Get Good In, Get Good Out...and Keep BA's Happy!

So I saw this posting and had to share it.  Funny how the first thing I thought about was how it applied to business stakeholders and business analysis.

But think about it for a few.  How many times have you read a business case and wondered how in the world the person came to the conclusion!?  I love the business case of a 12 month project that was submitted, but revenue projections show that they will be bringing in revenue on the second month of the project when the product will not official be available for sale until at least half way through the project!  

The thought that if you act like an adult and think about what value means and how to achieve it and spend some thought about what it will take to achieve this, then you will get more scrutiny from the BA than our minion is providing here.  Yet time and time again I see business cases submitted with the same amount of energy as the decision making being done above.  

Picking the project with the cooler sounding name will only make you cool as long as it takes to read the title.  After that the metal hits the pavement and you have to produce.  Projects fail if they were not well conceived to even start with.  And I adamantly defend BA's that projects do not fail because of bad requirements, but because they were not even setup to scope ANY requirements.  Some forethought to consider what might be involved, even a simple checklist can save a TON of resources!

Get the businesses to consider a simple checklist before submitting any kind of proposal, whether major project or small work enhancement:

• Is there IT components?  (Could there be IT components?)
• Do we do this work in house today?  
• What Legal issues are there?
• What Compliance rules do we have to worry about?
• Have we complied with Branding requirements?
• Who will be my testers to evaluate the solution?
• Do I know my budget?  Have I taken in account budget for any changes?
• Who are the people who use this process?
• Who are the people who support this process?
• Who are the people who pay for this process?
• Who has no clue about this process?  (Should they?)

And I could go on and on - but considering asking someone to look at these questions and for any question they do not know the answer to, then they must NOT submit their request and go find out.  A small checklist can save you a TON of time and headache from trying to work with a project manager to deliver an unrealistic project.  You may not be able to change the stakeholder's mentality but you can get them to consider a few conditions prior to asking for the world.  Then you'l be as happy as a BA with a 'bunch' of requirements!

Measuring Innovation

Image courtesy the BCG

To all my fellow innovation managers out there who are trying so desparately hard to measure the value of innovation in your organizations, I wanted to share something that struck me as so simplistic yet so profound that in and of itself, was truly innovative.

Rick Weaver posted an article about measuring project success and the impact Cloud services could have on these measures.  One of his measurements focused on an "Innovation Ratio" where we consider how much we are spending on reducing technical debts versus the amount of new capabilities we are adding.  More simplistically put:

                           Amount spent on reducing technical debts
      Innovation =  ------------------------------------------------------------
                                Amount of new capabilities added

To me we could keep this very simple on figuring out hard numbers of Innovation.  Consider what   are you spending to ensure your current technology does not become obsolete?  Are we buying the latest and greatest versions or upgrading legacy equipment?  Are we removing manual systems that lead to errors?

And then capabilities are easily accounted from a basic features list.  What can you do now that you could not do before is a great measurement for any change project or initiative.  Those are the benefits that are quickly tangible!   You can worry about culture change and measuring shifts in dynamics later once you have buy-in with your metrics!

So where to look for these things?  Again, keep it simple - where are you manually addressing processes?  Where are you using outdated technology (easy answer is where do people ignore the technology provided and instead use their own manual process - these are anyone creating their own spreadsheets and databases or emailing items or worse, printing!!)?

What ideas do you have?  Again, this equation struck me as a great way to help MEASURE INNOVATION and the value that you are bringing to an organization!

Delivering Value

How are you delivering VALUE in all you do?

VALUE - an interesting word that is often talked about but completely missed in daily activities.  This only perpetuates the statistics that projects fail to meet objectives or campaigns fail to meet their targets - they fail to deliver the value expected.

Do you consider how you are delivering value in all you do?  If every person on a team constantly looked at how they are delivering value, would the team then end up delivering significant value?

Being part of a volunteer organization where every single activity is done out of one's own selflessness, I found it amazing the energy and effort put into providing value for the members.  People who all have full time jobs in addition to their volunteer must absolutely prioritize all that they do.  For the service organization, the challenge was put out to ask if every thing they do delivers value, especially board members.  You are serving others and if you are not serving their value needs, then your efforts are not delivering the value intended.

Consider every task that is brought up in your work or volunteer organizations and ask "Does this deliver value to our [customer/stakeholder]?"  If you have a hard time answering this, you may reconsider the task itself.  People in offices often talk about how busy they are.  I see it too, personally, that the amount of information moving around seems to create a buzz of activity.  However, I find myself asking if what I'm doing is adding value.  I found a few simple responses to help me get through my day more efficiently by considering "Am I Delivering Value if I do this task?"

• If I answer "no" then I simply delete it and move on.  
• If I think the answer is "no" then I delete it and move on.
• If I answer "yes" then I prioritize it and do it as soon as possible.
• If I think the answer is "yes" then I skip for now and come back after I do the prioritized "Yes" items

"But wait!! Delete?  No one deletes ANYTHING around here!!"  To this answer - if it is important, someone will bring it up again - guaranteed!  And remember what's important to you may not be important to others so you can skip the tasks, but the owner/affected stakeholder may find value and will continue to pursue it.  Often if they ask a second time that have more information that provides you the background to turn it into a "Yes" value answer.

What's interesting on the "think the answer is.." options - they are often all No's as either it's clear that you can not articulate the value or you do not have enough information at this time to answer Yes and until then you do not understand the value.

Tricks to try and would love to hear other ideas and thoughts!!!