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.
Archive for the ‘Idea management’ Category
How to use force field analysis
Posted by James King on July 3, 2011
Posted in Idea management, Investigation, Risk | Tagged: Analysis techniqes, problem solving | Leave a Comment »
One the other hand, your question compass is better
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.
Posted in Idea management, Investigation | Tagged: questions to ask a stakeholder, Starting a new project | Leave a Comment »
On the one hand, I always ask the same questions
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)?
Posted in Idea management, Investigation | Tagged: questions to ask, starting a project | 1 Comment »
Why should we do this project? So what?
Posted by James King on April 24, 2011
If we don’t know why we are doing a project, then maybe we shouldn’t be doing it. But on many projects, if you ask the team “what will be different when we finish?” they look confused and start talking about the tasks they are performing.
But the tasks being performed should be moving toward some goal, which should be based on making something different to the way it is now (or would be without the project). Otherwise, to quote my grandmother:
How do you know you are not mistaking activity for progress?
Posted in Idea management | Tagged: benefit realisation, Project portfolio selection | Leave a Comment »
Categorising projects – what kind of project is this?
Posted by James King on April 16, 2011
As I mentioned in my last post, I have been pondering how to apply some of the ideas from a book called “Stand Back and Deliver” to my own work.
Posted in Idea management | Tagged: Comparing projects, portfolio managment | Leave a Comment »
Stealing ideas from Stand Back and Deliver
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.
Posted in Decisions, Idea management, Investigation, Observations | Leave a Comment »
A course on change management in the real world
Posted by James King on April 5, 2011
I spend a lot of time training teams in new approaches like agile development, but most of this training is about new techniques themselves rather than the process of managing the adoption and acceptance of those techniques.
I also spend a lot of time coaching project managers in how to run more effective projects, but I find that a lot of my time is spent on helping them to deal with internal politics, resistance to their projects and communication issues – which do not form part of most project management courses.
As a result I believe there is a need for good training in the area of managing change.
Posted in Capability growth, Courses, Idea management, Products | Tagged: agile, change management, communication plan | 1 Comment »
Agile documentation: Handover to production support
Posted by James King on February 10, 2011
What knowledge does a production support team need when a project goes live? And what do project teams actually give them?
Some agile teams catapult story cards across to the support team with no thought as to whether these will be of any use to anyone.
Even worse, some teams think that being “agile” means “never having to document anything and never having to say you are sorry”.
Posted in Idea management, Implementation | Tagged: agile, knowledge management, production support handover | 1 Comment »
Creating stories for the support team on an agile project
Posted by James King on February 9, 2011
This article is one of a couple I am writing to explain how agile projects can hand over useful information to support teams if they want to.
So this article is a (hopefully) straightforward description of how we can use stories to define the knowledge that to create and handover when the project goes live.
Posted in Agile development, Idea management, Implementation | Tagged: agile documentation, agile knowledge management, production support handover | Leave a Comment »
Would you hire a project manager to plant a tree?
Posted by James King on February 5, 2011
Many great ideas fall on deaf ears. So organisations bring in project managers to make sure we implement good ideas properly.
Good project managers define and clarify the idea, break the idea into features and then deploy the features into production. But quite often, people just don’t make use of the shiny new features they have been given.
Which is another way of saying that the great idea fell on deaf ears. So some organisations bring in change managers (and trainers and technical writers) to make sure people understand the new idea.
Good change managers make sure that the project is visible to stakeholders, supported by the important stakeholders and that the features being deployed are explained properly to the users. But quite often, the users go back to their old ways after a week, or they complain about the new features and the “stupid” projects that created them.
Which is another way of saying that the great idea fell on deaf ears. So what goes wrong? Why do so many good ideas fail to get adopted?
Posted in Decisions, Idea management, Leading change, Reflection | Tagged: change management, ideas | Leave a Comment »
