by George Casey | Apr 11, 2013 | Project Management, Uncategorized |
Project managers know that a lot of factors can lead to project failure: unrealistic goals, poor budgeting, and poor quality control. While the majority of projects that get off target can be saved, the secret to project success is not letting projects get off target in the first place. To do that involves key steps that are often overlooked and oversimplified: Planning, staffing, and communication. Consider everything According to project managers Ralph R. Young, Steven M. Brady, and Dennis C. Nagle, Jr., authors of How to Save a Failing Project; Chaos to Control, just scheduling, budgeting, and monitoring a project is not enough to produce satisfactory results. Instead, project managers must plan and identify their output: all the products that the project team must create. A product breakdown structure can be created to define each component of the output, including progress reports, technical analyses, and other deliverables. Attached to this needs to be a work breakdown structure that estimates the resources needed for each aspect of the output. The project plan should also include a “process model” that outlines the activities and outcomes for each task. If it’s anticipated that some tasks will need to be repeated, enough resources and funding should be allocated. Authors Young, Brady, and Nagle recommend dedicating 10% of the total scheduled project time to early planning and to continuing discussions about potential problems and changes. Pick your people These authors also cite bad personnel decisions as a factor in project failures. Project teams should be balanced and represent multiple skills sets. Once in place, regular, ongoing meetings should occur to discuss project progress, assess...
by George Casey | Apr 8, 2013 | Business Analysis, Uncategorized |
A center of excellence (CoE) is a structured team of people and resources that an organization establishes to promote collaboration and best practices. A center of excellence brings an enterprise focus to many business issues, including data integration, project management, enterprise architecture, business and IT optimization, and enterprise-wide access to information. A CoE helps business leaders implement and support improvement initiatives to meet goals at an overall business level. A Business Analysis CoE helps organizations deliver increased value by bolstering the trademarks of business analysis: Understanding the business domain Analyzing inputs, outputs, and stakeholders Mapping processes Identifying deficiencies Envisioning and communicating potential solutions Performing cost analysis and projections Understanding and representing business units and their needs Identifying and articulating details Ensuring that the target vision is met A BACoE is a high-performance enabler, closely integrated at a strategic level within a business. It consists of a variety of skillsets and roles that promotes business change and proactive optimization. A BACoE provides organizations with a means to instill standardization, best practices, collaboration, education, and BA maturity, which can result in: Improved quality of requirements Better collaboration between the user and developer communities Alignment of IT services with business needs Integration and alignment of people, processes, and technology Increased business value Strategic capability for competitive advantage Strategic activities of a BACoE include: Conducting research and providing the executive team with accurate competitive information Identifying and recommending viable new business opportunities Preparing the project investment decision package to facilitate project selection and prioritization Managing expected business benefits during project execution Measuring actual business benefits after the new solution is deployed Standardization One...
by George Casey | Apr 4, 2013 | Business Analysis, Uncategorized |
While using a BACoE has many benefits, shifting to this approach can present certain organizational challenges. Establishing a BACoE resource may destabilize the sense of balance and power within an organization. Executives are required to make decisions based on benefits to the enterprise versus to their specific areas. Functional managers are often afraid of losing their authority and control over the resources assigned to them. In addition, project team members may be unclear about their roles and responsibilities, and how they will be given assignments. These ambiguities may manifest themselves as resistance to change, and could pose a risk to a successful implementation. Therefore, it is imperative that robust coordination and effective communication about how the BACoE will affect roles and responsibilities are part of the implementation process. Another challenge is that the business drivers behind creating the BACoE must be established very early. If the organization’s motives are poorly defined it can be detrimental to the objectives, purpose, scope, and functions of the BACoE. Also, it’s important to appreciate that the idea for creating a BACoE does not have to come from IT; it can originate from any area. What is important is that the BACoE serves the entire organization, rather than just a small segment of it. Another potential difficulty that almost every fledgling BACoE eventually runs into is bridging the gap that divides IT and the business. To overcome this, a BACoE must be prepared to provide multidimensional services to all the diverse groups in an organization. This requires making certain that the BACoE is centralized. According to a USAG/SAP survey, “Organizations with centralized COEs have...
by George Casey | Mar 26, 2013 | Business Analysis, Uncategorized |
A common problem in many organizations is an inability to bridge the gap between IT and other business units. Through business alignment, organizations can use IT to achieve business objectives and improve the business value of their IT investments. A Value Chain is a vital technique used in the business alignment process that can identify the chain of activities performed by the organization to deliver value to stakeholders. By analyzing a Value Chain, organizations can identify which activities are best performed by the business and which would be best outsourced. This technique can help business managers and leaders determine which projects to focus on when defining a problem statement, and help them develop support for a project when creating a business case. Features of a Value Chain A Value Chain is a description of the key activities performed across a company or an entire industry. Usually depicted as a linear flow of activities, a Value Chain should show where value is being created. To do this, the Value Chain data should be quantitative, not qualitative, and should indicate the costs and revenues of activities at each stage of a product’s or process’s development cycle. By visually showcasing this information, the Value Chain technique is instrumental in clarifying key stages of activity in a company or industry, where value is created, and any shifts along the Value Chain. The technique is also useful for: Determining whether there is any backward or forward integration in an industry Learning whether and why competitors may be targeting specific areas of a product or process Revealing a customer’s or stakeholder’s experience with an organization...
by George Casey | Mar 22, 2013 | Business Analysis, Uncategorized |
Business analysis is a relatively recent business practice, so business analysis maturity is low for many organizations. When it comes to determining the maturity of your business analysis practices, consider these 11 questions: Are your customers dissatisfied with your product quality or IT services? They may submit formal complaints, or you may just hear rumblings around the water cooler. Do your business and IT stakeholders frequently have dissimilar interpretations of requirements? Do you find you’re speaking a different language regarding the type of information that’s needed; how that information must be collected, managed, and traced; and what ultimately the product or process must accomplish? Does your business analysis process fail to address the five types of requirements specified in the IIBA and BABOK: business requirements, stakeholder requirements, functional requirements, nonfunctional requirements, and transition requirements? Many times these requirements are poorly defined, or are used inconsistently. And often organizations address only one or two of these types, and not all of them. Are business cases seldom prepared or used only for funding purposes? If they are prepared, are they written accurately and completely and shared with stakeholders? At the conclusion of a project, do actual results differ from those indicated in the business plan? After the requirements elicitation process, are stakeholders not involved on the project until it’s time for acceptance testing? Are they not given opportunities to track their needs and scenarios, comment on requirements, and stay engaged in the process? Do your solution alternatives not consider impacts on stakeholders, business processes, and IT services? Mature business analysis involves effective impact analysis. One change can create a ripple effect...
