Next Generation BA: what new skills and behaviours do BAs need to develop in the next 5 years
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Slides from a presentation given by Robert Moores to a meeting of IIBA UK's North branch on 21 April 2015
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Next Generation BA: what new skills and behaviours do BAs need to develop in the next 5 years
- 1. Business Analysis 2020 Rob Moores Asda Stores
- 2. 2020 Context 2020 Cost of IT Re-Use Pace of Change Agilit y Virtual Value Chains Composab ility Cloud Services Integra tion Complex ity Knowled ge Managem ent
- 3. 1. Agile roles and skills; SAFe, Scrum, Kanban 2. High Tech Anthropology 3. Service Oriented Design 4. Requirements Patterns 5. Lean – and lean start up 6. Systems Dynamics 7. Storytelling 8. Human Centred Design 9. Servant leadership 10.Risk-based approach to BA work based on finite capacity 2020 Skills and Behaviours 11.Business domain knowledge 12.Design Thinking / Lean Start Up 13.Capabilities modelling 14.Value stream mapping 15.Estimation 16.Dude’s Law 17.Cost of Delay 18.Weighted Shortest Job First
- 4. 2020 Cost of IT Re-Use Pace of Change Agility Virtual Value Chains Composab ility Cloud Services Integra tion Complex ity Knowled ge Managem ent High Tech Anthropology (HTA)
- 6. 2020 Cost of IT Re-Use Pace of Change Agilit y Virtual Value Chains Composab ility Cloud Services Integra tion Complex ity Knowled ge Managem ent Services & Capabilities
- 8. 2020 Cost of IT Re-Use Pace of Change Agility Virtual Value Chains Composab ility Cloud Services Integra tion Complex ity Knowled ge Managem ent High Tech Anthropology (HTA) Why ? Complexity of user environment and structure of services
- 9. High Tech Anthropology (HTA) Term coined by Menlo Innovations Core element is working in situ to develop a deep understanding of the end user & identify unarticulated requirements AEIOU Framework Activities Environment Interactions Objects Users
- 10. High Tech Anthropology The HTA Discovery Phase Projec t Kickof f Observa tions & Intervi ews Defini ng the Proble m Person as Person a Mappin g Roles & Goals Workfl ows Business Object Model Conceptual Designs Design Assessments Finalized Designs Epics/Features/ Stories* The HTA Design Phase * And sometimes storyboards / screenplays
- 11. 2020 Cost of IT Re-Use Pace of Change Agilit y Virtual Value Chains Composab ility Cloud Services Integra tion Complex ity Knowled ge Managem ent Servant Leadership Why? Retention & motivation through respect for the individual and team: velocity; a core tenet of Agile ways of working
- 12. Servant Leadership The highest type of ruler is one of whose existence the people are barely aware… When his task is accomplished and things have been completed, all the people say, “We ourselves have achieved it !” Lao-Tzu Tao Te Ching 5th century BC
- 13. The Servant Leadership Paradigm
- 14. An Alternative to Servant leadership: the HIPPO Effect
- 15. 2020 Cost of IT Re-Use Pace of Change Agilit y Virtual Value Chains Composab ility Cloud Services Integra tion Complex ity Knowled ge Managem ent Services & Capabilities Why ? Need for speed; & agility ability to consume & externalise services; language of EAs
- 16. Services & Capabilities Service oriented design Capabilities Requirements / function patterns (very briefly)
- 17. Service Consumer Service Service Provider Capabilit y required by provides possesses offered by / provided by consumes / uses Service Specificatio n Service Level Agreement Commercial Agreement identifies Interface provides access to defines Service Oriented Design
- 18. service capabil ity people systems process es other assets leadersh ip organisa tion/man agement capabil ity capabil ity External view Internal view service Services & Capabilities A service exposes the latent value in a capability Business capabilities are dependent on IT and other resources for their realisation Services deliver value to the consumer
- 20. 2020 Cost of IT Re-Use Pace of Change Agilit y Virtual Value Chains Composab ility Cloud Services Integra tion Complex ity Knowled ge Managem ent Prioritising Demand Why ? Demand continues to outstrip supply; deliver the most value the soonest
- 21. Prioritising Demand Dude’s law Cost of Delay (CoD) Weighted Shortest Job First (WSJF)
- 22. Dude’s Law If you don’t have a good reason for the project, it doesn’t matter how well you do it.
- 23. Dude’s Law, Cost of Delay & WSJF We complete the Weighted Shortest Job First (WSJF) because that is the one that delivers the biggest bang for our buck. The “Weight” we use is the cost of delay. Cost of Delay Duration Value = Business value of the feature Decay in value over time Information discovery value (weekl y) (weekl y)
- 24. Featur e Cost of Delay per week Duration In weeks ? A £1 5 ? B £4 1 ? C £5 2 ? Dude’s Law, Cost of Delay & WSJF – Worked Example
- 25. Featur e Cost of Delay per week Duration In weeks Value Index A £1 5 0.2 B £4 1 4.0 C £5 2 2.5 Dude’s Law, Cost of Delay & WSJF – Worked Example
- 26. Duratio n Value/ Benefits A B C Weeks Cost/W k Cost/W k Tot. Cost 1-5 £1+£4+ £5 £10 £50 6 £4+£5 £9 £9 7-8 £5 £5 £10 Total CoD: £69 Total Cost of Delay Using FIFO (A-B-C) Featur e Cost of Delay per week Durati on In weeks Value Index A £1 5 0.2 B £4 1 4.0 C £5 2 2.5
- 27. Duratio n Value/ Benefits A B C Total Cost of Delay Using WSJF (B-C-A)Weeks Cost/W k Cost/W k Tot. Cost 1 £1+£4+ £5 £10 £10 2-3 £1+£5 £6 £12 4-8 £1 £5 £5 Total CoD: £27 Featur e Cost of Delay per week Durati on In weeks Value Index A £1 5 0.2 B £4 1 4.0 C £5 2 2.5
- 28. Value/ Benefits Featur e Cost of Delay per week Durati on In weeks Value Index A £1 5 0.2 B £4 1 4.0 C £5 2 2.5 A B C A B C CoD using FIFO = £69 CoD using WSJF = £27 Extra value = £42 Duratio n
- 29. Dude’s Law, Cost of Delay & WSJF Shortest Job First (WSJF) because that is the one that delivers the biggest bang for our buck. The “Weight” we use is the cost of delay Therefore ... If all the work is the same duration, then we do the job with the highest cost of delay first If all the work has the same cost of delay, then we do the shortest job first Duration works best where unit cost is Cost of Delay Duration Value = Business value of the feature How value decays over time Informati on discovery value
- 30. 2020 Context 2020 Cost of IT Re-Use Pace of Change Agilit y Virtual Value Chains Composab ility Cloud Services Integra tion Complex ity Knowled ge Managem ent 1. Agile roles and skills; SAFe, Scrum, Kanban 2. High Tech Anthropology 3. Service Oriented Design 4. Requirements Patterns 5. Lean – and lean start up 6. Systems Dynamics 7. Storytelling 8. Human Centred Design 9. Servant leadership 10.Risk-based approach to BA work based on finite capacity 11.Business domain knowledge 12.Design Thinking / Lean Start Up 13.Capabilities modelling 14.Value stream mapping 15.Estimation 16.Dude’s Law 17.Cost of Delay 18.Weighted Shortest Job First
- 31. Appendices
- 32. Business Analysis Shared Services AEIOU Framework AEIOU is a heuristic to help interpret observations gathered by ethnographic practice in industry. Its two primary functions are to code data, and to develop building blocks of models that will ultimately address the objectives and issues of a client. Activities: are goal-directed sets of actions—paths towards things people want to accomplish. What are the modes people work in, and the specific activities and processes they go through? Environments: include the entire arena where activities take place. What is the character and function of the space overall, of each individual's spaces, and of shared spaces? Interactions: are between a person and someone or something else; they are the building blocks of activities. What is the nature of routine and special interactions between people, between people and objects in their environment, and across distances? Objects: are building blocks of the environment, key elements sometimes put to complex or unintended uses (thus changing their function, meaning and context). What are the objects and devices people have in their environments and how do they relate to their activities?
- 33. © Copyright 2009, 2010, 2011 A. Nicklas Malik, All Rights Reserved Services & Capabilities – in Business Architecture context
- 34. Do I have enough people to do the work? How many people do I need to do the work? What should I focus on with the time / people I have? TraditionalApproach AgileApproach Risk-Based Approach
Editor's Notes
- I’m Rob Moores from Asda, and I’m going to talk about the skills and behaviours that I believe BAs will need to adopt over the next 5 years. I started my career in IT on 1st April 1985 so I have just over 30 years experience across many different sectors and sizes of organisation, so while this is a personal view, I hope it is an informed view. I’m not going to claim that all of these are new – but I hope some of them will be new to you and to the BA community generally.
- So before diving into what the skills and behaviours are I should first say a bit about why I think we need to adapt and adopt … This presentation isn’t about the case for change and there’s probably nothing you haven’t seen before on this slide so I’ll just briefly highlight a few of the points … Cost pressures within the business, and the pace of change are putting massive pressures on IT departments. Put quite simply we can’t continue to do more with less – the low hanging fruit is well and truly plucked ! One alternative is to re-use what we already have – except for the most part that functionality is locked up in massive silo applications. Value chains are becoming more virtualised - across enterprises. Tech is enabling this but again it has a serious impact on the BA whose life suddenly becomes a lot more complex with capabilities fragmented across a lot more different providers.
- So I started with a bit of a brainstorm, just listing out all the skills and behaviours that I think we need to focus on – and it ended up being a big list for a 20 minute presentation! And I’ve tried to focus on different types of skill and behaviour. Hopefully that will cover most of the context identified in the previous slide
- Anthropology is the study of humans from a broad range of perspectives: cultural, societal, linguistic, built environment. The high-tech version originates from a company called Menlo Innovations
- Servant leadership is a core tenet of Agile – and the concept in its modern form has been around since 1970. The term was coined by Robert K. Greenleaf in his essay of 1970 titled “The Servant as a Leader.”
- As BAs we’re used to mainly working with processes and functions as our models. However, the language of capabilities is being increasingly used, and there is a renewed interest in service orientation. As you can see the concept of services addresses almost all of the challenges that I’ve identified.
- I’ve interviewed dozens and dozens of BAs over the years, and whenever I ask them how they prioritise requirements they say they use MOSCOW. This usually involves asking the customer what functionality fits into each category – not a very rigorous method. I’d like to discuss an alternative that provides a rational economic justification for requirements prioritisation – Dude’s Law and it’s application
- I think that the real need for this skill comes from the increasing complexity of the user environment and the way that the organisations’ services are constructed, with businesses increasingly consuming a lot of services from external sources including the cloud - – and increasingly working as virtual organisations
- Anthropology is the study of humans from a broad range of perspectives: cultural, societal, linguistic, built environment. The term HTA was coined by a company called Menlo Innovations – and you can read all about it in this book – Joy Inc From our perspective HTA is the study of our customers – really getting into the detail of how they work – how they behave and interact with each other, their stakeholders, their physical environment, their organisational environment. Being an HTA involves “camping out” where the users are – really getting embedded into their work or play environment In the situation that I described, where services are being delivered by a range of organisations in a virtual value chain, there is a real skill in eliciting business requirements that can span many organisations and service end points So a good HTA will understand users in a very holistic way – and they may well use the AEIOU framework to assist them The AEIOU framework is both a framework and a handy acronym – that helps you as a BA ensure that you cover all the bases while you are embedded in the business [Talk through the acronym as per the slide – note that environment can include clothing, and objects can include devices]
- You can see from the phases and steps within HTA that it uses a number of techniques, constructs and models that you may be familiar with… In a real sense, HTA is a “back to basics” approach with a deep focus on the user based on recognising the more complex environment in which our customers work…
- [Make the link between retention and velocity]
- As you can see, the concept of servant leadership has been around for a very long time! The term Servant Leadership, was coined by Robert K. Greenleaf in his essay of 1970 titled “The Servant as a Leader.” Other well-known authors in this space are Stephen Covey and Ken Blanchard. Simply put, it is a concept which talks about a leader being one whose natural tencency is to serve as opposed to lead. Telling colleagues what to do is replaced by removing impediments to improvement. This is particularly important for knowledge workers who like to feel empowered – they don’t like or need micro-managing.
- The philosophy of Servant Leadership sits very well with the Agile philosophy. If you study the Agile Manifesto and the principles, you will read terms like individuals, interactions, collaboration, trust etc. There is no concept of a hierarchy, no concept of a manager, as it tends to talk of self-managed/self-organized teams. Thus, a leader has to be one who rather than throwing rank, tries instead to help the team and makes sure that the immediate needs of the team are addressed and the immediate problems solved. Foe example instead of asking a team why its stories don’t get accepted by the client, a Servant Leader will end up discussing how the acceptance criteria and definition of “done” can be better articulated A word of caution: it can be easy to focus on the servant aspect rather than the leader aspect. So these are the three elements that I see as core to servant leadership. They are all aspirational and something to work towards Having a vision: a future state that we all want to get to making sure colleagues have the motivation, the tools and the competencies to do work towards the vision: through performance and talent management and PDPs empowering those who are at the coal face make the decisions that they need to, to get the right things done in the right way. A fundamental underlying principle here is that knowledge workers – rather than their managers – are the people best placed to assess, design and implement
- So what is a service ? There are many definitions – and ITIL is a good place to look for one. For the purposes of this presentation let’s stick with a simple definition: A means of Party A providing something of value to Party B – through a defined interface, and over a period of time As you can see the concept of services addresses almost all of the challenges that I’ve identified. The concept of services can be used to describe and analyse almost anything from major organisations down to a simple IT function We can talk about services at any level: the NHS, payment services, SAAS, a VC service, a screen-scrape service So they are very easy to understand for both business and IT, and they get us focused on the value that we’re delivering and on the service user – the customer. So they are very easy to understand for both business and IT, and they get us focused on the value that we’re delivering and on the service user – the customer. “Capabilities” are of course the height of fashion amongst Business Architects, and you will need to at least understand what a capability is in order to talk with an architect! I’ll touch on the differences between a service and a capability – after the next slide.
- If we unpack the structure of a service this is what we might find (noting that there are many different ways to understand services) [Talk through the components on the screen - noting that the service specification is the bit that has our traditional functional and non-functional requirements] Note that this is a simplified view – e.g. there is no service payer or service broker in the model. Composability is the ultimate objective – supports business agility, re-use, lowers cost of implementation etc This way of modelling services lends itself well to patterning. By patterning I mean creating a re-usable description / model of the service that can be held in a pattern library and referenced / used over and over
- * NOTE THAT CALLOUTS BUILD ON CLICK * So what have services got to do with capabilities ? Capabilities are the HOW to the services WHAT – and notice that the HOW is not just about IT systems … [Talk through slide callouts]
- Finally on this topic …There is a great deal of professional skill involved in creating great services. Most of the literature is around application services, but the principles apply equally at the logical level as well ass the physical …. So a function that is described as a service still needs all of these attributes … [Highlight a few of the principles especially composability – which is the big payoff for service orientation]
- The last skill I want to cover today is a better way to prioritise demand … Why ? Read from screen …
- I’m going to cover 3 concepts: (read from screen) Is anyone familiar with all / any of these ?
- Dude’s Law was coined by a very well-known Agile coach called David Hussman and is very useful for quick and effective prioritization. Anyone know or guess why it’s called Dude’s Law ? Dude’s Law says Value = Why over How if (H)ow increase and (W)hy is constant, then (V)alue is reduced. As you drive the mechanics (H)ow towards zero, which you could call leaning out your processes, (V)alue increases even if Why is constant) To enable us to compare alternatives and prioritise we have to give Why and How a number. Then the Value will be a number and we can compare that number against other numbers … So lets see what that looks like … … with a caveat that Dude’s Law can be implemented in several different ways depending on the context …
- Here the “Why” in Dude’s Law becomes the Cost of Delay – and the How becomes the duration – and we’ll use weeks as the time period So the Cost of Delay is just that: – if this feature delivers x in benefit each week, then we incur a cost for every week that we delay it’s implementation - remember that a feature delivers no value until it’s being used ! An easy way to understand CoD is as the inverse of the anticipated Benefits. That cost of delay has 3 components (on the screen) – but I won’t cover these in this presentation due to time For the “How” we’re going to use time - the duration of the project – because we’re focusing on the cost of delaying it’s implementation – which grows over time Applying the formula gives the Weighted Shortest Job – not the Shortest Job – and that will be the Job with the highest Value result … So if we want to implement the feature that has the highest value we should use WSJF There is an assumption around cost here: this works well with a fixed team (and hence a fixed cost) that has to make choices over what to prioritise it’s work on. If we move outside that, we need to get more sophisticated By the way this works well with relative estimation techniques (e.g. Fibbonachi sequence) – you don’t need real numbers
- So in this example the solution has 3 features … So which should we implement first ? Quite often we stick with FIFO – the person requesting Feature A has been waiting the longest so we should do that first - in this case A then B then C It would be quite natural to say C because that has the largest cost of delay and if you multiply that cost by the number of weeks you get the biggest number But you would of course be wrong … because in applying Dude’s Law we DIVIDE the cost of delay by the duration – and that gives us something quite different …
- Dude’s Law gives us a relative Value Index as shown here … showing us that we should implement in the sequence B then C then A In the next few slides I’ll show that this sequence delivers value a lot more quickly than FIFO.
- So this is what the Total cost of delay looks like using FIFO
- … so we are delivering an extra £42 of value during this period. And of course the £s could be £00,000s and the duration could be months. When you also consider that value usually decays over time, earlier implementation becomes even more important.
- So to summarise ... [Read through screen ]
- So that’s a very quick run through of some of the skills and behaviours that I believe BAs need to focus on – in the context o f the challenges that I’ve identified I’ll be pleased to take any questions now, and discuss these with you afterwards Thank you for listening !
- If we want to dive deeper into services and capabilities and look at how they relate to other elements, particularly those that drive change then the EBMM is a great tool Nick Malik – Microsoft Architect This is ONE of many viewpoints articulated in Nick’s EBM model – I’ve used it because it shows the relationship between a service and a capability