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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