Outsourcing And IT

At STAR BASE, we are application developers.  Normally if an application developer has an issue with how to do something in SQL, a good developer can google it and come up with a quick solution.  But when it comes to generating and using a list of sequential numbers, it appears that the most common method used could be categorized as brute force.  That is generating a table with all known integers, or at least enough to support your application, and join to it.  However, I have found a solution, that admittedly may only work with DB2, that uses recursive SQL to solve the problem. Check this out:

with sequence (seq) as (

  select 1 from sysibm/sysdummy1

  union all

  select s.seq + 1 from sequence s where s.seq < 9

)

select * from sequence

This bit of SQL will generate the following response:

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

To adjust the ending point, change 's.seq < 9' to the appropriate ending point.
To adjust the starting point, change 'select 1' to the appropriate starting point.
To adjust the increment, change 'select s.seq + 1' to the appropriate increment.

For example to generate a list from 10 to 100 by 5 you can use the following SQL:

with sequence (seq) as (

  select 10 from sysibm/sysdummy1

  union all

  select s.seq + 5 from sequence s where s.seq < 100

)

select * from sequence

This can be used to solve several problems including generating n random numbers, determining the missing numeric keys in a file, and determining the numbers in a range.  Can you modify it to work with your DB? 

Another area that many Cincinnati, Dayton and other organizations across the country and internationally miss is utilizing the Business Analyst (BA) role in Enterprise Analysis, in particularly in giving assistance in “Project Portfolio Management”.

The goal of the BA in this role is to ensure that the proper mix of projects get approved through the organizational project governance body that best helps the organization achieve its short-term and long-term strategic objectives.  In addition the BA should ensure that there are no conflicting requirements or objectives of the projects being approved.

I worked for an organization that had a formal IT Steering Committee that considered each and every enterprise application development project proposed.  This IT Steering Committee was made up of the business leadership from all business lines and regions of the business and the Senior IT manager responsible for application software development within the organization.  The members of this IT Steering Committee would then rank the projects that were before the committee to determine which projects would get approved; those receiving the lowest ranking would receive approval.  Many organizations may have similar processes, whether they actually take a vote or not; but this organization missed the point because there were no BAs involved in this process.  The projects were presented to the IT Steering Committee by the IT Manager.  The process would have achieved greater results if the Business Executive Sponsor presented the project to the IT Steering Committee as they are most passionate about the business need and that the project would benefit them.  The BA would sit in support of the project as they did the initial analysis that provided the business need and the solution idea for that business need.

However, in this role the Business Analyst, or Enterprise Analyst (EA), would work with the IT Steering Committee or governance body to ensure that the projects receiving approval are the optimal mix of projects and helps the organization best fulfill its strategic objectives.  This EA would present to the governing body the strategic alignment and conflicting issues of the set of projects before the governance body and make recommendations as to the projects that should receive approval based on those criteria.

With this additional information the governance body can make a more informed decision to ensure the portfolio of projects that receive approval are best aligned with the strategic objectives of the organization and reduce the conflicting interests, requirements, issues and scope between the project.  This will help ensure that the organization meets its strategic objectives from year to year.

Does your company utilize the BA role to assist the IT business solution governance body in approving enterprise application development projects?

Last week I began to demonstrate the value a Business Analyst (BA) brings to the table in the area of Solution Validation by talking about how they bring value by ensuring the thorough testing of the solution prior to implementation.  Let’s continue in this area with an often overlooked and underutilized task of the BA “Assessing Organizational Readiness”.

It would be unfruitful for an enterprise application development team to take a project through the project life cycle (PLC) and implement the solution if nobody in the organization is going to use it.  I have witnessed many times a solution gets implemented and the business users don’t like the new process and often times find ways around it.  Business users try to continue on a path of “doing it the way we have been doing it for years”; which makes the job of the BA more difficult as he/she is the Agent of Change within the organization.  To get the business users out of that mindset and accept new, more efficient, ways of doing things is one of the goals of assessing organizational readiness.  This task is centered on identifying whether the organization, and the people in it, is ready to effectively use a solution ready for implementation.  The Business Analyst should identify the forces that support and oppose the proposed change to the organization.  In this way the BA can work to mitigate the opposition of the change, by identifying any training needs or other techniques that will make implementation of the solution go more smoothly and be effectively used for its intended purpose.

Some of the techniques that a BA may use to assess the organizational readiness are Data Flow diagrams and Process Models, to show the change the proposed solution will have on the organization and business users; Organizational Models to help identify stakeholders or groups of stakeholders that will be affected by the proposed IT business solution; Focus Group, Interviews and Surveys can help identify business users’ concerns about the proposed application solution; Risk Analysis helps identify all potential risks to the organization for implementing the proposed solution and develop a mitigation strategy for each risk; Force Field Analysis to identify the forces for and against the IT business solution; and SWOT Analysis to identify the organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats in preparing for the proposed change.

When doing these techniques to identify the organization’s readiness to accept the change required, the BA needs to be aware of the Culture of the organization and the impact the proposed solution will have on it; Operations and how the IT business solution will change how the organization accomplishes its processes; Security, physical and electronic, how the changes the solution will bring about affects the security of the organization; and Stakeholders, stakeholder groups, locations, functions, processes and concerns in relation to the enterprise application being affected.

An organization of Cincinnati, Dayton or other business community can benefit by effectively utilizing a BA for assessing the readiness of the organization to accept and effectively use an IT business solution by enabling necessary change management practices, decreasing solution implementation timelines, freeing up other project resources to move on to other responsibilities, identifying training needs and assists in identifying transition requirements necessary for solution implementation.

Do you do any type of Organizational Readiness Assessment prior to IT business solution implementation?

One of the tasks of a Business Analyst (BA) is Solution Validation, as it is defined in the BABOK®.  This is usually carried out by supporting the testing phase of the project once the entire solution or one or more features of the solution has completed development.  This would depend if you are using the Waterfall or Agile approach to application software development.

The BA should not be executing the testing of the solution, but be supporting the testing effort.  However, in reality in many Cincinnati and Dayton organizations, and organizations across the globe; with limited resources the BA is sometimes put in the role of actually performing the testing effort.  Whether they actually execute the testing or support the testing effort their main objective in this phase of the project is to validate the solution.  The BA accomplishes this goal by identifying acceptance and evaluation criteria, track and investigate issues that come out of the testing effort and performing root cause analysis on defects identified in the testing effort.

Take a step back from the testing phase of the project and realize that while the project was in the development phase, or slightly before, the BA should be engaged and preparing for the testing phase of the application software development project by preparing the test scripts.  In preparing the test scripts the BA should ensure that all the business and non-functional requirements of the solution get tested.  This process assists in providing requirements traceability from beginning to end; from stakeholder to solution.

In being engaged in this manner in the testing phase of the project, the BA can help ensure that the IT business solution meets the business need on an ongoing basis. This happens by reducing re-work, reducing the number of projects necessary, freeing up project resources and increasing the probability of project success as defined by the business stakeholders and project sponsor.

How does your organization utilize business analysts during the testing phase of the project?  Does your organization utilize the Waterfall or Agile approach for application software development projects?  Does your organization reap the benefits listed above of engaging the business analyst in solution validation? Please leave your comments to tell me how Cincinnati, Dayton or other business community organizations utilize the BA in the testing phase of the project.

There is no doubt that a considerable amount of resources of an organization is spent on requirement definition and documentation no matter where the maturity of the Business Analysis practice within the organization.  The business has a considerable interest in requirements that lead to IT business solutions and it can define the direction and prosperity of the entire organization.

By maintaining requirements for re-use the Business Analyst (BA) can considerably reduce the resources spent on requirements definition and documentation.  In this way the BA identifies long-termed used requirements of the organization that may be used by multiple systems, or continually come up for solutions on multiple projects.  These may include requirements that the organization must meet on an ongoing basis, as well as requirements that are implemented as part of an IT business solution.

Whether these requirements are maintained in a repository or not; they must be identified, clearly defined and available to all BAs within the organization.  When a requirement must be changed, the change must be communicated to the BA community and understood by the business community concerned.

Maintenance of requirements for re-use can facilitate impact analysis of new, proposed changes to the business, reduce analysis time and effort, assist in the maintenance of previously implemented IT business solutions and support other business initiatives; including training, corporate governance and standards compliance.

Cincinnati and Dayton companies; and companies across the globe need to mature their BA practice within the organization toward effective maintenance management of business requirements, including requirements for re-use.  This will give these organizations the benefits stated above and continue the BA practice on the path toward a Business Analysis Center of Excellence (BACoE).

Do you have an effective requirements management process?  Do you use a software requirements repository tool to accomplish this?

Any application development team member, whether in Cincinnati, Dayton or other business community, knows that a software development project goes through many phases, known as the Project Life Cycle (PLC), and through many tasks within those phases.  These include: develop business case, develop project charter, develop project scope, develop solution scope, elicit business and non-functional requirements from stakeholders, requirements management and communication, risk assessment, develop project schedule, develop work breakdown structure, analyze current-state systems, develop future-state models, develop use cases, develop user stories, develop data models, development functional design, develop technical design, develop solution, handle development issues, test solution, facilitate user acceptance testing, implement solution, post-implementation support, handle production issues caused by solution, turn over solution to IT support team. (Quite a list, huh?)  Your list may be slightly different than mine, but I believe the essence of a project has been captured.

The Project Manager is responsible for the project and all these tasks, but to have one person be completely responsible for every piece of an application development project would be overwhelming and considerably increase project schedules.  This person would not only have to perform the management tasks but also communicate progress, schedule, risks, issues and more to project stakeholders. This can be very time consuming.  By placing a second person on the project to off load responsibility for some of these tasks (AKA Business Analyst), you can considerably reduce project timelines and more likely to produce better IT business solutions.  You can also possibly better utilize project resources by more effective management.  The Project Manager and Business Analyst are accountable to work together for project success.  By making the Business Analyst accountable for project completion and the solution meets the business need and making the Project Manager accountable that the project completes on time and on budget you considerably increase probability that everybody concerned will deem the project a success.

Can you pick out the Project Management and Business Analysis tasks out of the list of tasks above?

As a Business Analyst (BA) we are often asked to help design a new user interface and the supporting application to perform a required function in the Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system. If you are talking about a web interface you may work with a graphic designer, or perhaps not. You go off with your business application development design team and create a mock-up of the interface and write a design specification describing how it is to be built.  Often the business is not represented on the design team. The design team may pass the mock-up and design specification by a business Subject Matter Expert (SME) before attempting to get it approved; but then they are often approved by a business manager without ever being seen by the end-users that will actually use the new application. Often, features and function are primary concerns when the design is being created. What if we change focus of our design team?

Last time we took a look at the first of two main concepts that of User Experiences Practices—Personas. I hope you are able to see the power that Personas can have for an enterprise application development team. Let’s now take a look at the second concept—Usability testing.

As I noted often an application with a new user interface, or changes to user interfaces are often put into place without the end users ever seeing the interface, or changes to the interface. This can lead to the users not liking or using the interface.   This outcome can be changed by conducting some Usability Testing during the design of the interface or changes to an interface.

Usability Testing is done by selecting three to five persons from the user community, usually from the primary or secondary user group of the user interface, and have them test a mockup of the interface. No more than five users are necessary for usability testing as you will receive decreasing benefits from additional users. Also, you may have to run more than one round of usability testing. Take the results of the first round that suggest changes are needed, make those changes to the mockup and run another round of usability testing with different three to five users.

The idea of Usability Testing is to create an interface that is intuitive for the users to use. So you will create a mockup of the interface, it does not have to be functional a paper mockup will do. Just so the users get an idea of what the interface will look like. You will also create user scenarios to have user perform tasks using the interface. Show them the interface and ask them to do the tasks. Do not give them hints or tell them how to do the tasks, you wish to see how intuitive the use of the interface is. If they take a long time to figure out how to do the task or have questions on how to use the interface then the interface needs designed to be easier for the user to use.

Using the two concepts of User Experience Practices will help your application development teams design more user friendly interfaces. Are you ready to design for user experience?

Weary Cincinnati/Dayton IT job seekers hope it’s true. Politicians declare that it should be true. Parents of young graduates with Computer Science degrees need it to be true. So is it? Are businesses beginning to backsource (bring IT services that they had offshored back to the U.S.) in significant ways? What about outsourced jobs? Are those moving back in-house?

This month, STAR BASE invites you to help us answer these outsourcing and backsourcing questions by participating in our 2011 Pulse Survey. This brief and confidential survey will go a long way in helping us all better understand the outsourcing/offshoring strategies businesses like yours are embracing today.

And, if you are motivated by swag the way I am, here’s another reason to take our survey. All participants are entered into a drawing for a Powermat wireless charging station. So take a moment, take the survey and share your backsourcing story with STAR BASE.

As a Business Analyst (BA) we are often asked to help design a new user interface and the supporting application to perform a required function in the Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system. If you are talking about a web interface you may work with a graphic designer, or perhaps not.  You go off with your business application development design team and create a mock-up of the interface and write a design specification describing how it is to be built. Often the business is not represented on the design team. The design team may pass the mock-up and design specification by a business Subject Matter Expert (SME) before attempting to get it approved; but then they are often approved by a business manager without ever being seen by the end-users that will actually use the new application. Often, features and function are primary concerns when the design is being created. What if we change focus of our design team?

I would like to introduce two concepts to which I have been recently introduced—Personas and Usability Testing. These two concepts are the main concepts of User Experience Practices. The purpose of User Experience Practices is to change the focus of the design team from features and function to the users the new application is to serve and usability of the application. Have you ever rolled out a new application and user interface to find out that the users hated it or even worse refused to use it? Have you heard of times new applications were rolled out but they did not make the user’s job easier or save them time or have any added benefit to the organization? Designing for User Experience would have changed those outcomes. Let’s look at these two components and see how they are used.

A Persona is an artifact (written document) that consists of a narrative relating to a specific user group. It should include a picture and an abstract name that you can live with.  So don’t name your Persona Mickey Mouse, name it Stan, Ned, Alain, or Liza instead. You don’t name them after actual people in the organization but use an abstract name that represents a group of people. Say you are a BA working with a design team that has been charged with designing a new Order Entry system. So what user groups (customers) is your new application going to serve—Order Entry/Customer Service clerks. Yes, the company has six manufacturing locations with at least two Order Entry clerks in each location; the larger facilities have as many as eight Order Entry clerks. So what Personas do you have—one local Order Entry Clerk, let’s name her Emily and she represents eight order entry clerks. In some instances you may find it necessary to have two Personas to represent this one group. The remote site Order Entry clerks will be represented by one or more personas. Who else—what about Sales Representatives that can enter orders as well. The Company has 16 Sales Representatives; 13 of which enter orders on a weekly basis, one who will enter an order or two every month and two who never enter orders. Sounds like three more personas, maybe more. Not considering reports that Sales or Upper Management will want out of the system, as these are often pulled out of the database after the Order has been entered; what about Inventory Management/Purchasing. If an Order Entry clerk enters an order that uses any extraordinary large amount of a raw material if Purchasing is not aware of it until tomorrow’s report comes out, in a day or two the manufacturing plant may be out of that raw material. Therefore, my Order Entry system must send an “alert” message to Purchasing for extremely large orders so that they can account for that material used and keep the manufacturing plant working. How about external customers who have to get the order to our company, they have to call the Customer Service Representative (CSR), how long do they have to stay on the phone with the CSR to get the order in. What if the customer sends their order in via EDI; so an IT persona is needed. Fax, email, XML file—all acceptable ways of receiving a customer’s order; these are often handled by a CSR or IT, but we may want to build an automatic process to enter these customer orders. These methods of order entry need to be specified on the external customer, CSR and IT personas.

The Persona Map—now that you have written all your personas, we need to focus on the important people that our new interface and application will be used to support. So take a very large cardboard poster and draw a target (bulls-eye). In the very center will be our Primary Persona. The one most affected by our new interface, probably the CSR/Order Entry clerks; but you can only have one, so we select Emily. In the inner ring of the target you can place two to three Secondary Personas. In our example, this most likely will be other local CSRs and remote CSRs.   In the outer ring of the target you can place three to four Tributary Personas. For our example, possibly Sales Representatives Personas and possibly IT personas. Now this Persona Map should be hung in the room where the design team will work, or if necessary duplicated and given to every design team member. Now we have changed the focus of the design team from features and function to the people who will use the new interface and application.

This is the first step of designing for User Experience. In my next post we shall explore the second step—Usability Testing. Even without knowing about Usability Testing, can you see the power that Personas can have?

My esteemed colleague, Kupe Kupersmith, wrote an article for BA Times last week stating that “Agile is a Fad”. Now I know that will get a few of my other friends’ up in arms ready to defend their approach to IT project work. I can see the smoke coming out of their ears now. However, if you read Kupe’s article he says that “the word agile is a fad, the agile movement is definitely a trend.” I think it is safe to say that Agile is the hottest trend in IT project work these days. Many companies have switched over to Agile over these past few years and many more companies are considering the move. It has prompted many training courses by education providers. So let’s take a deep, hard look at the Agile “movement” and see if it is a fad, or is it here to stay? Is Agile really any better than Waterfall? What is the next best thing that will come down the pike?

Agile came upon the IT application development and software requirements arenas like a wave, gaining support as it moved. As education providers developed courses to teach IT application development teams to “go agile”, it gained momentum. All this happened in these past few years in very much Fad style. A fad starts very abruptly and gains momentum as it moves, forceful and overpowering; like a wave. Will Agile be here with the wave reverses course and heads back out to sea? This is where the fad loses its zest, when people realize that this is no better than what we had before, or it is swept over by the bigger and stronger wave of the next best fad to come down the pike. The wave reverses course and heads back out to see and disappears as fast as it appeared.  

Is Agile better than what we had before (Waterfall)? I won’t even go there because depending on who you ask, you will get a different answer. You could ask 100 people and probably get somewhere near 50 yes’ and 50 no’s.   That is built quite a bit on personal opinion. The one thing I notice with Agile as it is used today is that it is misapplied by many companies. They talk agile and think that they are using agile, but in reality they have adopted some of the components of agile, such as sprints, scrums and the daily stand-up meeting, but they miss the boat on delivering a piece of working software at the end of each sprint. When your five minute daily stand-up meeting becomes 15 or 20 minutes, all you really have accomplished is keeping your application development team from doing actual work. There are other places that say they are agile, but their sprint is six months long. According to the principles of Agile a sprint should be a couple of weeks to a couple of months long, with a preference to shorter timescale. So a six month sprint is not agile.

The biggest downfall to the Agile principles that I have seen in my experience is the need for comprehensive engagement of the Product Owner. In my experience, Business managers have a business to run and helping IT develop software is not in their job description, they don’t want to talk to the geeks. However, the smart Business managers know that if you don’t talk to the geeks, hard telling what you are going to get out of them. They need more direction than one sit down meeting saying “here is what I need”; and we will not go into the language barrier. If you can’t make IT understand what problem you are trying to solve, then you probably will not get the best IT business solution out of them.

So, is Agile just a Fad? Through all its misapplications and shortcomings, I don’t see agile going away anytime soon. It will not whisk away with the outgoing tide. Is Agile the “Be All of All”? There are some things that you just cannot develop with an agile approach. Some companies have developed a hybrid of the agile and waterfall approaches, so Agile is not the answer to all of IT’s business solutions problems. What will the next great approach be that comes down the pike? My crystal ball is not working today, but it is sure to hit the IT project management world just the way Agile did a few years back. Will IT management be ready for it? Only time will tell.

Still a very timely topic of discussion, from the person who wishes to transition into a Business Analysis career who wants to know what skills they must have to be a successful BA, to the new BA who wants to know what skills they need to add to their repertoire, to the Senior BA who wants to know where to go next in their career; everyone wants to know how to improve their skills to get to that next level of their career.

Two of my colleagues take on this subject, Kupe in BA Times discusses soft skills vs. hard skills. He notes the importance of soft skills in being a successful BA. Kupe is not suggesting hard skills are not important, he notes that hard skills is what is going to get you noticed, stand out in a crowd, but it is the soft skills that will land you on that next level and keep you there. After all, nobody wants to work with a jerk.

Laura discusses whether Project Management is the next step in the career of a Senior BA at Bridging-the-Gap. She discusses how this use to be the case years ago but is no longer the only option. In fact, we now see the reverse happening where Project Management professionals transition into Business Analysis careers. For those who have reached the pinnacle of their BA career, besides Project Management, they could move into BA Management, creating a BA Office within their organization, Enterprise Analysis, Management Strategic Consulting, Business Consulting, Business Subject Matter Expert or external IT and Business Management Consulting. There are as many paths as there are people willing to forge them.

Elizabeth Larson will be taking on a similar topic at the Southwest Ohio Business Development Conference in April. She will discuss whether Business Analyst and Project Manager should be one or two roles within the organization. At this very same conference I will be presenting the topic “Improving Your BA Skills: From Self-Assessment to Self-Improvement”. This is where I will discuss the many ways you can gain new and improve current BA skills.   This is a conference not to be missed if you are in the Cincinnati area on April 29, 2011.

This topic has been around for many years and as you can see is still a very hot topic today, getting a lot of press. There is no one way to build your career, forge your own path. Remember you are in charge of your career. Unemployment, downsizing or IT outsourcing may derail your plans for a time, but don’t allow that to stop you permanently. For some general guidelines, as Kupe suggests, develop the hard skills necessary to accomplish the tasks of a BA and get you noticed. Then develop the soft skills that will land you on that next plateau of your career. Remember, that your current job is not your career, it is just your current position in your career; you decide where to go next.  Let your passions guide you. If Project Management doesn’t excite you, good; now you have other options to continue your career.

Those of you who follow my ramblings know that I have been a strong proponent for Enterprise Analysis and the strategic value of the Business Analyst within the organization.  My views can be ascertained from my previous articles:

BA: Business Alignment for the Organization

Business Case vs. Project Charter; Do You Need Both?

Business Analysis has far reaching impact on the Organization

IT Governance Needs to Change to Gain a Competitive Advantage

Making the Business Case for an Internal BABOK

Building the Business Case for the Business Case

Business Analysis: Building the Bridge

BA; The Architect

Yet, as the International Institute of Business Analysis (IIBA^®) grows in recognition, I find that many organizations, especially SMBs, do not utilize the BA role for strategic value.  Most organizations have BAs and use them in their traditional tactical role on projects in requirements gathering and solution validation; but very few organizations utilize the BA role for Enterprise Analysis.

As the framers of the Business Analysis Body of Knowledge^® (BABOK^®) sit down to write version 3.0 of the BABOK^® Guide and continue to work on the Enterprise Analysis extension to the BABOK^® Guide, I hope that they put particular emphasis on this very important BA role.  Perhaps companies will take note and start to utilize their BAs to help the organization achieve its strategic goals.

The BABOK^® Guide does mention tasks that a BA may perform under Enterprise Analysis, including but not limited to Capability Gap Analysis, Market Research and Feasibility Studies.  However, it falls short of describing how the BA should perform their strategic duties.  The BA having performed the Enterprise Analysis task(s) builds a business case, resulting in a Business Case document, for a solution to resolve a business need of the organization identified during the Enterprise Analysis activity.  This business case is presented by the Project Sponsor to the project review board (governance body) for approval to proceed with the project.  The Enterprise Analyst (EA), having performed the up-front analysis that resulted in the business case, should sit in support of the business case and the Project Sponsor.  He/she should be available at the presentation to answer any questions the governance body may have concerning the business case.

The EA also works with the governance body to ensure that every business case brought up for approval has traceability back to the organization’s strategic goals and objectives and that the most optimal mix of projects get approved that best contributes to the organization’s strategic goals.  This would be a portfolio of projects that do not conflict with each other and advances the organization the best in achieving its strategic goals.

When we see organizations utilize the EA role more effectively perhaps we will see better project success rates in the Standish Group’s CHAOS Report.
 

One of my fellow Techserve Alliance members sent out an article that I thought was pretty interesting.  You can view the original article here.  It reinforced the idea that local talent is important.  STAR BASE, Inc. has always focused on Cincinnati and Dayton IT talent, so I felt validated.  Some of you may think I’m crazy for talking about a Talent Battle while unemployment is still so high.  I don’t think so, because some IT talent is already hard to find.  Here are some key points from the article in winning the up coming Talent Battle.

1. Eliminate Past Biases.  Many companies don’t consider candidates who they have interviewed but declined previously. There is often a strong bias against them, as in, “We interviewed that guy in January, and he wasn’t any good …” Given that most companies don’t have highly refined selection processes; this is an error in strategy.  Most companies’ selection process is very subjective.  For companies to win, they will need to revisit local talent who they may have interviewed previously for other roles.
2. Don’t Overweight Experience and Technical Skills.  Most companies routinely overweight years of experience and technical skills through the interview process.  A question that needs to be asked is, “Is it possible for someone with five years of experience to outperform someone with ten years of experience? How is that possible?” Smart IT service providers will help their customers select on the portfolio of attributes that drive success in a job, being careful to not overweight less-predictive candidate attributes such as years of experience. Doing so will increase the candidate pool that is available locally.
3. Map your Internal Talent.  Now more than ever, developing internal talent is a smart strategy, as it also correlates to reduced attrition. So for those jobs that can be sourced internally, organizations will be well served by doing so, provided it supports the local search strategy.
4. Measure the Opportunity Cost of Key Vacancies.  Understand the business case for paying relocation. There could be a good argument for what jobs might warrant a rich pot of relocation dollars. This will put you ahead of the game.
5. Focus on the Local. Now would be a good time to look at your suppliers and choose ones that are local and focus on the local.  (I think I may know of one…)
6. Outsmart Your Competitors.  Smart companies will quickly recognize that improving the value package offered to employees to attract and keep more local talent carries far greater ROI than buying someone out of their underwater mortgage, or letting a key role in the organization sit vacant.
 7. Keep Your Best:  As always, the best local talent to attract and recruit are the strong performers who are already working for your company. But most companies have cut bonuses, reduced merit increases, and kept job promotions to a minimum in order to control costs during recent challenging economic times.

Now is a good time to think about your Talent Strategy.  Don’t get caught short in the up coming Talent Battle.

 

I know some of my application development colleagues my say “heard it”, but a virtual desktop is cool! We are currently running Windows XP as our company standard. We moved our 9 physical servers running Windows 2000 on ancient (and failing hardware) about 2 years ago. Most of our clients are currently on XP, but some are looking into moving to Windows 7, and one is going to Vista. When my application development friends stop laughing, they are doing this because they have certified their testing with Vista, and they will have to re-certify with Windows 7. They want to move to Vista now, and move again in a year or two.
We can just follow the Windows upgrade path, but given the success of virtualizing our servers, my boss gave me the green light to review our desktop strategy. Some application development and management people would say why? Well it gives us flexibility in what we can do. If we just move to Windows 7, and our clients are still on XP, then we are too ahead of the curve in terms of support. We do have some XP only development tools, so why not just keep them on their OS? With a virtualized desktop, we can run any OS we want. If our clients want us to run specialized software, we can set up an OS just for that client. The other big change is that we are using Ubuntu 10.4 as our host operating System. This is to reduce the memory requirements, but it has other great side effects. Our consultants can learn (at least the basics) of a new OS! If they are under constraints, they can fire up their Windows VM and get to work, or they can do the basic stuff (surfing, checking email) on Ubuntu. In time they can learn how to install packages and other tasks without disrupting productivity. The can even use Windows 7 and learn it too. The best side effect (for management anyway) is that we can still get a lot of mileage out of our 5-7 year old laptops. Our laptops have 2 gigs of RAM, so even if we went pure Windows 7, we would have a performance hit, especially when you fire up an IDE like Eclipse! The more I play with Ubuntu, the more I like it. I will probably use it as my main OS, but others can use XP, Vista, Windows7, or whatever we can virtualize. Choice is a great thing!

This month I have been exploring the IT and Business working relationship.  It is a hot topic these days getting a lot of press.  STAR BASE Consulting is conducting a pulse survey asking what is the relationship like in your organization.  BA Times notes that your “Customers Don’t Want to Work with You!”  A couple of weeks ago, I looked at the relationship and how BAs could reduce the rivalry, if there is one.  Last week I took the relationship to the Organizational level and described how the Organization can build a unified, collaborative team.

You say Organizational Structure, Seating Charts, Enterprise Analysts (EA) and Business Analysts (BA) are all find and dandy, but what about me and my small IT shop?  I don’t have enough people to split into EAs and BAs.  How do you split one person?  Small-to-Medium Sized Businesses (SMBs) usually have an IT shop of 10 people or less.  Maybe at most 2 of them will be BAs.  I even had one CIO recently tell me that in his small shop he doesn’t really have full-time BAs, but five Programmer/Analysts that do their own analysis.  So we will assume these are the hybrid Developer/Business Analyst role within the organization.  So in this kind of structure, how can we improve the IT and Business working relationship?

In SMBs, where resources are scarce, it is not uncommon for people to perform multiple roles or “wear many hats” within the organization.  In today’s economy, where IT spending and salaries have stalled but the workload has not: IT is getting even more squeezed.  In this situation, when the SMB cannot make one of its BAs the strategic role (EA), or perhaps the organization does not need full-time enterprise analysis activities going on, it becomes even more crucial for the BAs to assist in building a unified, collaborative working relationship between IT and the business.  So let’s look at some of the key points I have discussed in the past two weeks.

Seating Chart - Two Desks

When looking at this seating chart you realize that there is only one person, so you only need one desk, correct?  Allowing the BA to have a desk in the IT Department and one in the business unit of the organization allows them to build a working relationship with each team.  By spending part of the day or week with each team, the BA can understand the challenges each team faces.  Even if the BA can spend only part of his/her time sitting with the business unit that they are suppose to support, it helps build awareness of the daily challenges that the business people face on a daily bases.  This helps the BA identify business needs to improve business processes and make the business run smoother.  This also makes the BA approachable by the business people to assist to work on problems and will help get buy-in from the business people when the BA has analysis tasks that require business input.

Communication is Key

Communication is a key skill for a BA, but becomes even more important in this situation.  The trap that the BA must avoid is the business feeling that the BA is approachable only when he/she is sitting at the desk in the business area.  Or that the BA is available for IT project work only when he/she is sitting at the desk with the IT business solutions development team.  The BA must communicate to both teams that he/she is available whenever they need assistance; it is their goal to assist.  The BA also must represent the needs, desires and limitations of each team to the other.  Make the IT application development team understand the business requirements and why these requirements are needed.  Make the business understand the time involved to make “a simple change” to an enterprise application.  By representing each team to the other, and making each understand the work at hand, whether that is requirements or solution testing, they are creating a shared vision across the organization.

Build the Bridge

Through effective communication of the needs and limitations of one team of the business to the other and representing the each team to the other the BA can build a bridge of understanding between the two groups.  By making each side realize that we are all in this together and desire the same outcome, you can build a relationship of trust and get rid of the “Us vs. Them” scenario and replace it with a collaborative working relationship that brings about better IT solutions to business needs.

Whether in a large organization or SMB, business must go to IT for technology solutions.  Even in an IT Outsourcing situation, there are on-site IT people to directly talk with the business people.  In SMBs, where resources are less and people “wear many hats”, the BA role of liaison becomes more important to overall IT business solutions success.
 

On of the big things all application development people know (and I guess business development people know as well), is how their department is treated by management. This battle has been raging since companies decided to have an IT department. The perfect company would have an IT department that supports the business goals and objectives, and can scale and change quickly. I can hear some application development folks laughter already. It can happen. Management needs to let the IT department make the decisions on the software, hardware and infrastructure. IT must understand the business needs, and managements' objectives. The business needs to articulate their needs, and help IT understand the business concerns. In balance, all departments fulfill their roles and the business grows. I have seen some companies that at least understand this principle, and try to implement it, but most companies have one side dominating the other. I will highlight the major factors for the Great IT Battle.

Management treats IT as a cost center – That is correct only if you are an accounting firm. IT brings great value to any organization by streamlining your business processes, which gives you your competitive advantage. I think that more than justifies the cost.

Business “owns” the IT department – This is very common where the business was mature before IT was around. Management came from the business, and doesn't understand that IT is a separate department. IT cannot scale and maintain their infrastructure, so once every 5 – 7 years there is a project like the Big Dig. If you like complex, over budget projects, continue in this manner.

IT “owns” the business - This is  common with organizations that see growth when they added IT. Usually this is caused by management thinking that IT solves all of the problems. IT supports the business. You still need a business plan and a vision.

Political battles between the three – This is the crux of the issue. Management usually comes from the business side, so when in a political battle, IT loses. Unless management views IT as the “magic bullet”, then IT wins. All political battles boil down to my next point:

Risk aversion - an executive at one of my clients pointed this out to me. All of the executives are the winners of many years of political battles. Any decision made is with the idea that they are near retirement, and will not make any drastic change that could hurt their position.

There are a lot of other factors that nuance these scenarios, so your view to the struggle is unique. We at STAR BASE would like to know where you are in this struggle by taking a brief (17 questions on 1 page) survey. STAR BASE can help your organization call a truce to the Great IT wars.

I have been writing a lot about phones recently. What application development person wouldn’t be excited about the new smart phones? I will talk about that later, but first, the news!  My colleague Aaron Whitenberger has been interviewed about his role as a Certified Business Analysis here at STAR BASE.  If you didn’t know there was such a thing, you should read it now. I wrote my take about Google VS Viacom. Google spent 100 million dollars to defend their right, and it didn’t even go to trial. Vicacom is appealing, of course. The price of freedom is very steep.

Now on to my phone questions! A Java application development  peer my client site refuses to get a Android phone because of “market fragmentation”.  “I like that iPhone is walled off, but it’s on ATT”. He loves his blackberry, so maybe he doesn’t need it. This post from Slashdot  seems to support his case. My questions to you are why did you get a smart phone? Did you consider the operating system when you got your phone? Which would you rather choose, a fragmented but open system where you can get any type of app but could have bloatware, or an operating system ruled by a “benevolent dictator” which strictly controls your hardware and software, but you are free of bloat issues? I choose Android because of its openness. I do have the technical skills to root my phone to remove bloatware if I need to. Some people can’t or don’t. I think Apple went down this road before, and I think you will see Android be the market share winner. Let’s see if Google can do better than Microsoft in maintaining some control of  the platform, but still give 3^rd parties the tools to innovate.