Practical Analyst

Quoteworthy: George Orwell on “Scrupulous Writing”

2010-03-09T19:48:23-08:00

“A scrupulous writer, in every sentence that he writes, will ask himself at least four questions, thus: 1. What am I trying to say? 2. What words will express it? 3. What image or idiom will make it clearer? 4. Is this image fresh enough to have an effect?”

Politics and the English Language, 1946
— George Orwell

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Leadership Through Communication

2010-02-23T19:50:10-08:00

I wanted to share an interesting passage from an article I came across the other day. Dr. Rick Johnson, in the article, Leadership is NOT a Cake Walk, writes (emphasis mine):

Listening should dominate your interaction with your employees. Distractions need to be removed. Trust must be developed. You must have a sincere desire to understand. You must be aware of individual needs. Be attentive and don’t assume anything. Ask for explanations. Don’t interrupt because you want to talk. Try to keep an open mind. Be compassionate and don’t react too quickly. Avoid talking about yourself. These are the basic rules of communication. Remember: You and the person you are communicating with are trying to create a shared meaning.

Meaning is not in the words or symbols you speak. Meaning is in your head. The symbols represent your thoughts. Your goal is to get your meaning that’s in your head into their head, and hopefully, you will create that shared meaning. If you are not being understood, then you are probably not using very good symbols/words to represent your thoughts. Try again until he/she understands your meaning. Communication is shared a responsibility.

There were a couple aspects of the article that caught my attention and made me think. And I like articles that make me think.

First, I agree with the breakdown of communication to the fundamental goal of creating a shared meaning through use of symbols.

As analysts, a considerable portion of our efforts to hone our craft revolve around becoming better communicators, or finding that set of symbols that is most conducive to reaching that critical shared understanding for a particular work effort. Use cases? Prototypes? Textual requirements? Pictures? Something different altogether? Which symbols are most effective and driving to shared meaning, and in which situations? Things really begin to click when we become adept at identifying the right models (symbols) to use in order to tailor a specific message to a specific audience.

Second, I found it interesting that, while the article is directed toward “leaders” of the management variety – as evidenced by the references to “your employees” – the same counsel applies for leadership of a different sort. As an analyst, I find myself replacing references to employees with business stakeholders, project team members, users, etc., and finding that the exact same message of communication and leadership applies squarely to BA’s.

I’ve long considered BA’s to be leaders in organizations precisely because they specialize in bringing together diverse groups of stakeholders with different responsibilities, perspectives and experiences and leading them through a process of discovery, negotiation and collaboration that eventually results in a shared understanding of what is needed. If you want to break down the BA’s job to it’s simplest, that’s what we do. We facilitate shared understanding among project stakeholders. We are communication experts.

I’m not citing any expert sources here, but in my opinion, the ability to unite individuals toward a common purpose is a key aspect of leadership. The common purpose for which the analyst strives is that of achieving a shared understanding of what success for a given product or work effort entails. Once the team has that shared vision of success, that vision has a much better chance at becoming reality.

So while a BA may not typically have direct reports, the leadership advice shared for managers in this article applies every bit as much for the analyst.

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Quoteworthy: Dave West – Agility is Responsiveness to Change

2010-02-23T17:25:46-08:00

There isn’t just one agile: “Agile” is really the ability to respond to change in the most effective way, considering the restraints of the environment in which you’re working.

- Dave West

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On Schedule, As Designed and the Stakeholders are Thrilled!

2010-02-17T17:51:04-08:00

I admit the site has been pretty quiet lately. I haven’t quite kept up with things too well over the past few months. The fact is, though, that while I love blogging and interacting with my peers on all things business analysis, I’ve been working on a much more important project here recently.

My wife and I welcomed our son our son, Jacob into the production environment, on time (seriously – he was even born on his due date, Jan. 28!), as designed, and by all early indications, the stakeholders are thrilled with the end product – more on that in a bit.

Jake managed to exceed all our estimates in size, weighing in at a whopping 10 lbs. 3 oz.

Here is some of the feedback we received from key project stakeholders during the first few post-release days.

Big Brother Will

Will had been wanting a little brother, and was thrilled from the day we found out he’d be getting one. As a dad, I was a bit surprised and pleased at his reaction, though (around the 25 second mark).

Click here to view the embedded video.

Big Sister Anna

Anna wrote the letter below a few days before Jacob was born, and asked that it be delivered to him as soon as possible. Anna’s in first grade so she only spells about as well as I do, but if you read it phonetically you’ll find that she’s pretty happy about our latest “release” as well.

Big Sister Mary

No handwritten letters of videos of 3 year old Mary, but I think her smile speaks for itself.

Lessons Learned

Looking back on our recent “release” has only reaffirmed to me that the most important project I’ll take on in this life – and the one I want to get right if I fail at all else – is to do right by my Manager (and wife, Holly) and my little project team.

I do look to get back into the swing of participating the the online BA community, and being a little more faithful at keeping the site up to date. As it turns out, I’ve been given the opportunity to assume some additional responsibilities at work – still related to business analysis – that will provide me with some new experiences and perspectives.

So, while this post may not provide any new or clever insight on how to be a better business analyst, I appreciate you indulging me in a bit of a vanity post.

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No related posts.

Link Share – February 11, 2010

2010-02-10T17:30:10-08:00

This is a test post of a shared item autopost from my reader.

Quote of the Day

February 10, 2010

4 Tips to Not Destroy Your ProjectSpreadsheets suck for Software Requirements, but if you use them

February 10, 2010

The Cost of Community

February 10, 2010

Rules Discovery

February 10, 2010

Not all innovation needs to be disruptive

February 9, 2010

Agile Beyond Development

February 8, 2010

How Lean Six Sigma affirms agile programming practices

February 8, 2010

Use cases: a personal history (and a bit of a love affair)

February 8, 2010

Trim the Tail

February 6, 2010

The Right Way to Wireframe videos

February 7, 2010

Emerge ground up or build to plan?

February 9, 2010

50 Free UI and Web Design Wireframing Kits, Resources and Source Files – Smashing Magazine

February 6, 2010

Time to Retire “Scope Creep”?

February 7, 2010

Filtering your work life

February 5, 2010

Demystifying use cases – a white paper

February 5, 2010

Friday fun: The Reality of Meetings

February 5, 2010

Back to the Basics – 1 – The problem

February 5, 2010

Agilepalooza Atlanta!

February 4, 2010

Starting a Requirements Engineering Community of Practice: Interview with Anthony Oden, Business Systems Analyst at Dell

February 4, 2010

The new user story is a real story

February 3, 2010

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Give ‘em Pictures!

2010-02-03T17:45:33-08:00

The longer I do this “business analysis” thing, the more convinced I become of the notion one of the surest ways to ensure project success is to get “pictures” in front of the users/stakeholders as early in the process as possible.

Kulak & Guinney tell us that,

The requirements specification does not provide the users with a cohesive view of what the system will accomplish; it is merely an itemization of each of the various functions.

The “itemization” has its use, but for customers it is a little like going to the restaurant and seeing recipes for the various items on the menu instead of images of the delicious end product. I might be able to tell from the recipe whether or not I’d like it, but I would have a much better idea if I had that picture.

As a customer, I don’t want to have to work that hard to tell whether or not I like what I see, and as a customer, I shouldn’t have to.

Bottom line – we often make our customers work much harder than they should have to in order to get a contextual view of what we think the end product will look like.

And when I say “pictures” I am referring to rough sketches, mock-ups, diagrams, prototypes – any tool that takes requirements and puts them in a form that is more familiar to our customers.

Robert Wittig goes a little more into the psychology behind how we process an essay as opposed to a picture (emphasis mine).

When we read an essay, we attack it a few words at a time, we do not consciously try to ’see’ the whole essay at once, the way we at first view a picture. There is an interesting difference here, in how our consciousness manages these two different tasks. With the essay, it starts with the words, the small bits of information, and slowly builds upward toward full understanding of the whole. With a picture, it starts with the whole picture, and gradually works its way down into the details. Our consciousness cannot hold either an entire essay or an entire picture in its consciousness at one time. For some reason, it prefers to approach these two tasks from opposite ends.

Wittig’s description of how we process pictures differently than words is precisely why it is so important to give users visual models early. We don’t want them to have to begin with the details and try to construct the whole of the product mentally. As it is, natural language is ambiguous and can be interpreted in many ways even when we take every care to minimize ambiguity.

Instead, let’s provide a rough sketch of the big picture – something that resonates with the user or business stakeholder, and something they don’t have to work so hard to understand – and iteratively refine it until it becomes a solution that will delight the customer. Visual models are much less ambiguous than words alone.

To be clear, I am not inferring that we ought not do requirements in written form, only that they should be supplemented – as early as possible – with other models that help customers understand them. As the visual models are refined, the functional specification or use case is refined in serial.

A customer is much more likely to engage in the review process when they feel that they understand the materials they are asked to review. When we hand them a BTD (big thick document) and tell them we want their feedback at the meeting in 3 days, we are doing them and ourselves a disservice.

After all – how much do you, as an analyst, look forward to peer-reviewing your teammates 190 page document that’s packed to overflowing with colorless “system shall” statements?

More to come on visual models, and maybe a few ideas on how they can be used to in concert with textual specs, but I wanted to get this out sooner than later. Been much too long since I last posted!

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Quoteworthy: John D. Rockefeller Jr.

2010-01-25T17:41:47-08:00

The secret of success is to do the common things uncommonly well.

- John D. Rockefeller

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Quoteworthy: Jim Brosseau

Quoteworthy: Blaine Lee

2010-01-14T17:54:37-08:00

Before you attempt to set things right, make sure you see things right.

- Blaine Lee

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Quoteworthy: George Orwell on “Scrupulous Writing”

Quotable: Arnold Toynbee

2009-12-01T18:24:29-08:00

Apathy can be overcome by enthusiasm, and enthusiasm can be aroused by two things: first, an idea which takes the imagination by storm; and second, a definite, intelligible plan for carrying that idea into action.

- Arnold Toynbee

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Quoteworthy: The bitterness of poor quality

2009-11-12T19:23:36-08:00

The bitterness of poor quality remains long after the sweetness of meeting the schedule has been forgotten.

– Anonymous

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