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Gordian knot, butterfly effect:Organizations are a study in complexity

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Business is complex.  Gone are the years of simplicity in business operations.  Exponential growth and change in regulations, globalization, distributed operations, changing processes, competitive velocity, business relationships, disruptive technology, legacy technology, and business data encumbers organizations of all sizes. Business … Continue reading →

What Happened to the Fine Art of Business Analysis? – Revisited 2013

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Link: http://taotwits-too-big-to-tweet.blogspot.com/2013/05/what-happened-to-fine-art-of-business.html

From Taotwit's Too-Big-To-Tweet

Back in 2008, I wrote a paper on Business Analysis. Recently, I’ve been revisiting this subject in my day-job and this made me realise how little things had changed and inspired me to write this post, which is, basically, the original article re-written, with additional thoughts (in italics).

The role of the Business Analyst has never been more important but needs refocus on Information Systems not the technical solution. Many of us can recall a time when a distinction was made between the hardware and software supporting the business and the information used by the business – there was a clear difference between IT, to describe the former, and IS to describe the latter. 
IS stood for Information Systems: 
IS: The landscape  of business  information used by people within an organisation 
and how they use information to deliver business outcomes. 

IT, in contrast, meant: 
IT:  The  hardware  and  software  technology  that  automates  or  otherwise  supports 
information processing. 

This distinction between these two concepts is all but lost, and the disciplines associated with Information Systems (such as Business Analysis and IS Architecture), are have become too obsessed with IT. 

Read more

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What Happened to the Fine Art of Business Analysis? – Revisited 2013

by

Link: http://taotwits-too-big-to-tweet.blogspot.com/2013/05/what-happened-to-fine-art-of-business.html

From Taotwit's Too-Big-To-Tweet

Back in 2008, I wrote a paper on Business Analysis. Recently, I’ve been revisiting this subject in my day-job and this made me realise how little things had changed and inspired me to write this post, which is, basically, the original article re-written, with additional thoughts (in italics).

The role of the Business Analyst has never been more important but needs refocus on Information Systems not the technical solution. Many of us can recall a time when a distinction was made between the hardware and software supporting the business and the information used by the business – there was a clear difference between IT, to describe the former, and IS to describe the latter. 
IS stood for Information Systems: 
IS: The landscape  of business  information used by people within an organisation 
and how they use information to deliver business outcomes. 

IT, in contrast, meant: 
IT:  The  hardware  and  software  technology  that  automates  or  otherwise  supports 
information processing. 

This distinction between these two concepts is all but lost, and the disciplines associated with Information Systems (such as Business Analysis and IS Architecture), are have become too obsessed with IT. 

Read more

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Your org as an api #openwork

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What if your organisation’s internal business processes had a publicly accessible api?

What if information about the internals of your products and services where available to mine, interact with and influence?

How would that change your customer’s perception of your organisation?

Would your customer’s self organise?

Would they help you improve your organisation?

Would your customer’s uncover insight you didn’t know you even wanted?

How would transparency of your organisations strengths and weakness change how you and your competitors operate

What would prevent such a leap? the thought of airing your dirty laundry? losing competitive advantage?

Wouldn’t it be great to not have dirty laundry?

Would radical openness and the necessary re-orientation of the organisation towards its customers bring a whole new competitive advantage?

Lots of questions, I don’t have the answers at the moment. If this post sparks any thoughts i’d love to continue the conversation either on twitter or in the comments on this post.

The value of lenses

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image

TOGAF

Zachman

Agile

Scrum

Kanban

XP

User centred design

Lean

Lean startup

Service design

Design thinking

Behavioural economics

What do these things have in common? These are all things I’m either interested in, read a lot about, studied/got certified in, or use/have used in my work.

The other thing that they have in common? None of these things are The answer.

I like to think of each of the list above as lenses that help you view problems in a different way, using them individually or in combination can help inform your view of the problem space and give you greater options when looking for solutions.

It is very tempting for us to find a methodology or framework that resonates with us at a point in time (for me back in 2006, it was Scrum) and start to see everything through that particular lense.

There is a danger in relying on one lense too much and that in focusing on the use of one lense we become myopic, concentrating on using our chosen methodology/framework/process without understanding its application in the context of the wider problem space.

Example:

A few months ago I attended the excellent @SyncNorwich monthly conference. One speaker gave a talk about using Kanban on a software development project. It was a really informative talk about using Kanban on a project, the team seemed to work really well, the ‘product owner’ seemed happy and they shipped early and often. It all sounded great until the speaker put up a slide showing the tiny amount of usage/sales of the product.

I was left with the conclusion that using the lense of Kanban had enabled the team to deliver the wrong thing really really well. The weak link in the chain was whatever design process the Product Owner (and his team) used to feed into the development process.

I raised this conclusion with the speaker, he didn’t seem to think it was his problem (or Kanban’s). The fact that the organisation he worked for had ploughed (i’d estimate) several hundred thousand pounds into developing products that customers didn’t use, didn’t seem to register as a problem. His team had delivered what his customer (the Product Owner) required using Kanban, worrying about what the real customer actually wanted wasn’t even on his radar. The net result was the customer’s needs weren’t met. Whatever lense we decide to use the needs of the customer should always be in plain sight.