Guerrilla CoE

BA Uplift
Fast, Cheap, Easy and without Management Support

Scope of the presentation
Methods to improve the performance of a BA team where:
Cost of the method (if any) can be put on an expense report
No disruption to delivery or billable work
No external consultants required
No explicit mandate from IT management required
No existing structure for BA Team exists

Target Audience
Senior BAs looking to improve BA practice in their organisation where:
Time or resources are very short
IT Management views BA as low-values
Billable hours/Utilisation is a constraint
Training budgets are inadequate

Why Cheap? Why not Properly?
Like a quick-win to build confidence
Get Mgmt Buy-In to build the CoE later
Self-improvement is self-sustaining
Encourages bottom-up participation
Sets the foundation for later (“proper”) process improvement
Builds brand of BAs throughout organisation

Targeted areas
Skills
UML
BPMN
Data Modelling
Etc
Competencies
Workshops
Requirements Elicitation
Technical Writing
Knowledge
Domain knowledge (Banking, Insurance, etc)
Technical Knowledge (SAP, BI, etc)
Skills
Traditionally monolithic courses
Try demonstrating examples, encouraging small use in projects.
Follow up with support and review
Competencies
Notoriously difficult to train for
War stories and post-review
Knowledge
Experience or deep training is required
Mitigate lack of knowledge through encouraging support by other BAs.

Skills Uplift - Idea
Concentrate on the basic theory, e.g.
What is a requirement?
What are the types of requirements?
Creates a structure for self-directed learning
Prescriptive training just takes too long

Skills Uplift - Practice
Brown Bag lunches
Concentrate on specific areas of practice
Do not use examples from current projects
Targeted help for those on high-value/high risk projects
Do not attempt to imbue by doc review
Get a good bookshelf going – actively lend books

Competency Uplift - Theory
Improve Existing People
Show patterns and anti-patterns
Tools that encourage good behaviour
Model good behaviour in shared spaces
Hire Right People
Behavioural interviewing
Competencies more important than skills or knowledge
Hire for personality, train for skills

Competency Uplift - Practice
Rearrange seating to place BAs next to each other
Include in coffee runs to catch gripes, and have others suggest solutions
Do informal requirements planning in corridors
Ask the questions “Why did we decide to do it this way?”

Competency Uplift - People
Improve Interviewing techniques
BAs interview BAs (Should be obvious, but often not the case)
Interview – run a mini-req gathering session
Ask some “Microsoft Questions”
Keep some variety in team

When not to bother
Large amount of outsourced or short-term contract BAs
If the organisation is full of bad BAs with lots of experience
You are a contractor or consultant
If you’re a recent implant

Summary
Regular Brown-Bags to plant seeds of new practices
Provide material (online, books, etc) to better implant new practices
BA socialisation across team to encourage capability sharing, collaboration
Self-Improving teams to keep momentum
Concentrate on hiring process to fill gaps

Outcomes
Don’t expect miracles, but you can expect:
Appreciation of BA as a profession inside and outside team
Better knowledge sharing inside team
More self-directed learning
Build a platform for a proper BA CoE

Bookshelf
<include list from consultnik here>

http://consultnik.blogspot.com	122
http://consultnik.blogspot.com.au	25
http://consultnik.blogspot.in	3
http://consultnik.blogspot.co.uk	1
http://consultnik.blogspot.it	1

Guerrilla CoE

by harrislloydlevy on Feb 01, 2011

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Guerrilla CoE — Presentation Transcript