and the product owner have very different roles. The BA works with the product owner to identify what exactly they need, help them understand how this is going to help them achieve the values that they are looking for. The product owner, on the other hand, is responsible for understanding exactly what the business needs.

“They are there to talk about how, where and when they need to improve their businesses, which translates into the product backlog,” said Yee.

In 2013, there is going to be a stronger relationship with the product owner and the BA together in order to create a stronger foundation of understanding of what they need to be able to deliver value when it comes to priority of the product background.

Check out the full video here: 



Be sure to register for Yee’s upcoming webinar, Developing Effective Agile Requirements. Click here for more information:  http://bit.ly/ZXGbaa

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Wednesday, April 24, 2013

The Perfect Project Management Tools for Content Creation


As businesses spend more and more on content marketing, brands are challenged to keep their content creation process under control. Today, organizations simply cannot risk publishing content that hasn’t gone through a process of checks and balances. So, content marketing directors need a solution for keeping their editorial calendars in check, providing timely insights on progress to senior management and centralized document storage. According to Businsess2Community, the ideal project management tool for a content marketing team is likely to use tools including:

Support for Multiple Steps

Every content creation process requires steps for creation, editing, review, and publication, which will take place over multiple workdays. The system needs to be complex enough to support the need for multiple components of a single step – which will each have a separate deadline.

Task Assignment

Projects and duties can change quickly as companies make changes to optimize their content marketing strategy. So, an ideal system will be flexible enough to allow the project manager to quickly assign.

Priorities

Mid-sized and large content creation teams may need a moderate amount of oversight, and this need will grow if your company is among those outsourcing. A system that requires tasks to be completed in a specific order can minimize the attention needed from management through each process.

An Aggregation System

Whether it’s integrated into your project management software or not, it is crucial to aggregate content marketing in a single, centralized, and searchable location.

Workload Forecasting

Some content directors may prefer simpler systems, having the ability to estimate time needed to complete assigned tasks can streamline management, and improve your ability to assign “hot jobs.”

Billing and Time Tracking

A project management system that allows time-tracking, as well as instant reporting for billing or internal reporting by projects can improve communication between departments.

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Monday, April 22, 2013

The Importance of End-to-End Project Management


Project management makes projects happen. In order to achieve successful project management, someone has to keep them on track, progress reports must be made, tasks must be completed, and resources must be secured. This process is often involves several teams and vendors, so error and miscommunication become expected, scheduling conflicts multiply, and deadlines fall through. According to a recent article by Business2Community, end-to-end (E2E) project management, where one team is tasked with all aspects of a project, can make a big difference.

Typically, a project follows the path from research and planning to task management and testing, and then project closure. Overall, the goal is to produce or implement a quality deliverables, whether it’s a printed asset or training procedures, which can require many people. But, projects that require input from large teams are subject to misaligned approaches. Use of different technologies can be disruptive, too. So, it’s important that these variables be minimized, or at least recognized.

Fortunately, E2E project management dissolves these issues by reducing the amount of people involved in the project.  This can be useful if the project in question doesn’t require a lot of recreating to succeed. If it’s following a process that’s been established before limiting input can bolster productivity, even if that means fewer people have to take responsibility.

With E2E project management, governable collaboration happens in a way that widespread cooperation is not. By using end-to-end, you limit the same risks as you would by avoiding outsourced work, often associated with preventable error. And aside from being a centralized hub of the project, E2E teams have the tools to assess risks, communicate issues, and re-center project focus when things get off track.
Use these eight E2E best practices to keep your projects running smoothly:
  • Select projects that are straightforward with fewer elements
  • Point to the solutions before the problems arise by completing a risk assessment
  • Agree on a shortlist of technologies and approaches that can be used, and stick to them
  • Choose your team wisely
  • Schedule everything (from vacations to meetings)
  • Make sure everyone on the team understands the plan, the goals and the timeline
  • Be accountable to each other (tight-knit teamwork keeps people aware)
  • Update the team when anything changes

End-to-end project management won’t work for everyone, but when it’s done right, it provides a simple-to-execute process with which internal projects successfully delivered with minimal risk of failure.
Want to learn more about project management best practices? ProjectWorld & World Congress for Business Analysts (PW&WCBA) blends practical learning, skill building, big picture thinking and leadership training together for a holistic approach to developing managers into leaders.

Whether you are looking to sharpen your toolkit, grow as a leader or benchmark against peers by exchanging stories of success and failure, this event delivers it all – providing you with more credits than any other event of its kind. With a huge  network of experts to connect with, you'll be prepared to confront the Increasing complexity even more confidently with dexterity and agility.

To register for PW&WCBA, click here!


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Friday, April 19, 2013

The Top 10 Business Analysis Trends of 2013


Today, businesses require effective business analysis in order to be successful in a competitive business world. Business analysis involves taking information gathered from a variety of sources and analyzing to forecast future trends, find ways to make improvements in business strategies, improve businesses operations, and make smart business decisions to improve the bottom line. Understanding key marketing areas is essential to helping a business generate revenue and cut down on excess waste.  According to Nancy Yee, vice president of Global Product Strategy, ESI International, there are some key business analysis trends that will be prominent in 2013.

1. The roles of the BA and product owner will be solidified and respected.

In an Agile environment, the BA and the product owner have very different roles. The BA works with the product owner to identify what exactly they need, help them understand how this is going to help them achieve the values that they are looking for. The product owner, on the other hand, is responsible for understanding exactly what the business needs.

“They are there to talk about how, where and when they need to improve their businesses, which translates into the product backlog,” said Yee.

In 2013, there is going to be a stronger relationship with the product owner and the BA together in order to create a stronger foundation of understanding of what they need to be able to deliver value when it comes to priority of the product background.

2. Strong User Stories will be the force driving effective requirements analysis and product backlog prioritization

If the BA is already working with the product owner the BA needs go back to the roots of what they know, being able to elicit and analyze requirements in the form of a user story.

In 2013, BAs must return to the grassroots of what you know in requirements management development and get in sync with your inner elicitation and analysis requirements, focusing on the perspective of developing user stories.

“Using what you already know from an analysis standpoint, you will create successful user stories that will help your product owner prioritize their product backlog and deliver value at every iteration,” she commented.

3.  Forget consensus, in 2013 it’s all about collaboration and convergence

Requirements in the form of a user story are all about the business analyst focusing on delivering convergence vs. collaboration and consensus. The new trend of collaboration and consensus is a way to get everybody on the same page, but it takes a long time to be able to get those requirements developed.

“Remember, in agile from a BA’s perspective user stories are supposed to be there to deliver value that provide a way for everybody to converge on the same path so that you can deliver every four to six weeks. That’s the package and the focus of what agile is all about,” Yee said.

In 2013, Yee thinks we will begin to see that the BA’s are going to need to focus their elicitation skills more on convergence than on consensus. To get there, BAs can focus on collaboration and choosing the elicitation methods that will bring everybody into that convergence path.

4. BAs will become the new PMs through Agile

BAs will become the new PMs. From the Agile perspective, project management disappears and we focus on project leadership, project delivery, project execution. The role of the BA in agile is about delivering value from the user story perspective. “The role of a project manager become obsolete? Maybe, maybe not. Only time will tell,” she said.

In 2013, the focus of the BA will be more on upscaling themselves in the traditional role of what we know as PM. They will learn the skills of scheduling, planning, managing risk, controlling costs – so that they came become the new PMs of an Agile project.

5.  BAs will be seen as the keystone to adopting Agile

At its core, Agile is all about requirements from the perspective of user stories, according to Yee. In 2013 if organizations are going to embrace Agile, they need to focus on the keystone to success of Agile, which is business analysis.

If they don’t have a current business analyst role, they will at least embrace the function of business analysis because at the end of the day Agile success is all about requirements and that is what BAs do because they are able to define user stories and be able to deliver value which is what Agile is about.

6. The federal government will slowly recognize the value of business analysis as it moves more toward an Agile environment

Requirements management and development is a concern in the government. Although state and local governments have embraced the role of BA, the federal government hasn’t fully embraced that function.
However, in 2013, when the government is focused on Agile and delivering things in a modular fashion they will begin to see the value that requirements management will lend itself toward embracing the role of BA. In 2013 from a government’s successful usage perspective, we will see a critical eye on a key role of investment in looking at the BA role to define user stories and deliver value.

7. Strategic Enterprise Analysis will slowly become the foundation of business architecture

These days, with budgets so tight, there is a focus on strategic enterprise analysis – the foundation to organizations that are embracing business architecture.

“It’s all about: How do we grow our business? Make our business more money? How do we keep our business stable? All of these things are about the BA and the ability to do strategic enterprise analysis,” Yee explained.

We will begin to see that as organizations are able to work in the space they are trying to deliver their products with greater uptake to be the next Apple or Microsoft, for example. They will be looking at strategic enterprise analysis and business architecture together for its all about defining the “what” of business and how we can deliver customer value.

8. BA Centers of Excellence will focus on providing their worth and driving innovation

In 2011 and 2012 we saw the resurgence of BA COEs. We saw that many organizations were establishing those centers of excellence. Now in 2013, we will see the trend of those COEs staffing up their ability to deliver the value and innovation that they promise to have in place.

This year we will see senior BAs and business architects joining the ranks of showing the innovation and value because it is all about understand exactly what your business does, how you should invest in it and be able to prioritize the value from a requirements and product perspective.

9. Modeling skills take precedence in business analysis training

In 2013 is all about pictures, graphics or models. What you will begin to see is that the BAs are going to be using and leveraging all of the different models and modeling techniques they know to be able to deliver the messages they need. For instance, user stories require the use cases to be able to develop the value the customer is looking for. Process models are a way to understand how the organization as a whole is going to be able to deliver what they are looking for and add operational effectiveness and across the board.  
In 2013, will we see the written word disappear?

“I hope not, but pictures speak a thousand words so 2013 BAs should get focused on practicing your modeling skills and techniques because the model is going to pay the rent,” said Nee.

10. Communicating “up” will become critical to articulating requirements’ impact on a deliverable.

In 2013 we will see BAs learning that they have to communicate better, meaning that communicating up and across is going to be a major focus of what BAs are going to be targeting in 2013. BAs are the most aware of the requirements of the value those requirements bring because they do a lot of impact analysis on those requirements.

She added, “When they are working on a project they know if they miss a requirement or if it changes, and how that will affect the business. The problem is the ability to share that difficult message and have that crucial conversation.”

In 2013 BAs will be focused on their ability to have those communicating up conversations with their sponsors and stakeholders, laying it out for them of what could happen when it comes to these requirements.
“By being able to put that in your bag of BA skills, you are solidifying yourself as a key component to everything related from a business value standpoint,” Yee concluded.

Business analysis is a big part of the upcoming conference , ProjectWorld & World Congress for Business Analysts (PW&WCBA), which blends practical learning, skill building, big picture thinking and leadership training together for a holistic approach to developing managers into leaders.

Whether you are looking to sharpen your toolkit, grow as a leader or benchmark against peers by exchanging stories of success and failure, this event delivers it all – providing you with more credits than any other event of its kind. With a huge  network of experts and peers to connect with, you'll be prepared to confront the Increasing complexity even more confidently with dexterity and agility.

To register for PW&WCBA, click here!


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Wednesday, April 17, 2013

Business Analysis Trend of 2013: Collaboration and Convergence


Today, businesses require effective business analysis in order to maintain competitiveness. Effective business analysis involves taking information from sources and analyzing for the purpose of forecasting future trends, finding ways to make improvements in business strategies, improving operations, and making smart decisions to improve the bottom line. Understanding key marketing areas is essential to helping to generate revenue and cut down excess.

Business analysis can include market research analysis like analyzing consumer data from transaction records, consumer surveys, polls, financial analysis, inventory analysis, product and service analysis, and more. Business analysis helps a business avoid making bad decisions that can result in time and money being wasted. The result of finding the right solution the first time is projects get completed in a timely manner, strategies are executed with beneficial results, and there is effective monitoring of the project resulting in the best outcome.

Effective business analysis allows managers to make sure information is distributed and understood by the project team. Then the team is able to work together in an efficient manner to create a plan that has a high chance of success. Due to changing demographics and consumer habits, it is important that a business understands current and future trends in order to meet changing consumer preferences. In the competitive market, you cannot run a successful business without understanding your customers and all facets of the company.

According to Nancy Nee, PMP, PMI-ACP, CBAP, CSM, Vice President of Global Product Strategy, ESI International, requirements in the form of a user story are all about the business analyst being able to focus on delivering convergence versus collaboration and consensus. The new trend  of collaboration and consensus  is a way to get everybody on the same page, but it takes a long time to be able to get those requirements developed.

“Remember, in agile from a BA’s perspective user stories are supposed to be there to deliver value that provide a way for everybody to converge on the same path so that you can deliver every four to six weeks. That’s the package and the focus of what agile is all about,” she explained.
In 2013, Nee thinks we will begin to see that the BA’s are going to need to focus their elicitation skills more on convergence than on consensus. A way to get there is to leverage their ability in focusing on collaboration and choosing the elicitation methods that will bring everybody into that convergence path.

Collaboration and convergence is a big part of the upcoming conference , ProjectWorld & World Congress for Business Analysts (PW&WCBA), which blends practical learning, skill building, big picture thinking and leadership training together for a holistic approach to developing managers into leaders.

Whether you are looking to sharpen your toolkit, grow as a leader or benchmark against peers by exchanging stories of success and failure, this event delivers it all – providing you with more credits than any other event of its kind. With a huge  network of experts and peers to connect with, you'll be prepared to confront the Increasing complexity even more confidently with dexterity and agility.

To register for PW&WCBA, click here!


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Monday, April 15, 2013

Six Project Management Blunders to Avoid


Today, we work in a world that is highly dependent on transparency and shared responsibility. These days, project management is as necessary a skill for virtually anyone in agile business. But, according to Bussiness2community.com, there are six common project management mistakes that you should keep from getting in the way of your project success.

1. Too many projects
It may be tempting to create a great team, build a schedule and push project after project through a smooth assembly line-type process. But juggling so many projects at once puts quality at risk. According to Forbes, “Our brains just aren’t equipped for multitasking tasks that require brainpower. Our short-term memories can only store between five and nine things at once.”

2. Lack of clarity
One of the biggest culprits is one of the easiest things to avoid: ambiguity. Lack of clarity leads to miscommunication, misdirection, repetition, missed deadlines, and eventually failure. If you’re creating the outline, be clear in your directives. If you’re handling just one piece of the puzzle, ask questions and be clear about priorities.

3. No credit
When someone works hard on a project, exceeds every expectation, drives a project forward, comes up with great ideas and beats deadlines, they appreciate being acknowledged. Since we’re all acting as PMs, it might not be clear who’s responsible for doling out props, but we all are. If someone helps you get the job done, letting them know you appreciate will retain their support.

4. Wrong focus
We know times are tough, but times are always tough. There is never extra budget, there’s not more time and everyone is too busy. But every ideal circumstance in the world won’t save a project if the wrong person is managing it.

5. Workflow inconsistency
Different departments approach projects from different perspectives. The tools necessary to completing projects can change frequently and quickly. If teams aren’t kept up to date with different approaches and changes aren’t communicated to key players, structures dissolve, time is wasted and frustrations explode. 

6. Too late for risk management
Starting projects is all about setting goals and planning the steps to achieve them. Gathering resources, mapping out assignments, and analyzing budgets are all priorities on the to-do list. While there’s some discussion of roadblocks, they’re not always assessed. Before a project ends up in crisis, consider who has a stake in decisions and who has the final say over changes. It is key to develop contingency plans, and cushion resources to lessen the impact of any potential mishaps.

Want to learn more about project management? Project World & World Congress for Business Analysts (PW&WCBA) blends practical learning, skill building, big picture thinking and leadership training for a holistic approach to developing managers into leaders without the commercialism that you experience at other events. Whether you are looking to sharpen your toolkit, grow as a leader or benchmark against peers by swapping stories of success and failure, PW&WCBA is comprehensive enough to deliver it all.

Click here to register today!
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Tuesday, April 9, 2013

Download the ProjectWorld & World Congress for Business Analysts 2012 Executive Summary

Last year, we gathered all the key takeaways from the ProjectWorld & World Congress for Business Analysts event so that attendees could immediately take action once afterwards.

The 29-page executive summary highlights the key points and overarching themes of the 2012 conference covered by our esteemed keynotes. We've now made these action points available for download to provide value, drive innovation and create real life business impact on both you and your leaderships’ health and future success.

Download ProjectWorld & World Congress for Business Analysts 2012 Executive Summary to learn:

  • Why Risk management is not always negative; there are opportunities to harvest in the uncertainty of risk.
  • The Essentials of the agile method
  • Techniques for achieving excellence in project portfolio management
  • How your audience can help to break down the inter-departmental communication barriers
  • How to Collaborate to deliver value
  • and much more.
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