How Business Analysts Add Value: Lessons Learned from Practicing Business Analysts

well hello and welcome everyone I'm Laura Brandenburg from Virginia Gap and today we have a super exciting panel called how business analysts add value and we are accompanied by three amazing business analysts and I'm going to let them each introduce themselves and just admit it but just to kind of give a bit of a frame for our talk is uh we are like the reality of being a business analyst is that you're often going to find you face resistance and pressure to get things done quickly sometimes too quickly but we know that to be effective and gain credibility like you need to be really clear on the value you provide like why are we using the techniques that we're using why are we bringing these best practices to our organization and so that's the topic I really wanted to dive into with our panel today uh and I forgot to ask if you are joining us live feel free to uh let us know in the chat where you're joining from if you have any specific questions we're going to do our best today to make things super interactive as well so today's panel is all about how to add value using specific techniques and we are getting ready to host our next session of the business analyst blueprint where you can earn your acba and all of our panelists today are acbas uh so we're excited to hear from them about their experience but really more specifically about how they have leveraged these techniques from their real in the real world in on the job experiences to add value in your business analyst work okay so that's enough for me for a minute here I'm gonna just invite you each to do a brief introduction to get us started so Andrea I see you first so we'll go Andrea euphemia and then in the James go ahead awesome I I am Andrea Wilson I am in North Florida I live in North Florida my background is in I.T and education and I currently work in the IT industry but I do government work so I have a lot of time um spending time learning processes for our organization and it spans the gamut from HR budget Court practices so I'm I'm all over the place learning uh those businesses so that I can teach them about I.T and I just enjoy sharing uh with them my knowledge and taking what they've given me back so that we can build what they need yes and you are also an instructor with Bridging the Gap so I I want to just Frank you are both an acva you took the program earned your acba and then became an instructor which is one of the like goals I had set and so I was such like I always just like to hear that that part of the story too or emphasize that part of the story I am in acba I did go through the program before I became an instructor with uh bridge in the Gap and that is one of the most fun things I do and we've got some of our participants here so rather than log the light I will pass over to leukemia ACB experience along with James uh thank you Andrea my name is euphemia zaremba and I um am in Boise Idaho um and I work for micron Technologies I have been in um this whole Information Technology feel for over uh close to 40 years okay so and and I would tell you my passion in all the different Industries and jobs that I've had was business analysis I believe that that is core and foundational to every job so um and what's great is I am always looking for the best techniques and tools to effectively communicate and drive change in an organization so um I am a senior ba in our Global sales operations and um and had a wonderful opportunity to you know focus on our internal process efficiencies in our sales operations because there's a lot to do there so I've been enjoying it as well and I'm also a recent acba I should have put that on the on the end of my title of my name Andrea but yes I am happy and proud to be an acba congratulations we're are talking before we got started about how you and James are kind of to our star participants from the last couple of sessions like very actively involved in the program so James for you do you want to tell us a little bit about your business analysis career yeah no problem yeah hi guys my name is James Dean and I'm based in Ireland in Dublin and so I recently just stem I achieved my acba which is fantastic because it's been a roller coaster of a journey and but it's been great and it to me that the main thing has been kind of validating kind of the techniques that I've been using but also learning and leveraging other techniques that I can now have the confidence of training other employees within my organization and also just showing them kind of the best practices to say hey like this is kind of like what you do or just how you approach things and especially like the last kind of module where it's the to be Essentials it gives you that kind of eight-step success and it gives you more of a guide and it shows you exactly kind of um how you should kind of approach a project and kind of what questions you should ask you should include all of that kind of thing and I've been working as a business analyst for six years now and in kind of different Industries so I start off at a corporate business Registries and I went to life sciences and now I'm in the energy industry so completely different and it's really really cool and what I love most about being a business analyst is that there's always value there it's there's always things to learn new techniques new skills and and I like learning the kind of the core skills and the techniques that you can use or leverage within any industry and I do know that some business owners do kind of specialize within a particular industry but I really like that you can take um like the core skills and the core techniques from the blueprint program and you can utilize them within any industry and and I'm going to start talking now because I will talk forever no worries at all I know I think it's really impressive that within six years you've already had experiences in three really really different Industries so that is maybe we'll hear more about that as we move through so all right so let me I feel like this is the time for me to share the slide So today we're really here to talk about some of these techniques and specifically how they had value if you were just joining us um just to kind of reframe where we're at we've done some introductions and really the takeaway that I hope each of you have is to more fully appreciate the value that you might already be adding as a business analyst sometimes we just need to hear somebody else say I did this thing and I accomplished that result you're like oh wait I'm actually doing that thing and achieving that result as well like maybe I should be talking about it um or you know see some opportunities to expand the set of techniques that you use and add even more value to your organizations so we're going to go through today we're going to go through a couple of the techniques in the the top level here so we're going to look at the process flow diagram or business process analysis we're going to look quickly or at use cases and wireframes and then we're also going to look at a couple of our data battling techniques and I'm going to do the briefest of introductions on that technique just that context and then we for each of them have two of our panelists are going to share their actual examples of how they apply these techniques and what value they saw that add to their organizations so we're going to start with business process analysis and this is a relatively simple process flow diagram really a business process is the end-to-end view of the process or the steps that a business user completes to achieve a specific outcome for the business so you want to identify the steps those are the rectangular boxes on here the diamonds are decision boxes where maybe one thing doesn't happen consistently so you have a branch or you have a decision of how the process can flow the lines show the overall flow through the process and these little kind of curved boxes here are any documents or deliverables that are created what's unique about this one is we did capture it in a swim Lane diagram so swim Lane is an easy way to show roles so it's clear who is doing what task or what role is fulfilling what task or what step in the process so that's just the briefest view of business process and if you have I would love to hear in the chat like is this something that you've done before have you created process flow diagrams do you have the the ability to analyze the business process as part of your work as a ba and if this is new to you or you just want to kind of look a little bit more into it we do have a really free resource called our business process template and we'll share that link in the chat and that's a great way to just get a little bit more learning about this as a high level what I see is business process modeling helps you identify inefficiencies right so find gaps find more cost-effective solutions and really true ensure that you're Building Solutions that benefit the business sometimes we want to jump right into those software requirements right so stopping at the business process really helps that I want to hear from some specific examples from our panelists so Andrea do you want to get us started do you have a specific business process in mind that you'd like to share I do um yeah let's see I worked um in the Housing Industry for a little while and one of the things that we had to do was have this this quarterly meeting and there were a lot of inputs that went into this meeting there was a lot of preparation so there were a lot of steps it sounds really easy to say we're having this meeting the goal was to bring together uh the residents from low-income communities with services and opportunities for them to become self-sufficient so this quarterly meeting was a meeting of all of the different organizations that offered services for these people and we needed to bring them together quarterly so we could kind of plan what kind of activities that they were available um streamline the resources and ability to contact with these people and then also you had residents that didn't have the opportunity to to travel to many places maybe just across town so one of the things that we did for the preparation was to ensure that we knew who needed to be contacted when this needed to occur and we had several people that were working on the process so you'd think that this would be a bang-up thing right sounds really easy and it wasn't so sometimes you'd end up with the meeting occurring there were resources or organizations that were not present they did not know what was happening uh and so then you end up sometimes with a bit of hurt feelings but more importantly of the overarching goal of getting the residents connected with those resources was not occurring effectively so the first thing we did as Laura mentioned was correcting any inefficiencies right and you guys have been here you talked to the folks involved and you get in and you say what is going on tell me how you're doing this and if you've got multiple people as this was working in silos there's no communication there's no communication uh miscommunication folks were working from their own notes were the notes up to date not always they were working from their own contact list and sometimes it was as much as who was there the last time what do I remember and we know that can kind of run as short right we don't have it documented there was not a documented process for doing this so instead uh that process flow diagram we figure out what are the steps let's talk with these folks what do you need to do we got our sticky notes together root out what the different steps were importantly what are the inputs what are the inputs for this you've got to ask that question and then what are the outputs are there design outputs for this and another thing folks tend to forget about is are there any business roles so you've got your list is it up to date is there a better way to handle this list is it a community list where is it listed who needs access to it and is it available when they need it what are the timelines and the business rule behind that what do you need to have done before James or euphemia can do their steps right so now we're looking at business roles and those are the things that we had to do uh to get this process out diagrammed and outlined and really do a technical uh write-up of this process so that we can walk through it and then execute efficiently and meet our goal and that's what we ended up doing so now we've connected more residents with resources we've got more opportunities for success and bigger opportunities for families to become sufficient that's amazing Andrea and one of the things that really a couple things stuck out to me as you were sharing that but like we can get so focused as Bas like on that deliverable right like the creation of the process model but like what was probably just as if not more important was all the collaboration you had with all of these people right and and was it actually a technology solution that ended up solving the problem or were you or was it just a process update initially it was a process update so there was that money that had to be spent to build a solution but we had to think through this whole part the biggest input was this list of organizations it needed to be update it had to be called regularly so that's something that you can use technology for but that's technology that was already owned right so we could reach in and say let's take advantage of something we already have and find a way to use it for this process so a lot of times technology is a technical solution creating software might not be what you need and that's something that you can observe up front as opposed to say okay let's go out and buy a tool that will schedule this meeting and do all of that well let's take a step back and figure out exactly what we need to do and how we can take benefit from what we already have yeah yeah thank you for sharing that and I think the other piece to just highlight there is how the different sections of what are in that business process template like the inputs is like one that's so easy for people to want to skip over right but sometimes that discipline of using a template like that or thinking through each of those pieces is really it's where the kind of the magic is where you kind of find those opportunities to improve fantastic and you also mentioned the who is responsible who's going to do this right so it might not be on your process flow diagram you can do a diagram that has swim Lanes but also know that you really need to know ahead of time who's responsible so that everybody's executing with Fidelity and they are meeting the timelines they need to meet so that the process can flow as it should awesome well thank you for sharing that example all right James I believe you also have an example of a business process to share with us would you like to tell us about yeah what you analyzed and what the results were I I have many but off the top of my head I'll just take one and so I remember um it was a few months ago and I was kind of um pulled into it a last minute meeting and it was automatically kind of assumed that I knew this um term that we were going to go through so it was a meeting with a project manager and system architect and if you were the kind of technical people there wasn't any one kind of business oriented or from the the business side that could kind of give a an explanation of kind of why we're doing this particular project and anyway out of that we um we came across or we eventually got to the the point where we actually um identify what the business process was so there was a lot of kind of um preparation on my side where I had to First understand okay we're looking at this we had the same frequency plan schedule process so in the energy industry there's different customer assets like say a battery it has the response at different frequencies so it has to do different things based off different frequency levels that's um at a high level I won't go into the technical parts and but that's the kind of a high level what it needs to do so there was this whole frequency plan schedule that um needed to be um implemented within the system in order for the customer asset to do this now this was an existing process so on some projects I've been on where and we've identified new business processes that we need to implement and there's a separate kind of approach we take there well for this particular one and it was really identifying okay who are my users like who actually use this processor who needs to use this process and what way does it currently work today and what way do we want to work in the future so what like what's our current state and what's our future State and that's always my kind of my first step and because I always explain to people like if you don't know how something works today then how do you know where the gaps are where the inefficiencies are where the bottlenecks are and all the different steps that are involved or all the different tasks or inputs outputs all that kind of stuff so what we did was and just arrange kind of a disco recession where we um once we had identified the particular stakeholders who were involved in that particular process and we just started talking about it so we literally just said okay um what is this process like what's the purpose you know what why is it used kind of why is our value to the company and I failed a lot of the time and some people were kind of jump into like solution well without understanding the why behind things and a lot of people some people get frustrated when I asked why a lot of the time but I phrase it in different ways to just make it a bit more kind of like oh I'm not gonna be challenging or difficult but we do want to understand okay how does this business process work and where you're at the bottleneck so where are the inefficiencies and so when we mapped out all of the different steps involved we identified the different actors so whether they were users or systems we identified the flow so first of all we went through kind of the happy path so what are the the main and steps that need to be carried out within the process in order to achieve this particular business goal and then we looked at okay what happens what can happen in this process so what are the different ways that you can achieve this particular um goal or what are the things that can go wrong is there different um roles or like in Andreas said a different roles or responsibilities involved either other users and from a different process that have an input into this particular process like how does the process start how does it ends and all of these different things so it was really um it was nice to see because a lot of the time um a lot of time people don't really sometimes they jump straight to solution mode and they don't want to engage with the people who want to use the process or who are going to use it and they just end up kind of developing something thrown it over the wall and then just giving it to users and some users they might even be kind of um they might speak up about it and they might just kind of accept it and say oh the development team must be under pressure and they just this is what they could do where I've taken a step further and like you have to engage with the people who are going to be used in that process done just to make it work for them because at the end of the day if they can't use that particular um solution whether it's system or a manual process it's just not going to be of any value to anyone and I don't think it's good for a business analyst to kind of step back and say oh well it's fine you know they have something they have some sort of solution but if it's not valuable to them then it's kind of like it doesn't really make sense um but we found like there was a lot of inefficiencies and like some tasks were taken like over an hour to complete and there was a lot of um kind of packs thrown in that didn't really make sense to the users themselves when we were talking about them so only by mapping a model in that process and actually having a conversation like just like we are here and it actually it was easier to pinpoint the pain points and the challenges to say okay that's where we need to focus and then we looked at okay how long does this particular task take and if this one takes say five minutes okay is it really of much value if we prioritize that over this one that takes an hour and so it led to those kind of discussions but overall and it ended up being um if we kind of automated a few of the steps within the process then it actually sped up the process and it enabled a lot of value to the to the user one of the the comments that we got when we did deliver the solution was it was significantly better and just based off like those few discussions that we've had and so there was some solution kind of design and the the the the wireframes which we'll get into at a later stage but um it shows how much value then it is just by having that simple engagement communication collaboration overall yeah thank you for that James and I think we're going to move right into the use cases and wireframes but one thing I just want to highlight about for everybody listening in you know you were brought into a room with the technologists and they were asking you right and sometimes we have that temptation of like oh I need to have the answers right and instead of having the answers you discover the answers and there's a lot of um confirmation of that in the the chat that I'm seeing too that you know this is this is the value that the ba has it's not having the answers it's the ability to discover the answers and and really get the business buy-in and I think as well a lot of people think that business analysts like you said do have all the answers and it shouldn't be that perception like I've been on so many different projects and so many different Industries and I always kind of if I hear a term I always ask what is it and I remember there was one time where it's like oh you've been working in the company for so long you should know what this is or you should know how this works and I'm like well no why should I because business owners too yes yeah I always learning like new systems new processes we're meeting different people like so it's it shouldn't be a case that we're like a subject matter experts we identify the people who are those um experts to help us do our job yeah awesome thank you all right so we're gonna shift gears here and let's talk a little bit more about the soft so we talked about the business level requirements and the kind of value that those add we're now going to shift to use cases and wireframes and so this is actually module two of the business analyst blueprint where we teach use cases wireframes as well as user stories and building a product backlog and how you actually verify that the use case is what you want or represents with the business user wants um and essentially the wireframe that you're seeing here is this visual representation of the screen and what it could look like not necessarily what it will look like and then the use case is a structured textual document that walks you through an analytical thinking process to really get clear on how the user interacts with the system and one of the first questions we always get is like do I need to be technical to do these kinds of requirements and it is not about knowing how it's coded it's not about being able to build it it is about being able to be really specific about what the functional requirements are what the software needs to do what the user would perceive if you were like interacting with that system and it's in that specificity that you can really help get people on the same page so I'm going to go ahead and you you feed me is up next and she was gracious enough to actually share an example with us so um yeah I'm going to switch a layout oh I didn't mean to make it be let's see Paula I might need your help here nope there we go okay you feed me I'm gonna go ahead and leave it as it is and allow you to share a little bit about your example and also just your experience using some of these techniques sure Foundation yes thank you so much so this is my favorite part of of the discovery is using visual aid along with um use cases to really um facilitate the discussion and collaborative in the collaboration that's needed between our business stakeholders first to help them understand the new day in a life design idea as well as with the technology stakeholders so they can understand the perspectives from the user experience and and what I am so the the project that I'm referring to is we had a project to automate our quote management system right now for really moving from your traditional manual labor intensive process to an automated process and and so at the high level context it's all about creating the quote approving the quote and delivering that quote to our customers and the wireframe that I'm sharing here is that process where we we are having to approve the quote when it's not Auto approved and when that happens what should happen right and so what I found was using both use cases and wireframes brings increased Clarity to the user experience with the system and so it it the it it really places the whole usability you know to the Forefront so that it's easier to refine clarify and identify any missing requirements with your business stakeholders because you're showing them the day in the life of this new um experience that they're going to have and it also brings a visual a great visual aid to drive that collaborative discussions with the business and technology stakeholders because given that I truly believe that ninety percent of the people learn visually so if you're able to augment your requirements or use cases with a wireframe it's really going to place the focus on oh what am I going to do now with this tool with my with this new process versus focusing on the pain points and being resisted to change so when you're using these tools I find it very effective in um driving further conversations further Discovery further um of the questions um like in this story when I used this wireframe for this example I'm it's there was an exception that um the quote was not going to get Auto approved it needed to be routed to another line of business to either accept or override the quote price and so as such there's a decision that needs to be made either you need to it goes goes to a certain approval group and that person is going to evaluate the price going to evaluate it against the price guidance that's other reference information in this quote and then they're either going to either accept or override that price and what's great about this model is they'll either accept the price if it's a based our business rule or they're override it which will Auto approve it and so this is a great way to talk about you know with the approver about all the different things that we're looking at and as you notice in the days to quote expiration um we discovered new requirements around that enablement field that really didn't have anything to do with the approver but it did impact the number of days that the quote was going to stay alive and active it did play a role in the business decision so it really allows us to really go through for me to model the the use case which is this each step of the process of the use case between the interaction between the the user and the system and it also helps me and you know give them a a general feel look and feel of the experience with this new tool without getting into the explicit design but conceptually about where data where certain fields and interactivity is going to be so they know how to interact with this and the goal here is to you know it's the typical thing less clicks less clicks you know reduce the number of clicks so that is also you know so those are the things that you're you know you're bringing in to this conversation because you're trying to get them excited about the new interface and how you're going to interact with the with the tool and how the system is going to respond so I I'm a big fan of um using wireframes and use cases because it allows us to reduce that rework it allows me to save time when I'm collaborating with both my business in technical stakeholders because they're always asking more questions and more questions mean what oh I never thought about we never thought about that right or we did need to think about that but this is how we're going to deal with it but it drives the right kind of conversations um and excitement with with the business stakeholders so that they're looking forward to the change not being resistant to the change yeah thank you so so much for sharing this um and I think you know there were so many takeaways there but one was just how one you got the feedback right but also like the sort of the detailed nuances that yeah right it's it's not that we miss like the big stuff right we miss these little nuances and they're easy to overlook unless you're looking at it from multiple ways and having some some really detailed analysis happen and you found many techniques to to help you think through that so thank you so much for sharing yeah all right and then James um you also have an example of a use case in wireframe correct yeah and yeah so I was on a project um actually only started recently as well and it's involving and switching different customers through different energy schemes so basically if a customer is say battery wasn't performing within a particular scheme or and it wasn't making enough revenue for the company or for the customer they wanted to be able to switch between different NG schemes on a daily basis and so it seemed at a high level the scene kind of um straightforward but there was a lot of um a lot of kind of moving bits and pieces and to get it to kind of to work as a solution and so the overall solution was um we we had this um frequency template as it's called and it would basically be a template full of um there's different like I said before the frequency percentages so the Slowdown and ramp up and basically means like when the the battery needs to turn on or turn off so load down is turned off ramp up is turned on and that's what essentially would do so it would say for each energy scheme the user would have to create one of these frequency templates and then if it needs to switch a particular customer's battery to a different scheme they would just apply that template and in the appropriate area of the system so that was the kind that the end goal and by using use cases um at the start of the analysis and there was a heavy assumption made that there was only kind of one stakeholder group that would be impacted by this particular um whole project essentially and this particular process but when I used the use case to do some analysis and I actually identified that as a missing stakeholder and that missing stakeholder was really crucial to the process and also needed to use these frequency templates within the system so that that was a gap that was um identified and by even using wireframes like when we were creating the actual how to create a frequency template it actually improved them the engagement and again the collaboration with different stakeholders because we were saying okay this is basically like this is what the screen would look like and now it's a draft it we're open to um opinions we want this to be like a collaborative session where you gonna you can tell us like how it's gonna work or does this make sense or what happens when the user does this or how should the system respond on in this particular scenario so it's really identifying those different scenarios that you can then take away to now do analysts on which dendroso um additional requirements like say the data fields that need to be present when user clicks of particular and item on the screen or the different business rails that need to be handled or what happens um after they they have created a frequency template does it go to a different department okay that also leads to another business process so we need to engage with that separate stakeholders so there's so much value with M use cases are more from I love them I I use them nearly properly on every single project even when they can't be used I try to see what way and even to just kind of get some feedback and because a lot of time even to try get feedback on requirements and some people kind of use like big design documents or big uh these mad lengthy documents and it's not the best because people they don't want to read like a 40 page document they don't want it and look at like a load of kind of use cases together so if you take the different steps like what the user does uh show the use of the sorry the wireframe and what the system does and if you're shown is step by step it's much easier for the people that are in that meeting visualize oh hey this is how it's going to work this is what it's going to look like oh no that doesn't make sense and that that that's that doesn't really um that we won't need that or that doesn't make sense in this particular scenario and or what about this have you thought about this uh what will happen when I do this so it brings up all those kind of conversations and discussions and in in anything and even there during the day I was using use cases and Analysis and we were going through different wireframes that we there was an assumption again made that there and we needed this existing functionality in the system because it's already there and but with the solution they're like oh sure we still need that but when we actually like marked it out we mapped the process so we talked about the different scenarios we used different wireframes and only by using those wireframes and walking through the different steps like the user the system the system the user and so on like a ping pong and it turned out that the the person who was going to be using it said no we we actually we don't need that so we don't actually need to build that piece of functionality and because it's going to be of no value it's not going to be used and I'm like well that that's that's good to get this address now because if we didn't it would have been really bad like later on and but by using the the wireframes to actually visualize how it's going to look and what the edit that we need to capture how the process flows how to use or will actually interact how the system will behave it brings a lot of value to any project or any um anything that you're doing business analyst relates yeah that's amazing I want to share a comment from the chat just as a way to um summarize what I think both euphemia and you were sharing people seem to interact much better with diagrams and images than they do with words right and they are much more likely to spite so spot something that is missing or wrong um and that what there was several people who commented similar to that and I will just add though and I think this also came out in your shares that in addition as analysts we need the use cases to do the thinking because like the wireframes are great for that stakeholder engagement but the use case gives us the power to ask some of those more powerful questions that we might overlook so all right so with that I'm gonna move on to data modeling and we're going to hear a couple more examples here I do see some of the questions coming in and I just want to make sure we get through all of our core techniques and we're going to have time for at least a few questions at the end uh and so we will get to that shortly so data modeling we teach five different techniques in our data modeling modules is probably our most intense module of the business analyst blueprint certification program uh and we're going to talk about it just a couple of these today but high level glossary being a list of terms and their definitions Andrew's going to share a great example about that so I won't do much teaching on that entity relationship diagramming being an overall conceptual view of how business Concepts relate to each other so for example can a customer have just one order or multiple orders and is there a limit on that just as an example an entity relationship diagram would help you visually model that out a day-to-day dictionary then gets very specific about the specific data fields that are stored in your information system and a data map would show how two data dictionaries relate to one another if you are moving data from one system to another either because you're migrating systems or maybe you have some Integrations going on in either case you need a data map to show how those relate to one another and you feel me is going to share an example about that and then finally a system context diagram which shows an overall picture of the data flow I actually like to do that as part of this establishing the project scope so with just that context uh Andrea do you want to go ahead and share your example about glossaries and terminology and how critical that was on one of your projects yes glossaries wow they seem like something that people just kind of want to gloss over James mentioned earlier about terms we just think we know them right we work in the business um and and we're there and we've been there for years and people just assume you should know what that means right and then you dig into it and you have to almost teach your stakeholders that these terms the definitions are critical to ensuring that we don't miss requirements to make sure that we're not doing rework so one of my favorite questions is can you define that for me and oh it does not go over well frequently but and then you kind of got to get a little sneaky and and figure out how to get that definition right sometimes it's an email or a different way to explain why you need that definition and I'll give you an example of why that was so critical for me we were working on creating a notification system and the notifications would go out based on this date right simple enough it's a date okay which date is it well it's it's the date it's it's for sending a notification to let people know that an employee's performance evaluation is due simple enough what's that date well it was with the HR department and we know that HR has lots and lots of dates and they've got to capture everything so which one okay well it's based on your anniversary so we'll go with higher date okay cool all right so higher date does the employee always start on their higher day we'll know they don't okay um can it change if an employee changes oppositions does the notification date need to change well yes it does okay well higher date's gonna be the same and if the employee goes to another position then now this notification is based on when they go to the setup position right awesome okay so we're going to change that and we're going to call it assignment date right all right cool we're going to March forward with assignment date um just to be sure here if that employee's manager changes does the employee get a new set of dates yes they do why is that because they've got a new manager so now we've got to close out the position that they were in under that manager and now start them in this position where they under are under this new manager so now that date changes for when the notification needs to go out it's related to when these are under this new manager and it has nothing to do with higher date it has nothing to do with assignment take so we ended up having to do was create it after going through about 10 of those dates they realized well wait a minute okay now I understand why you need the definition of this date and we realize we need a new date that's that's not what was wanted but we need a new date because these notifications are critical they need to go out and there's going to be reminders that are tied to them and if the date can change we can't go with the static items we've got to have one that we can change that's not going to impact anything else so we need a clear definition of each one of these dates so we can know which ones to use to trigger these notifications or other things that need to come out of the system so um after going through that exercise I think there was a little bit of respect gained about why we need to talk about uh terminology why it's important to have a glossary and you don't have to have every term in the glossary that that's for a system or for a part of a system but those things that you need critical defining that they might have a related term they might have an alias which is going to be kind of the same thing maybe we call it by an acronym or something we need to ID those things for our discussion as we go through Discovery as the Bas go back to the technical team everybody needs to be speaking from the same voice so that we're not planning for one thing and we think it means this one thing we think that notification trigger is going to be based on the assignment date absolutely not because that assignment take the change for some other reason right so this is why it's important to define those terms and it's great euphemia you mentioned the wireframes and your use cases you're going to use these terms there right and in those wireframes now we can see the screen we know what we're working with and as Claire mentioned our users will start to talk oh I see this okay now I see the date no we can't use that date that's start date that cannot change that will never change for an employee but they might change positions and they might change managers oh no no we've got some real estate over here on the screen we need to put this new thing over here so they will start talking about as Laura mentioned the tiny little details because they can now see it um but that glossary is going to be critical for your systems in your your projects so that you can be clear that everybody's speaking from the same voice about each piece of data well I have lots of reflection sermons um Andrea's doing a great example of asking the right questions it's all about being curious and about being clear and yeah I when you I've heard you share that example before and when I think about it I'm like if you had not asked those questions like what would have happened right you would have had this solution in production based on the wrong date it would have worked that worked right and then you would have had been reworking and backtracking so it's just so so essential emails everywhere right those notifications going out and can you think of your high level managers getting these random emails and there's not actually an action they need to do because it's the wrong date oh my goodness that I don't want that responsibility because it will come back to the I.T people you guys mentioned something earlier and I think it's important to talk about this as you get your users involved the more involved they are the more accepting they are to this change and they become champions of what is their software they become owners of this and they want it to work and they start to learn how to use it before it's even developed and having that in place allows them that opportunity to engage and start to learn about this new thing or this change to thing and they take some ownership of it and some pride in having it awesome thank you so much Andrea and so euphemia you wanted to bring us into like a more of a data mapping challenge so share your example yes but being a fan not only that but a big fan of the data um uh glossary because again just to exp expand and agreed with Andrea is that um I live in a world where acronym is a language and our data glossary was an acronym it was the definition of the acronym not a definition of the of the noun of what it is doing and what it's used for and which I learned in through acba on how to write better data on glossaries but um but alongside that data glossary is the data map so where data is the lifeblood of the business um it resides everywhere in every line of business so mapping the inputs and outputs um and discovering the real data source um um I thought was going to be easy peasy but not so much it is very challenging because um um so we're during during uat of our quote management tool we discovered that we were having some data missing data in certain key fields and we're like but we did the data map so obviously we go back to the data map tool and we discovered that um where we so when you live in a world of data is everywhere in every line of business every line of business is taking that data stitching it creating a new version of that data and it becomes the source in their perception of the data and so will the real data source please stand up has been the lesson learned here is because while we were mapping it to a report that that was fed by The Source it was there was some latency issues and then and then there were some and then when the master data really changes it doesn't send you all that data um through a reporting tool so I the big Lessons Learned here is that data map helped me discover that I did have the wrong data source and and we discovered that um we and we had data latency issues because why would there be a data latency why would my data be blank here and in the and I would say um I would say that referencing that data map help us discover the root cause of why we were having this missing data and um and it helped us identify that where latency was um we fixed the latency problem was okay but but refreshing of that information was also problematic and so we decided you know we shouldn't be using reporting tools as our data source we should be going back to the master data because that's where all the maintenance and management and change happens and so that way when we are linking it to the right Source then naturally the right data will start populating where it's supposed to be so I I will tell you I'm a big fan now of data mapping but also not listening necessarily to my business stakeholders because it's their point of view of where they think the data is because they use it they go to this reporting tool and they're using it right and they really don't know the source of it but it's a big lesson low for me as a business analyst to dig deeper follow the source of the data verify that data is the actual doors and and then work with the master data of that of that of that source so that any changes is part of my natural procedures right um change procedures because when data change I by process needs to know about that change and I need to make sure I am um proactively managing the that change um and you know in for my administrators who are responsible for certain things of that process so big fan of the data map wasn't so much when I went through acba uh but but I will tell you I'm a fan of a lot of new tools and techniques because at the end of the day I pride myself on I'm using these tools to communicate effectively because it's not my process I'm facilitating the facilitator of the process and and I pride myself in creating requirements that are executable by my it team so I do track how many times they come to me for clarification because I use that as a as a just a personal personal development to say okay how could I've done that differently or how could I have communicated that differently because at the end of the day it's all about my job is to make sure I'm enabling people to do their job more effectively which is my business stakeholders and I'm enabling it to understand the pain of the business process so that they can be creative and Innovative in their design approach when they come back to us um through the use cases analysis so big fan um but follow the data don't because it is a lifeblood of the business yeah I love that distinction of you know using a data reporting system as a repository versus Source data I think everybody can take that away as like a top tip from today a very practical top tip so we have a few minutes here for questions and I just want to thank you all these shares and examples are like I think it's just so awesome to hear real world on the job what are Bas doing today how are they using these techniques so thank you so much for opening up and sharing your experiences and your examples um if you have a question feel free to get into the chat I'm gonna pull up one from way earlier that I really stood out to me and I want to get started with and then we'll I'll look and see what is coming in more recently so Claire had asked I analyzed an end-to-end order to cash type process that spanned multiple departments and I found it difficult to break down such a complex diagram and use swim Lanes to split it any tips anybody have a have a sense that anybody want to jump in on this one I actually I I can jump in a little bit because I did a quote to order process okay so that span um three different lines of business are pricing our um sales Ops and our order management system and I will tell you um you swim Laney is was a big help because it helped delineate who was responsible within a given process that's the big key and so then your only chunk you're chunking the process so and you're only talking to those stakeholders who are responsible for and accountable for doing the work then and you verify all the inputs and outputs and you get alignment on from their perspective but as soon as you go to the next swim Lane and another group of users who use who's consuming the information from the first step then you're understanding what's missing from the output and you're you're in your understanding the world and the lens from their point of view and you're going through their swim Lanes you know their roles and who's accountable for completing this particular process and then when it gets to the order now if my code is done and now order comes through now what happens so again it does allow you to still use the same tool but break chunk it up based on my role it my my recommendation is chunk it by the user who is who is accountable in the process and keep it and keep only those folks initially you know and your Discovery making sure you understand their point of view but when you bring everybody together in the same room that's where the real Discovery happens because it's all the AHA oh I didn't know you had to do that well you don't have to do that because I'm doing that over here too so it's it's it it is it's it's phases because again you're that I will tell you how many times have I changed my my workflow diagram how many versions of a workflow diagram do I have infinite ladies and gentlemen it is it is a living entity it of its own but it also is exciting because when people visually again that visual effects when they see that they get engaged yes very good answer does anybody have something add to that all right I've got another question to pull up if not yeah I think it's really important to kind of identify at a high level what you're trying to achieve first look at the steps involved and maybe one of those steps could be like a separate process in itself I've had that experience with like a trading project and that I've been on and we kind of mapped it the whole entire process and we found like it just wasn't visibly uh clear on the screen it was like massive and but when we done some analysis we actually identified that hey there's actually like five or six processes going on within this one diagram so by buying by being specific to each kind of business process goal it will help you like um euphemia said break it down chunk it into different pieces so that you can individually analyze each business process awesome um one of the pieces to that I think that goes along well with this is is one of the things we do in the blueprint program is to visit how to make a sizable chunk right so that is something that is key uh and discussed in the acba program and I want to make sure that we talk we talk about that and highlight that but yes bringing it down chunking it and finding manageable pieces if it doesn't fit on on one page it we can probably break this thing down and definitely Claire take some time to think that through as you talk with each um work unit they will probably be an infinite number of smaller things that can go into smaller uh sub process as well yes awesome and one other question I just lost it here oh here we go um so Jessica asked what wireframing tools do you recommend I know in the course we show balsamic as samples that also came up in the chat but does anybody else have another favorite tool that maybe um so they could recommend to the people on there on here are you all balsamic users I I'm a Vizio and a PowerPoint Queen okay so you saw the one that I created was was a PowerPoint visual you know where I didn't want to change people's perception of I didn't want them getting into the actual design of the quote tool that existed you know it get get all that stuff in the way but I wanted to draw the eye to where their interaction was going to be and so I highlighted in red okay there's a lot of stuff on this on this screen on in this interface but where you're gonna interact with is here so I I I try to focus again on my interaction the system response your interaction the system response and I think it's important to use the best tool I mean even handwriting diagram even getting up on a whiteboard is just as effective um but I I love PowerPoint yeah because it allows me to bring in the color in the theatrics and the you know in the you know sticky notes about oh you know you know you know sticky notes you know I have a question here that kind of thing it's just it's just it also demonstrates that it's not it's not complete this is a workshop where we're all going to be engaged and we're going to be talking about you know the the the the you know your activity in the system response activity okay call all right um uh Helen is also saying things like lucidchart and Vizio and I just love that you use PowerPoint like sometimes you know people can have this idea that like like Tech is the problem right like I don't have the right text so I can't do whatever this job requirement is if there's always a way um and it's about finding a tool set that really works well for you so do not underestimate word uh whiteboards and and a pinch do not underestimate pencil and paper you can make it happen yes and I Andrea I believe I don't know if you've personally seen one but I we have historically had a few people who submitted work samples for the blueprint that were hand-drawn okay do you accept that as long as it's clear like you have to have good handwriting but absolutely it works it does all right so we've got just a couple minutes to wrap it up um I would love to just do I didn't prepare you for this I apologize but I would love to do just a final takeaway from each of you that you'd like to share so James do you want to kick things off put you on the spot a little bit there if that's okay um I think um it's just been able to my key takeaway has been able to share um experiences with other business analysts I know a lot of time and you kind of would read certain articles so you'd see LinkedIn posts but you don't really see real world examples of how business analyst techniques and skills are being used through an organization so to me that was really cool to see and especially like euphemia's PowerPoints idea I'm definitely going to see how that's going to work because I'm always looking to to leverage different skills and use different things and change my Approach when I'm dealing with different kind of contacts or projects thank you thank you euphemia I would say that um I had a lot of experience in business analysis as a product you know product manager bringing new products to Market but when I chose in my last part of my career to focus on internal operational efficiencies it was a different mindset and I in business analysis honing in on those skills was critical to my success and so I'm Googling okay how do I improve my process how do I improve my work and so I am actually um you know I found I discovered Bridging the Gap and as a result um I became a big follower and as a result I'm sitting here thinking okay is are my skills relevant in today's volatile market and that was and when I answered the question truthfully and and honestly I said no and so I I think it's important for us to always make sure that our skills are relevant regardless of what's going on because um I will tell you I will be able to use these tools and techniques regardless of change regardless of what happens and I think it's important for us as business analysts to balance our technical skills with our soft skills because it this business being a business analyst and dealing with people who really don't like what they're doing is an emotional um toll on you and I think we have to put on our you know empathetic hat on and to agree with them and not disagree but agree and and and relate with them because it's important for us to listen you know be um you know you know active listeners and so I would say you're going this this class has definitely given me increase my confidence and I will tell you and increase my in boldness um especially my my ability to facilitate and make sure that um I am bringing my business and Technical stakeholders and all thank you and I just realized um Paula who's organizing things behind the scenes for us I believe we're supposed to share some closing slides so maybe we can do that as Andrea is um sharing her takeaway too yes thank you awesome I think um we had a participant that that mentioned questioning uh and James and euphemia both brought it up you might not know and it's okay and don't think poorly of yourself you're not supposed to know it all build relationships get to know your stakeholders get to know your subject matter experts and start asking questions and keep asking questions and keep asking questions it's okay you need the answers to those questions and that was I think the biggest takeaway from me today and each one of these techniques that we discussed there was always the communication there was always a need for communication and to ask questions so that's that's a big takeaway as a business analyst uh stay on top of that and you will do just fine awesome well thank you again all so much um I believe Paula showed the slide that you are each welcome you're inviting people to connect with you here on LinkedIn or reach out to you that way and then we have my social up here as well I also would love to connect with any of you on LinkedIn we have our Bridging the Gap Facebook page as well as our YouTube page and a lot of resources uh our website at bridgingthegap.com with those hyphens and we are starting the next session of the business analyst blueprint in Late July and we would love to have you join this if you want to learn more about these techniques and I just want to close by saying thank you again to each of you for sharing your experiences and being willing to show up for the business analysis Community this is one of the things I love about being in this community is how generous and giving and open people are and just want to help other people get better because I feel like when we I always come back to this when we build our profession one business today so thank you for everyone for being here and for supporting our panelists and thank you to all of our panelists again for sharing your stories all right have a great rest of your day everyone thank you

Channel: Bridging the Gap - Resources for Business Analysts

Views: 1,646

Keywords: business analysis, business analyst, business analyst best practices, business analysis training, business analysis tools and techniques, business analysis process, business analyst training, how to become a business analyst, business analyst certification, business analysts, practicing business analysts, business analysis best practices, business processes, use cases, wireframes, software development cycle, data modeling techniques, data quality issues

Id: cfCml2RLlP0

Length: 63min 9sec (3789 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 30 2023