benchmarking reveals the fingerprint of a new system

Benchmarking is a valid, powerful and concrete way to compare a new system or process to the current, “as-is” state OR to compare multiple systems in a vendor selection process. To ensure each of those adjectives (valid, powerful and concrete) are met here’s some suggestions:

1. Valid – ensure a level playing field in all systems evaluated – think “sameness”!  The same approach, conditions and evaluation guides need to be used.  Many years ago, while benchmarking systems for Nebraska’s first Automate Fingerprint Identification System for the Nebraska State Patrol (circa 1994) we included fingerprints that would match, partially match and had zero probability of matching.  One vendor objected to the zero match fingerprints (called latent fingerprints).  We held firm in the benchmark and onsite testing – in part that two other vendors had already complied.
2. Powerful – benchmarks of the current process, user interaction and system performance ensure that new systems can be fairly and completely verified. This is powerful and makes for an apples to apples comparison.  If the current system provides 99.99% up-time and less than 2 hours for return to operational state, then all replacement systems can be held to that standard, OR BETTER!
3. Concrete performing benchmarks is a concrete way to see a set of requirements in action.  A few years back (2004) I facilitated a vendor review for a modernization of a large state agency unemployment insurance system.  Three leading vendors had pitched all sorts of cutting edge development frameworks, tool sets and approaches – it was at benchmarking that the complexity (or over complexity) and mismatch was found.

Benchmark away!  Capture metrics for quality, quantity, speed of your current system and maintain those metrics. They are the seeds for benchmarking.

Related articles

• Benchmarking (managedvideoblog.com)
• Business Analysis Technique #5 – Data Dictionary and Glossary (tapuniversity.com)
• Business Analysis Technique #4 – Business Rules Analysis (tapuniversity.com)

TAPUniversity Blog surpasses 100,000 visits!

Time for a little celebration.  Today the TAPUniversity blog surpassed 100,000 visits or reads.  Over the last two years our blog readership and contributions have grown steadily.  Several hundred professionals check in each day and explore over 400 articles and growing.    We’ll continue to publish and hope you’ll share in our exploration of the Management Nexus as well; from agile, to business analysis, kanban, leadership, lean, management, project management and six sigma. 

Thank you!

David Kohrell, editor, TAPUniversity Blog and Management Nexus

As well as blogging for Tap University, I am also a member of the team behind Pragnalysis.com, a website which provides free BA tools and templates to the BA community.  I’m extremely excited to announce the launch of our latest initiative :  A fully functioning, open source, requirements management tool.  The tool will be completely free to use and re-distribute, and a Beta version can be downloaded and used immediately:

You can download the ReqLine Requirements Management Tool now by visiting http://www.pragnalysis.com

Full details of the tool can be found on the website, however its features include:

• A common repository for all requirements
• Ability to maintain individual requirements, along with their status (draft/signed off)
• Ability to define requirements groups – releases, iterations etc
• Reporting functionality including various dashboard-reports and the ability to export a requirements catalogue
• Logging and monitoring of risks, issues, assumptions and dependencies
• An intuitive way to link requirements back to high-level goals and objectives, ensuring that stakeholders consider business value throughout the project
• Built in change-control and impact analysis functionality
• Project glossary

It has been very exciting to have been involved in the creation of such a useful tool. ReqLine is a requirements management tool designed for BAs by BAs, and we’ve combined the experience of a number of BA practitioners to create this first Beta release.  The Beta version is a single user, single machine version – but it is anticipated that future versions would be multi-user and server based.

Please try the tool, and provide feedback directly to me or any other member of the Pragnalysis team.

For more information, please visit http://www.pragnalysis.com

I look forward to hearing from you!

Related articles

• How to Find Where New Process is Really Needed (tapuniversity.com)
• 34 Business Analysis Techniques from The IIBA (tapuniversity.com)

Business Rules can be fun!

Business Rules.  Universal definitions or process descriptions that transcend a single use case or process flow.  A little bit bigger than a glossary definition (such as income range, gender, ethnicity) but not quite a usage scenario in its own right.  Business rules as they’re refined, adapted and updated are invaluable requirements assets – they really can help collect and focus attention.  Customers and sponsors like them because they provide a connecting point in the IT world.  For much of the same reason developers and quality assurance team members like them because they help maintain focus and provide an opportunity to write code once, reuse many times!

Some sample business rules include:

1. Payment receipt
2. Payment authorization (ACH, debit, credit card)
3. User login validation
4. Account balance
5. Purge record

The analysis includes creating those business rules and determining which processes benefit from their reference.  Time spent to gather and update business rules is rewarded with consistent and expedited delivery!

Related articles

• 34 Business Analysis Techniques from The IIBA (tapuniversity.com)
• Business Analysis Technique #26 – Scenarios and Use Cases (tapuniversity.com)
• Business Analysis Technique #11 – Focus Groups (tapuniversity.com)

Listen to your focus group and learn!

prospective or current customers to seek out and understand what the customer or user wants and/or how they use a product or service.  The information gathered from a focus group is powerful.  It can reorient a product’s direction or change how a product is presented.

Typically a focus group meets in person with a facilitator guiding a customer or user through a set of open-ended questions about a product or service.  The use of web panels has become an increasingly popular method and allows an organization to understand and trace a customer’s perception over time.

Focus groups are often combined with several other business analysis techniques such as brainstorming, user scenarios, nominal-group technique and usability testing.

I’ve witness the power of focus groups to alter a software’s design and even halt a new product introduction.

Related articles

• 34 Business Analysis Techniques from The IIBA (tapuniversity.com)
• Focus Group (mesyeda.wordpress.com)
• Business Analysis Technique #32 SWOT Analysis (tapuniversity.com)
• On Focus Groups: Anyone can convene a group, ask questions, and write up the answers (iterativepath.wordpress.com)
• Business Analysis Technique #3 – Brainstorming (tapuniversity.com)
• Online Focus Groups – Washington DC, DistrictofColumbia (travelpod.com)
• Business Analysis Technique #26 – Scenarios and Use Cases (tapuniversity.com)
• David Kohrell: Brainstorming – Facilitated Workshops for Project Selection & Scope (pmhub.net)
• Example of a Voice of the Customer (VOC) Survey (brighthub.com)
• Business Analysis Technique #31 Surveys and Questionnaires. (tapuniversity.com)

8 steps to capture your use cases

incremental development.  Two of those articles focused on replacing a legacy unemployment insurance system. The entire article provides a much more thorough introduction from that example – so take a quick read of that as you have time.

Use cases and scenarios that are created from them, allow for capturing a process flow of a business function.  They’re addressed directly in The Business Analysis Body of Knowledge, 2nd Edition (BABOK© 9.26) and indirectly referenced in The Guide to Project Management Body of Knowledge, 4th Edition (PMBOK© 5.2)

The eight basic steps we used to generate use cases for each business process area are described below.

Step 1: Confirm actors and goals.
Have all actors and their goals been identified?
Which actors can be generalized (combined)?
Which goals are potential use cases?

Step 2: Develop an outline of the use case(s).
For the goals identified as potential use cases, what are the key pieces?
For each outline level, what are key data?
Outline all use cases.
Prioritize the use-case flows.
Decide on a final use-case list (for initial pass).

Step 3: Write a brief description of the use case(s).
What two or three sentences describe all actors and the basic flow?
Generate content first, and worry about wordsmithing later.

Step 4: Detail the basic flow.
What event starts the use case?
How does the use case end?
How does the use case repeat some behavior?
What is the “happy” (best case) path?
There is one and only one basic flow.

Step 5: Detail the alternate flows.
Are there optional situations for the use case?
What might go wrong?
What might not happen?
Which resources might be blocked?
Which alternate flows are special — perhaps nonfunctional — requirements (i.e., they apply to this use case only)?

Step 6: Review the use case(s).
Are there more use cases?
Should some use cases be redefined?
Which ones can be combined?

Step 7: Record pre- and post-conditions.
What was the previous state before this use case comes into play?
What happens once the use case is complete?

Step 8: Develop generalizations for all use cases.
Determine shared content and process for the use cases.
What items have been noted for the glossary or as global business rules?
Who has the most recent and accurate source document?
Where is it located?

Related articles

Related articles

• Fast tracking the RUP Inception phase: Eight steps for agile use-case generation (ibm.com)
• 34 Business Analysis Techniques from The IIBA (tapuniversity.com)
• Business Analysis Technique #3 – Brainstorming (tapuniversity.com)
• Business Analysis & Decision Making (thinkup.waldenu.edu)

Why couldn't I have invented this and got the patent $

The whiteboard.  The dry eraser.  The multi-color pens.  The overbearing meeting participant.  Those four things often come together when thinking of brainstorming.  It’s a technique among multiple management nexus disciplines and at the heart of agile, business analysis and project management. It can produce great results from a team.

The Business Analysis Body of Knowledge (2nd Edition) addresses it in section 9.3. The Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge references brainstorming as the tool and technique, Facilitated Workshops, for Collect Requirements (5.1) and Define Scope (5.2).

Brainstorming is also technique, despite years of coaching and training to improve its effectiveness, that can go easily astray.

An innocent enough brainstorming session can quickly turn into a diatribe from a “power figure” or as easily slip into a real life parody of the television show “The Office“.

When effectively facilitated brainstorming sessions can unleash a wealth of ideas, strategies and enthusiasm for a team.  One approach that helps keep the brainstorming in the positive side is nominal group technique (NGT).  And one little tool that makes NGT work is the ubiquitous post-it note (aka sticky note).   Here are some steps for NGT – we’ll use deciding features for a new Twitter interface as an example:

1. Gather group together – preferably less than 12
2. Distribute 10 post-it notes
3. Keep a supply of extra post-its handy
4. Have participants write their ideas for the new Twitter interface, silently, on their post-it.  One idea per post-it (people often forget the 1 per post-it rule, so gently remind them
5. When everyone has a chance to capture their ideas, call for confirmation that “we’re done”
6. Have each team member read 1 idea at a time and go around the table or room
7. Clarification questions are OK, judgment questions are not
8. Continue going around the room until all post-its have been shared – one at a time
9. When all post-its have been shared, ask “what’s missing”?
10. Gather up the post-its and have the group arrange by topic or association – for example #trending topics, social network plugs, etc.  This leads wonderfully into another technique called affinity diagramming!

Related articles

• 34 Business Analysis Techniques from The IIBA (tapuniversity.com)
• Business Analysis & Decision Making (thinkup.waldenu.edu)
• Management “Nexus” – the intersection of multiple disciplines (tapuniversity.com)
• The Secret to Good Brainstorming Techniques (cgreyes.wordpress.com)
• John Reiling, PMP: Systems Thinking in Project Management (pmhub.net)
• Risk Priority Number (RPN) (tapuniversity.com)
• Risk from a Business Analysis Perspective (tapuniversity.com)
• Brainstorm your way to PR success (publicrelationssydney.com.au)
• Make the most of your brainstorming (smartblogs.com)

Business Rules Galore!

Chapter Nine of the Business Analysis Body of Knowledge (BABOK®), Second Edition provides a concluding overview of thirty-four techinques used throughout business analysis and the six processes defined within the BABOK®).  I’ll highlight the most frequently used ones in my career over the next several weeks.  If one of the following techniques does not make the list, that’s OK.  It’s not meant to be a slight; rather it may be a technique that’s not used as frequently in practice, or one that we have not used in our consulting practice.

I hope you join in the conversation from Acceptance Criteria to Vendor Assessment.

1. Acceptance and Evaluation Criteria Definition
2. Benchmarking
3. Brainstorming
4. Business Rules Analysis
5. Data Dictionary and Glossary
6. Data Flow Diagrams
7. Data Modeling
8. Decision Analysis
9. Document Analysis
10. Estimation
11. Focus Groups
12. Functional Decomposition
13. Interface Analysis
14. Interviews
15. Lessons Learned Process
16. Metrics and Key Performance Indicators
17. Non-Functional Requirements Analysis
18. Observation
19. Organizational Modeling
20. Problem Tracking
21. Process Modeling
22. Prototyping
23. Requirements Workshops
24. Risk Analysis
25. Root Cause Analysis
26. Scenarios and Use Cases
27. Scope Modeling
28. Sequence Diagrams
29. State Diagrams
30. Structured Walkthrough
31. Survey/Questionnaire
32. SWOT Analysis
33. User Stories
34. Vendor Assessment

Related articles

• Risk from a Business Analysis Perspective (tapuniversity.com)
• Risk Management Approaches (tapuniversity.com)
• How I passed the CBAP (professionalprojectservices.wordpress.com)
• Management “Nexus” – the intersection of multiple disciplines (tapuniversity.com)
• Business Analysis Techniques: 72 Essential Tools for Success (deurainfosec.com)

Lean room - not a whole lot of space for paper work.

Agile was a software development out to business, innovation.  Or it could have been called “geeks to execs”.  Now for a fast forward, to today. Emerging trends and practices include those that fuse business, design and nimble development practices together.  They’re not always “geek driven”.  Sometimes its entrepreneurs or product designers steering the ship.

A leading practice is the Lean Startup.  Determining the exact roots of the movement is challenging.  It seems to be a somewhat organic meeting of User Experience (UX) or designers, with business entrepreneurs (Silicon Valley, NYC, Seattle) who bring a passionate customer focus (similar to Lean manufacturing and service) to new product innovation.  The roll out of that product innovation is aided by quick Agile driven releases.

Joshua Seiden provides a great synthesis of how the three disciplines (UX, Agile and Business Startup) are fusing to form the Lean Startup.  Take a moment and read the blog post from Joshua - here’s a sample.

“I’m telling you this because we’re at a multiple discovery moment as we speak.  The time has arrived that three communities–the business, design, and technology communities–have independently discovered the same thing. That the best way to build new technology products, services, and the businesses that deliver them is to work in small, cross-functional, highly collaborative teams.”

Working in small, cross-functional collaborative is not new.  It’s been a way of making stuff happen (think WEMSHA) for the last 15 years.  What is new is that business, design and technology have somewhat independently driven to that same result and applied similar techniques for that collaborative effort.  Customer focus and Time To Market (TTM) are two factors that lead to one important thing – revenue.  Unlike the venture capital backed efforts of the late 1990′s, which embraced TTM, the customer focus is vital to produce stuff that people will actually want.   Clicks, eyeballs, presence alone will not cut it – cash flow is king.  The way to that cash flow is to focus on the customer, hear their voice!

Related articles

• Agile Principle 7 – Working Software (tapuniversity.com)
• Reflections on the 10 Years Since the Agile Manifesto (allaboutagile.com)
• Agile Manifesto, made more agile (zdnet.com)
• Authors of The Agile Manifesto discuss its Tenth Anniversary (pragprog.com)
• Lean Startup for Geeks at Wealthfront: Miško Hevery on the Psychology of Testing (eng.wealthfront.com)
• Why Startups Should Care About Lean UX (appliedconstraints.tumblr.com)
• Agile Principle 12 – Team reflects, tunes and adjusts (tapuniversity.com)
• Agile Principle 10 – Maximize work NOT done! (tapuniversity.com)
• Lean Startup 101 by Eric Ries: How to Build a Better Startup (socrated.com)
• Agile Software Development Turns 10 (devx.com)
• Podcast: Beyond Lean Startup (growvc.com)
• Lean Startup Machine SF – Customer Development-athon Weekend (sf.theleanstartupmachine.com)

OK, ok, OK - the Apollo 11 mission was much bigger deal!

We reached 400 posts yesterday. Our blog is primarily targeted for education, learning and conversation. While we do need some money to keep the lights on, we try to keep the commercial pitches and “monentization” to a minimum.  Thank you everyone who has participated, read and engaged with our blog since late 2008!

Our author roster is growing and we have appreciated the contributions from Adrian Reed and Meryl Rowley this year. Several more authors will be sharing soon!

And, here’s to the next 400 topics across the management nexus of:

• Agile/Scrum
• Business Analysis
• Business Process Management
• Contract Management
• Earned Value
• IT Compliance and Auditing
• Information Technology Information Library Version 3
• ITSMF
• Lean Software Startup
• Lean Six Sigma
• Project Management & Portfolio Management
• Risk Management
• Six Sigma
• Virtual Teams

Thank you!

David Kohrell, MA, PMP®, CBAP®, CISA®, MCP®
Seminar Leader TAPUniversity, Editor TAPUniversity Blog.
http://www.linkedin.com/in/dkohrell

Related articles

• Management “Nexus” – the intersection of multiple disciplines (tapuniversity.com)
• Certification Exam Feedback: PMP , CBAP , CISA , CISM , CISSP , ITIL , CSM , Lean Six Sigma (tapuniversity.com)
• John Reiling, PMP: Systems Thinking in Project Management (pmhub.net)
• Risk from a Business Analysis Perspective (tapuniversity.com)