Business Analysis & Leadership

1
By Christian D. Kobsa
Leadership in
Business Analysis
An Introduction

Agenda
 Introduction and Basic Definitions
 Facilitative Leadership
 Business Analysis and Project Management
 Communication
 Stakeholder Management
 Facilitative Business / System Analysis
 Problem Discovery, Abstraction, and Scope
 Problem Types
 BA / PM Collaboration
 Facilitation
 Creativity
 Ethnography
 …TBC…
2By Christian D. Kobsa

3
What Does a Business Analyst Do?
 Involves understanding and responding to a business situation
 The role purpose is to turn strategic goals and visions into reality
while adding value
 It begins with understanding challenges and problems
 It discovers new opportunities that help the business meet its
vision and goals
 It helps the business realize the identified benefits and values of
an opportunity
 It requires innovative thinking, collaborative working, and
strategic acting
To fulfill a business analyst role at this level the individual must act
as a leader within the project and the organization.

4
Systemic and Holistic Approach
 Pay attention to all the different elements that have
an impact on change.
 Look across the organization’s processes, people and
culture.
 Identify interrelationships between organizational
units.
 Understand the context in which the change occurs.
 Identify technology and infrastructure that could
possibly enable the change.

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The BA as Leader
 Work with the business to draw out what is really
needed.
 Must have a strong and committed mindset.
 Have the courage to challenge appropriately and
respectfully at all organizational levels.
 Have the drive to make a difference.
This is Business Analysis Leadership

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Expert Versus Process Consultant
Expert Help Process Consultant Help
The problem has been correctly diagnosed. The BA does not own the problem, the client does.
The problem is straightforward or simple.
The client understands the problem better than the BA
does.
The client has effectively communicated exactly what
they are expecting.
The BA works with the client to identify what to
improve and how to improve it.
The client understands the consequences of the business
analyst doing the work; i.e.: access to relevant people
and information is available.
The BA uses various appropriate techniques to help the
client to understand the problem and to develop and
communicate potential solutions.
People asked for information know why they are being
consulted.
The client knows what will work in a particular
situation. The BA looks for and proposes a variety of
well thought out potential solutions. These must be
discussed and considered with the client.
The business analyst has the skills to discover and
provide the information.
The BA helps the client to see the cause of the problem,
and leads collaboratively with the client towards the
best solution that provides the most likely success.

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Leadership = Holistic Business Analysis
Holistic:
“Relating to or concerned with wholes or with complete systems
rather than with the analysis of, treatment of, or dissection
into parts.”
Business:
“A person, partnership, or corporation engaged in commerce,
manufacturing or services; profit-seeking enterprise or
concern.”
Analysis:
“The division of a physical or abstract whole into its constituent
parts to examine or determine their relationship or value.”

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BA Versus Holistic BA
BA (Junior / Mid-Level) Holistic BA (Senior / Consultant)
Detail oriented Detail oriented
Good analytical skills Good analytical skills
Enough communication skills to ensure scope is clear to all
stakeholders
Enough communication skills to ensure scope is clear to all
stakeholders
Requirements gathering Requirements gathering
Understand enough techniques, tools, and methodologies Understand enough techniques, tools, and methodologies
Requirements documenting Requirements documenting
Ability to challenge requirements defined by operational
management
Ability to extract out issues that need consensus at a senior
level; i.e.: conflicting priorities, use of resources, etc.
Ability to anticipate organizational change
Ability to anticipate changes in the marketplace that affect a
given organizational project
Ability to overcome resistance and anticipate obstacles

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The BA as Facilitative Leader
“The defining feature of facilitative
leaders is that they offer process and
structure rather than directions and
answers. In every situation, they know how
to design discussions that enable group
members to find their own answers.”

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Facilitative Leadership – Best
Practices
 Model the way
 Inspire a shared vision
 Challenge the process
 Enable others to act
 Encourage the heart

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Facilitative Leadership – Model The
Way
1. Understand the connection between values
and actions.
2. Align actions with shared values.

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Facilitative Leadership – Shared Vision
 Any proposed solution should relate to moving a future
goal.
 The more a project is linked to strategy and future
vision, the greater the usefulness potential of the
project becomes.

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Facilitative Leadership – Challenge
The Process
1. Do the processes encourage cross-organizational interactions?
2. How closely are the processes aligned with business objectives?
3. How much noise and complexity do the software tools the organization uses bring to
these processes?
4. What was the main motive behind the selection of this process? IT strategy? Usability and
productivity? …
5. How were the processes defined? Were they imposed top-down? Or did they emerge
based on healthy practices from the bottom up?
6. Can we measure their efficiency? How? Do we actually measure and monitor it? If not,
why not?
7. Are the processes rigid, or are they flexible? Are they updated, modified, or improved
based on user feedback?
8. Do the processes make any sense? I.e.: can those using the them explain how their
contribution through these processes align with the organizations strategy?
9. Are the processes agile? Do the processes simplify practices?
10. Do people take ownership over the processes they use? If yes, how? Do they propose
improvements?
11. Do the processes provide visibility of work performed?
12. Are the processes built around pre-defined data structures? Do the processes allow for
unstructured data to be managed?

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Facilitative Leadership – Why
Challenge The Process?
Art:
Inputs are fuzzy and there are many possible outputs. There is no
clarity of how well these match system goals. Organizations try
to minimize Art, since it is not well understood and it is
inefficient.
Practices:
Inputs and outputs are defined. However, there is a substantial
amount of judgment based on past actions used to selecting and
transforming inputs into outputs.
Processes:
Inputs and outputs are clearly and unambiguously defined. The
environment which transforms inputs into outputs is clearly and
unambiguously defined, and it is a controlled environment.

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Facilitative Leadership – Enable
Others to Act
 Provide key roles to subject matter experts
(SME) or project champions.
 Network SME’s and project champions together
through workshops.
 Engage SME’s and project champions early.

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Facilitative Leadership – Encourage
The Heart
 Show genuine appreciation for contributions
made.
 Show genuine empathy for peoples project
related challenges they face.
 Demonstrate recognition publicly.

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Business Analysis and Project
Management
 How does the work of business analysis and
project management connect?
 How can business analysts and project
managers support each other?
 Who does what, and which tasks overlap?
 Are both roles necessary?

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Why The Business Analyst Role?
 The ones requesting don’t know what they want.
 The engineers do not understand the requestors
business.
 The requestors and engineers have a different
vocabulary.
 The requestors and engineers have different goals.
 The working world of both groups is in constant flux.
 Both groups, and individuals within each group, are
geographically dispersed.

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Why The Project Management Role?
 Monitor and manage the interactions between all the
variables that affect completion of a project.
 Work towards meeting the project goals within the
specified constraints.
 Plan, monitor, manage and drive to completion
project related tasks.

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The BA / PM Alliance
Project Manager Business Analyst
Planning
Administering
Monitoring
Supervising
Motivating
Risk Management
Constraint Management
Resource Management
Reporting
Understand the Business
Investigating
Clarifying
Questioning
Quantifying
Modeling
Formalizing
Risk Identifying
Innovating
Facilitating
Providing Feedback
Communicating
Collaborating
Goal Oriented

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PM / BA Concerns About The Other
PM Fears About BA BA Fears About PM
BA endlessly collecting requirements without effective
coordination, facilitation, or realistic deadline.
PM is unwilling to fully investigate and analyze
stakeholder needs.
BA will create unrealistic expectations with stakeholders
regarding project commitments that jeopardize
deadlines.
PM doesn’t understand the complexity of defining,
analyzing, and managing requirements; rushes the BA.
PM left out of the loop on critical meetings and
conversations (BA off talking to sponsor and
stakeholders alone – after requirements are locked!)
PM sees the BA as an assistant and not owning
anything.
BA doesn’t have functional or technical knowledge to
articulate requirements accurately.
PM moves on after the project is done, but BA has to live
with the consequences (good or bad) and face the
sponsor far into the future.

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BA / PM Collaboration – Scope
Management
Potential Conflict
Areas
Business Analyst Project Manager Both
Scope Management
Defines high level
deliverables scope during
Enterprise Analysis (Pre-
Initiation).
Plans and manages project
scope including integration
of the business analysis
approach and analysis
deliverables into the overall
project.
PM and BA have
responsibilities that relate
to scope.
After project authorization
facilitate agreement and
scope approval from
business stakeholders.
Responsible for project
scope management.
The BA is responsible for
the product deliverables
(solution) scope.
Focus on planning and
defining deliverables scope
and ensuring product
deliverables are aligned
with the project.
The PM is responsible for
the project scope and
incorporating the product
scope into the project
scope.

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BA / PM Collaboration –
Communications Management
Potential Conflict
Areas
Communications
Management
Primarily with stakeholders
directly or indirectly
affected by the product
deliverables (solution)
requirements.
Accountable for all project
related communication with
all project stakeholders.
Stakeholder analysis is
completed by BA and PM.
Communication with above
stakeholders is likely
throughout most of the
project life cycle.
Responsible to the project
sponsor about all aspects
of the project.
The PM needs to know the
stakeholders for project
planning purposes.
The BA needs to know the
stakeholders for business
analysis planning purposes,
which must be incorporated
into the project plan.

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BA / PM Collaboration – Risk
Management
Potential Conflict
Areas
Risk Management
Identifies and
communicates business
risks and analysis risks to
the PM.
Create the overall project
risk management plan and
for managing project risks.
PM and BA identify and
analyze project and
business risks and help
develop risk response
strategies all stakeholders
agree with.
Works closely with the PM
in gaining stakeholder
consensus on risk
strategies.
Responsible for
incorporating business risks
and analysis risks into the
project risk management
plan.
Assess implementation and
organizational readiness
risk and plan/implement
along with the PM
strategies to reduce overall
project risks.

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BA / PM Collaboration – Requirements
Management
Potential Conflict
Areas
Requirements
Management
Responsible for defining,
tracing, and creating a
requirements management
plan for how requirements
will be analyzed,
documented, and managed
throughout the project.
Works with the BA in
planning the business
analysis work.
BA and PM work together
to determine which
activities will be done and
which deliverables will be
produced.
Incorporates the
requirements management
plan and the business
analysis plan into the
comprehensive project
management plan.

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BA / PM Collaboration Strategies
1. Clear, documented, and mutually agreed on
roles and responsibilities.
2. Constant and open communication based on
mutual respect and trust.
3. Have a common understanding of project
methodologies, the requirements process, and
critical success factors.
4. Active business sponsor engagement.

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Why a Common Language Model?
?!!@$@%??

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A Common Language Model

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Early Communication Requirements
Start with finding a balance between:
a) Scope of the work to be investigated
b) Stakeholders who need to be involved
c) Goals of the project
d) Partition the investigation
e) Prioritize the pieces
f) Start doing some detailed business analysis
Initially the following items are important:
a) Narrow down the scope
b) Determine and narrow down the stakeholders
c) Identify the project goals
d) Determine how much work must be investigated
e) Find out how the investigation is partitioned
f) Estimate the amount of effort for each task
g) Compare the budget with the estimate
h) Define the project constraints
Business Analyst Project Manager
Project Manager & Business Analyst
Initially business analyst provides to project manager with:
a) Input about value and priority of different business use cases
b) Possible risks
Initially project manager provides to business analyst with:
a) Project management strategy
b) Involvement of external suppliers
c) Quality review checkpoints
d) Mandated documents

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Stakeholder Management
Difficult Stakeholders:
 Bad News
You can not change another person!
 Good News
You can influence the way another person responds to
you!

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Stakeholder Management - TKI
Low
Low
High
High
Concern for
own needs
Concern for needs of others
Compete
(win / lose)
Collaborate
(win / win)
Avoid
(lose / lose)
Accommodate
(lose / win)
Compromise
(win a bit / lose a bit)
Conflict Preferences

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Stakeholder Personality Types
 Competitive:
 Take a firm stand
 Know what they want
 Operate from a power position
 Collaborative:
 Try to meet the needs of all people involved
 Can be highly assertive, but cooperate effectively
 Understand and acknowledge value of team input
 Compromising:
 Look for solutions that will partially satisfy all
 Willing to give up something in return for something else
 Accommodating:
 Willing to meet the needs of others at the expense of one’s own needs
 Highly cooperative
 Avoiding:
 Tend to evade conflict entirely
 Delegate controversial decisions; accepting default decisions; not wanting to hurt
anybody’s feelings

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TKI – A Time and Place for Every Style
Low
Low
High
High
Concern for
own needs
Concern for needs of others
Compete
(win / lose)
Collaborate
(win / win)
Avoid
(lose / lose)
Accommodate
(lose / win)
Compromise
(win a bit / lose a bit)
Conflict Preferences
 No relationship needed
 Important to win
 Long-term relationship
 Time available
 Worth the effort
 Not worth it
 Relationship unimportant
 To help win next time
 Built relationship
 Collaboration not possible
 Lack of time

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Meeting or Workshop Facilitation
Definition:
“Facilitation is a process in which a person whose
selection is acceptable to all the members of the group,
who is substantively neutral, and who has no substantive
decision-making authority diagnoses and intervenes to
help a group improve how it identifies and solve
problems and make decisions, to increase the group’s
effectiveness.”
- The Skilled Facilitator by Roger Schwarz

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Facilitation – Why Important?
 Mixed teams – hierarchical, functional, cultural.
 Each person has their own individual
perspective.
 Ensure each persons perspective his heard.
 Ensure each persons perspective is understood.
 Lead the project team to a shared
understanding and true consensus.

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Facilitation of What?
 Project meetings
 Kick-off meetings
 Regular status meetings
 Milestone meetings
 Analysis planning meetings
 Project workshops
 Scope discussions
 Business needs discussions
 Business requirements discussions
 Business processes and information discussions
 Functional and non-functional requirements discussions
 QA and testing discussions
 Operational implementation discussions
 Lessons learned discussions

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Facilitation – How?
 Before:
 Clearly identify the purpose of the meeting.
 Narrow discussion points to just a few things.
 Give thought who must, who should, and who should not attend.
 Identify objectives and when they are reached.
 Schedule as convenient to all as possible.
 Identify meeting risks.
 Create and provide an agenda.
 During:
 Lead the group towards objectives.
 Keep the spotlight on the group.
 In conflict situations, intervene based on factual data.

38
After Facilitation, What’s Next?
 During the meeting write down actions publicly, stating
who has what action items to do, and by when.
 Ensure action items are stated clear and
unambiguously.
 Gain agreement on action items prior to end of
meeting.
 Ensure all participants have a copy of the follow-up
action items.
 Periodically follow-up on action items, checking
completion status.

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Discovery of a Problem’s Essence
 Essence:
The problem to solve is some piece of work, some business policy, an organizational process,
etc., that can be stated without any technology that may attend to it. The problem exists
regardless of any technology implementation. That is the essence of the problem.
 Scope:
More projects fail from having too narrow a scope than fail because the scope is too large. The
scope of the problem is always larger, than the solution.
 Viewpoints:
The ability to see the problem space from as many stakeholder viewpoints as necessary.
Understanding which viewpoint is being used at any given moment.
 Don’t Rush:
“If I had one hour to save the world, I would spend 59 minutes defining the problem.”
- Albert Einstein
 Behavior:
The goals of a system are demonstrated by the way it behaves.

40
Requirements Abstractions
 Ignore implementation details!
 Ask what problem needs to be solved.
 Ask what the stakeholder does to solve it.
 Ask why they do it that way.
 Ask why again….
 Ask what the bottlenecks are.
 Ask why they are bottlenecks.
 ….

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Requirements Viewpoints
 Each stakeholder has a point of view.
 Stakeholder’s viewpoints differ.
 Viewpoints are not right or wrong.
 Stakeholder viewpoints are important analysis
findings.

42
Viewpoint Modeling
What NowHow Now What
Future
Model of the current
situation
How
Future
Essential business use
case
Enhanced essential
business use case
Product use case
scenarios

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Scope Modeling
 Context Diagram:
 Oval: The work that the problem solution must perform.
 Rectangle: Adjacent systems that interact with the work that the
problem solution must perform.
 Directed Lines: information flow between the oval and the rectangle.
 Why Create:
 Define and agree on scope and system boundaries of interest.
 Provide a simple high-level picture of solution of interest.
 Help identify elements within the environment the solution of
interest interacts with.
 Identify and define external interfaces the system of interest interact
with.
 Allows the team to share information and gain a common
understanding.

44
Dealing With Problems
“Successful problem solving requires
finding the right solution to the right
problem. We fail more often because we
solve the wrong problem than because we
get the wrong solution to the right
problem.”
- Russell Ackoff (1974)

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Dealing With Problems
 Are we dealing with the right problem(s)?
 Are we aware of all the problems or are some of
them hidden?
 Are the problems worth addressing?
 What type of problem is it overall?
 What sort of problem are the component parts of
the overall problem?
 What are our personal governing variables that are
affecting the frames by which we perceive the
problem(s)?
 Is our approach to addressing the problem part of
the problem?

46
Problem Types
Tame Problems Wicked Problems
Does not mean simple, but means there is a solution.
Do not have straightforward solutions; at times there is
no optimal solution at all.
The more we study a tame problem, the more likely an
optimal solution is found.
The more we study a wicked problem, the less likely an
optimal solution is found.
It can be solved through convergent analytical methods.
It can not be solved through convergent analytical
methods. It is divergent in nature; i.e.: the more people
study it, the more they come to different solutions.
Project management specialization works well in solving
tame problems.
Project management specialization does not work well,
or at all in solving wicked problems.
There is broad agreement as to why something needs to
be done and how to go about doing it.
There is broad disagreement as to why something needs
to be done and / or how to go about doing it.

47
Nature of Problem Types
Present or past oriented Future oriented
Reactive or planned Anticipatory or responsive
Answer known somewhere; either inside or outside the
organization
Answer not known – tends to rely on emotional and
ideological aspects
Requires process, procedure or practices to fix Broad in scope and complex
May be simple or extremely complex Questions and learning drive the work

48
Leadership Needs by Problem Type
Management based Must be knowledge synthesizers
Creates teams, committees, task forces, etc…. Need to be creative
Sets guidelines, milestones, deadlines, due dates, etc…
Create a vision and get others to share it, demonstrate
commitment to it and the mission it represents
Can be delegated Need to foster and facilitate collaboration
Activity based and biased Need to possess entrepreneurial ability
Be a system thinker
Be able to and set priorities
Must be able to form coalitions and build teams
Have the ability to put innovative ideas into practice
Act as colleague, friend, and humanitarian to everyone
in the organization

49
Facilitative Leadership – Core Beliefs
 People are intelligent and capable. They want to do the right
thing.
 Everyone’s opinion has value, regardless of an individual’s rank or
position.
 Groups can make better decisions than individuals acting alone.
 People are more committed to the ideas and plans that they
create.
 People will take responsibility and assume accountability for their
actions and can become partners in the enterprise.
 The role of the leader is to evoke the best possible performance
from each member of the team.

50
Creativity Defined
Noller’s Symbolic Formula for Understanding Creativity
C = fa (K, I, E)
Creativity is a function of:
 Knowledge
 Imagination
 Evaluation
Creativity reflects an interpersonal attitude towards
towards the beneficial and positive use of creativity.

51
Systematic Approach to Creative
Problem Solving
Person
Characteristics of people
Process
Operations people
perform
Product /
Service /
Enhancement
Resultant outcomes
Environment
Organizational
culture,
climate, context

52
Facilitative Creative Problem Solving
in Business Analysis
Analyze
Conceptualize
SynthesizeApply
Evaluate

53
Characteristics of Creativity in
Business Analysis
 Curiosity
 Elaboration
 Imagination

54
Business Analysis Paradigm Shift
“The significant problems we face today, can not be
solved at the same level of thinking we had, when we
created them.”
- Albert Einstein
“If I had only one hour to save the world, I would spend
fifty-five minutes defining the problem, and only five
minutes finding the solution.”
- Albert Einstein

55
Ethnography
Definition:
Ethnography is a social science discipline rooted in
anthropology. Ethnography is the study of mankind.
Ethnographic methods include entering a subject’s own
environment; i.e.: their living room, kitchen,
supermarket, school, beauty shop, repair shop, streets,
etc., all settings of normal daily routine.

56
Ethnographic Research in Business
Analysis
Principles of Effective Observations
Do’s Don’ts
Try to wipe away preconceived notions before starting
your observation.
Begin with a strong expectation of what you expect to
see.
Collect observations under different circumstances and
from varied perspectives.
Draw major conclusions from a very small and/or biased
sample of observations.
Seek informants wisely. Rely on the lone voice of a so-called expert.
Take good notes, including quotes from key
conversations, and collect important artifacts.
Try to commit everything strictly to memory.
Engage active listening. Ask leading questions.
Keep systematic track of observations that surprise you
or contradict your prior beliefs.
Seek and record data primarily to prove a preexisting
hypothesis.

57
Business Analysis Leadership Skills
 A knowledge synthesizer.
 Creative.
 Able to create a vision, get others to share in it, an demonstrate
commitment to it and the mission it represents.
 Foster and facilitate collaboration.
 Possess an entrepreneurial ability.
 A system thinker.
 Prioritize.
 Form coalitions and build teams.
 Ability to convert innovative ideas into practice.
 Act as a colleague, friend, and humanitarian w/o bias.

58
Business Analysis Leadership in Agile
“Agile” is an approach to collaborate among stakeholders, with the
specific goal of delivering value to customers in frequent increments.
To do this successfully, “agile” requires regular and consistent
reflection, continuous learning based on that reflection, and
subsequent adaptation in order to continue delivery of value.

59
(Agile) BA – What First?
 There is no first thing a BA does on a project.
 There are several things a BA does opportunistically:
 Get to know the people involved.
 Understand why the project is undertaken.
 Understand what the project must achieve.
 Get something done.
 Identify obstacles to getting something done.

60
References
White Papers:
 How to Challenge Existing Processes
 An Exploration into Some Problem Solving Strategies
 …
Academic Papers:
 Basic Strategy for Algorithmic Problem Solving (Jorge Vasconcelos)
 The Process of Solving Complex Problems (Andreas Fischer, Samuel Greiff, Joachim Funke)
 Introduction: Leadership for Wicked Problems (Richard H. Beinecke, DPA, ACSW)
Professional Magazines:
 Ethnographic Research: A Key to Strategy (Harvard Business Review; March 2009 Issue)
Books:
 Business Analysis & Leadership (Penny Pullan / James Archer)
 Know What You Don’t Know (Michael A. Roberto)
 The Structure of Scientific Revolution (Thomas Kuhn)
Websites:
 http://agilemethodology.org/

61
Appendices

62
Appendix: A1
Human
Problem
Solving
Approach
Scientific
Problem
Solving
Approach
Creative Problem Solving – The Human
Element

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