Something for the Weekend - IIBA Barclays 14th October

For those who couldn't make it to the IIBA event we held at Barclays on the 14th October all is not lost! We recorded the lot and thanks to Simon Ward they're now on YouTube.

Due to the time limits on YouTube they're broken into parts;

Building BA Communities - David Avis with opening comments from Gill Reed.

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3



Agile in a Nutshell - Portia Tung - Emergn

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3


Closing messages - James Archer

Click Here

Something for the Weekend - BA Communities

This week I wanted to share the opening thoughts from my presentation last night to the IIBA on 'Building BA Communities'.

Leaving the European BA Conference a fortnight ago I was really exited by the breadth and depth that the BA role is talking on and the pace at which it's changing. It's amazing how far the industry has come along in the last 12 months.

Hard skills such as Business Process Management, Agile, Business Rules, LEAN and Six Sigma are really coming to the fore in the BA world now. And that's being supplemented with a plethora of soft skills such as facilitation, creativity, innovation and even ethnography.

To me the wideing of the skills spectrum is a really exiting time for us as it should allow Business Analysts to fulfil the full value and potential that the role has to offer. I particularly enjoyed Joseph Da Silva's presentation at BA2010 entitled 'Nobody Knows Your Business Like Your Own Business Analysts' - Over the past two years at Skandia they've been using a subset of BAs to act as an internal consultancy organisation for the identification and resolution of business problems. - Just one of many functions BAs could perform.

Leaving the conference I've been asking myself two questions;

1) Why are all these skills moving into mainstream Business Analysis now? At first I thought it was just environmental. The economic position over the past few years has meant that organisations have been challenged to do more with less. The rapid pace of consumer end tech is raising exceptions of the tools we're delivering. Increased regulation over many sectors is providing it's challenges.

And then I thought again... that may be prompting change but it's not what is promoting these skills, that is actually our communities. As BAs face new challenges in their practices they're finding new ways to overcome them and sharing their learning for others to build upon.

2) What will happen to the role over the next 18 months? It's easy to speculate about a fragmentation and specialism of the role or perhaps pen portraits of some form of 'uber analyst' who can do everything! It's very difficult to predict accurately but one thing is for sure , it is our communities that are going to be crucial to that evolution. Key in terms of shaping but also in making sure that we develop and learn together as a global community.

Powerful stuff that the people working in the profession are directly shaping it's future. Having strong, effective Business Analysis Communities is more important than ever...

Something for the Weekend - A Community of Thinkers

Liz Keogh, Jean Tabaka and Eric Willeke are actively involved with the development of Agile Software techniques. They recently met up with the objective 'to give something back to the community' and this week I wanted to share what they created with you.

The output was a statement of commitment, a pledge if you will, for their group - Here's a copy of it:

“A Community of Thinkers”
I am a member of a community of thinkers.
I believe that communities exist as homes for professionals to learn, teach, and reflect on their work.
I challenge each community in the software industry to:

• reflect and honour the practitioners who make its existence possible;
• provide an excellent experience for it's members;
• support the excellent experience its members provide for their clients and colleagues in all aspects of their professional interactions;
• exemplify, as a body, the professional and humane behaviour of its members;
• engage and collaborate within and across communities through respectful exploration of diverse and divergent insights;
• embrace newcomers to the community openly and to celebrate ongoing journeys; and,
• thrive on the sustained health of the community and its members through continual reflection and improvement.

I believe that leaders in each community have a responsibility to exhibit these behaviours, and that people who exhibit these behaviours will become leaders.
I am a member of a community of thinkers. If I should happen to be a catalyst more than others, I consider that a tribute to those who have inspired me.
”A Community of Thinkers” by Liz Keogh, Jean Tabaka and Eric Willeke is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License. Please attribute to the distributor of your copy or derivative.

Whilst I agree with the sentiment entirely (albeit a little manifesto-ish for my personal taste). The point that interests me particularly isn't as much about the code of conduct itself but the thoughts behind the need for a community in the first place... And the questions of whether we view that we're part of similar communities in our respective worlds.

The statement really acknowledges two things which I think are important to us as a community of Business Analysts (regardless of whether that involves IT development or not):

• Continuous Improvement - It's obvious but the way we do things today isn’t the only way that we can do them. We need learn from our combined success and our failures in equal measure. The world keeps moving and so must the disciplines and techniques that we use… weather that's for better product, better results or simply to do things faster and cheaper.
• Respect for Communities - A 'community' in this sense is just a boundary-less, hierarchy-free group of people who are committed to driving their industry forward regardless of their organisation, team or political agendas. The statement to me really embraces the old management cliché of 'people being our most important assets' and does this with conviction. The community are the root of the improvements, innovations and developments that we see.

Equality important is the recognition that we're all part of that community and with that comes an equaled responsibility to contribute & support it. The level of our contribution to the community directly correlates with our success (or failure) and how fulfilled we are by the roles we play both today and in the future.