Archive for the ‘Investigation’ Category
Posted by James King on January 30, 2012
I wrote an article on stories for production support teams quite a while ago. But I always meant to add a couple more.
The problem with production support is that nobody has time to ask for what they want, but it is all urgent and super critical. So the last thing you often feel like doing is to slow down and understand the context that the user is in (annoyed, relaxed, sitting in a cafe, in their most important sales meeting ever etc). Instead the focus is usually on fixing “it” before you know what “it” really is.
But this often leads to rework. So whenever I am doing enhancements I always spend a little time understanding why the enhancement is needed, who it is needed by and when/how it is likely to be used in the real world. To do this though, I think we always need to spend a little time understanding the people who will use the system and why they need something new.
There are many approaches to doing this, but one I often find useful is “PAC” or “People, Activities and Context”.
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Posted in Agile development, Implementation, Investigation | Tagged: production support, testing, usabilty | 3 Comments »
Posted by James King on July 3, 2011
Force field analysis is a good way to analyse the constraints and the drivers of success when leading change, delivering projects or problem solving in general.
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Posted in Idea management, Investigation, Risk | Tagged: Analysis techniqes, problem solving | Leave a Comment »
Posted by James King on May 1, 2011
I have my own favourite set of questions to ask at the beginning of any assignment or project. I call this my “question compass” because the questions help me to find my way at the ambiguous beginning of most of my projects.
People often write the questions down when I explain them, so I assume they like my question compass too. But often a senior BA will listen politely and then reveal that they have their own “question compass” that works better for them than mine does.
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Posted in Idea management, Investigation | Tagged: questions to ask a stakeholder, Starting a new project | Leave a Comment »
Posted by James King on April 28, 2011
I have always believed that a good business analyst will be able to work on any project because he or she will ask good questions. At the same time though I have always believed that different projects need different approaches and therefore potentially different skills.
Which begs the question – should our approach to starting a project be based on the type of project or on a generic set of questions aimed at understanding the problem to be solved (or the opportunity to be seized)?
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Posted in Idea management, Investigation | Tagged: questions to ask, starting a project | Leave a Comment »
Posted by James King on April 16, 2011
I am running an “advanced BA course” next week and as part of the course we will be exploring the concept of strategy from a business analysts point of view.
One of the trainers I work with (Shane) recommended we provide the participants with a book called “Stand Back and Deliver” by Pollyanna Pixton, Niel Nickolaisen, Todd Little and Kent McDonald.
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Posted in Decisions, Idea management, Investigation, Observations | Leave a Comment »
Posted by James King on February 2, 2011
To really understand any team, it is important to understand the distribution of power within the group and how that power is exercised.
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Posted in Implementation, Investigation, Leading change | Tagged: change management, politics, power, teams, tribes | Leave a Comment »
Posted by James King on January 30, 2011
I recently explained the “Arenas of Change” approach that I often use to understand a team and its environment. So I thought it might be a good time to discuss another approach that I often use – the 7-S framework developed by McKinsey Consulting.
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Posted in Consulting, Investigation, Leading change, Techniques | Tagged: 7S, change management, change readiness assessment, consulting | Leave a Comment »
Posted by James King on January 29, 2011
To communicate effectively, you should align your message to your audience. And to drive effective change, you should align your change to the drivers and constraints faced by those you are planning to impact.
But, as I discuss in a long-winded recent article, that is easier said than done. And unfortunately my solution here is just as long-winded as the last article.
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Posted in Idea management, Implementation, Investigation, Leading change | Tagged: change management, change readiness, stakeholder management | Leave a Comment »
Posted by James King on January 25, 2011
I was talking about assessing documents (and statements) to see whether they are “logical”.
Critics of “logical communication” will quite rightly make the point that a document can be logical, but boring, irrelevant and completely un-compelling. This is true and I should get to talking about it soon.
But before I do I wanted to talk about “Bad logic”.
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Posted in Arguing, Investigation | 3 Comments »
Posted by James King on January 24, 2011
In my last article (“Is that logical?”) I discussed a way to test the logic of a statement. But a document filled with logical statements can still be gobbledegook if the statements are not linked together logically.
So how can we assess the overall logic of a document?
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Posted in Arguing, Investigation, Techniques | Leave a Comment »
