In the popular children’s book A Mother for Choco, a baby bird goes looking for its mother. He stops and asks Mrs. Giraffe, Mrs. Walrus, and others “Are you my mommy?” But to no avail. None of these potential mommies looks like Choco and so he is left alone and very sad and begins to cry, “Mommy, mommy, I need a mommy!”
Communicating Posts
Are You My Sponsor?
Posted: June 28th, 2010 by Andrea Brockmeier. Comments »
What to do with Meeting Saboteurs?
Posted: April 14th, 2010 by Andrea Brockmeier. Comments »
In a recent project management class, we were discussing meeting effectiveness, and a student asked if it was ever appropriate to flat out excuse someone from a meeting for being rude or obnoxious?
Fortunately, I have not been in a situation in which I wondered if I should do that. Unfortunately, I think this student had a specific situation in mind. It’s a tough question, especially if the person who is being difficult is a peer or more senior than you.
Should Business Analysts Model Requirements?
Posted: April 8th, 2010 by ElizabethLarson. Comments »During a recent client visit I encouraged the use of modeling as a way to uncover hidden requirements and expectations. One of my clients expressed her rather strong opinion that modeling requirements was not and should not be a part of business analysis work. Oh, she could accept the fact that uncovering gaps between the “as-is” and “to-be” using process models made some sense, but she was adamant that this gap analysis should be done by a business Subject Matter Expert (SME), not by a business analyst (BA). As to data modeling, well that was technical in nature and if done at all, she said, it should be done by the technical IT staff. Use cases were helpful to the testing staff, but were clearly technical and were not to be done by BAs. Prototyping? This should be done by developers—no question about that one!
Culture and Communications
Posted: March 22nd, 2010 by Andrea Brockmeier. Comments »
Projects cross cultural boundaries probably as often as not anymore. How many people either go to other countries to work on projects, find themselves working with team member from other countries here in the US, or work with virtual teams that include people from other places?
Of course, you don’t have to cross an ocean to experience cultural differences. Cultural differences here in the US can even breed culture clash.
I was reading about someone from the Deep South who was communicating with a team member in the northeast part of the country. The northern team member was offended that the southerner had called her “Ma’am.” The southerner was completely flabbergasted that this could be considered an offense.
Four Tips for Avoiding Conflict Between the PM and BA
Posted: March 10th, 2010 by ElizabethLarson. Comments » 
At a recent conference I sat next to a project manager who observed, “My organization hired a new consulting company to do business analysis work. They’ve completely taken over. Now they do a lot of the project management work that I used to do, such as meeting with the sponsor to uncover the business problems, determining what we’re going to do on the project…I can’t believe it! I feel like I’m being treated like a second-class citizen!”
2 Ingredients To Spice Up Meeting Effectiveness
Posted: February 22nd, 2010 by Andrea Brockmeier. Comments »As project managers and business analysts, you are undoubtedly familiar with the misery of poorly planned and poorly run meetings. It’s a long list of things that drive meeting madness: unclear purpose, wrong people in attendance, lack of ground rules, inadequate preparation, poor time management, etc.
Thought given to key elements of the meeting ahead of time can make for a more effective meeting. Communication of those things insures that everyone arrives at the meeting with a shared understanding of why they are there and what they need to accomplish.
Five Tips for Estimating Requirements
Posted: February 10th, 2010 by ElizabethLarson. 2 Comments »Years ago I worked on a large effort to reengineer a distribution
center for a large retailer. We provided an estimate for both the business analysis work and for the entire project, which would involve the organization’s first use of Electronic Data Interchange (EDI), new business processes, many software changes, and the purchase of new barcode scanners. The business analysis effort took far longer than we anticipated, and at the end of it we refined our estimate for the total project. When we reported the new estimate to the president of the company, he literally pounded his fist on the table and asked, “How did we get to this point? Why didn’t we know sooner? You’ve already spent all this time on the project and what do we have to show for it? Nothing!. Absolutely nothing!”
Top Fundamentals for Successful Virtual Meetings
Posted: January 29th, 2010 by RichLarson. 4 Comments »If you’re a project manager or business analyst and have ever facilitated or participated in a virtual meeting, you know they can be highly productive. And, highly frustrating if not run well. Here is a list of 5 things I think all virtual meetings should have to be successful:
1) Test your technology. If you have never used the software or hardware for your virtual meetings, make sure you practice with a small group first. If you are doing a formal presentation, I suggest you reboot your PC right before you make it. We recently did a product demo where the presenter’s PC froze up right at the start. It took some fancy “tap dancing” to recover and keep the meeting going. Better to reboot first than to recover later.
Three Tips for Project Tracking Made Easy
Posted: January 19th, 2010 by Andrea Brockmeier. Comments »What do your team members do when you ask them the question, “Where are you at on the project?” Ignore you? Stare blankly? Look confused? Cower? 
What makes tracking and reporting so difficult? After all, “Where are you at?” is a completely reasonable and fair question. In fact, without answers to that question, we have very little information for our stakeholders.
Many things make tracking and reporting on projects difficult. Project Managers often don’t have authority over the resources, and team members may not feel obligated to provide timely answers. Those providing answers may not be clear on what information is being asked, or they may be dependent on others before they can report progress on their part of the project. Fear of the response to their answer also drives a lot of behavior around tracking and reporting.
Three things to keep in mind to make the Q and A around project tracking and reporting less painful:
Who Should Plan the Business Analysis Work?
Posted: January 8th, 2010 by ElizabethLarson. 4 Comments »
When I first read the BABOK® Guide, my initial reaction was, “What are they thinking?!” With my Project Manager (PM) hat perched squarely on my head, my reaction was “but… but this is project management work!” In my mind I imagined all kinds of conflict occurring as the Business Analyst (BA) took on more and more of the PM role. After all, as PM I had done such traditional project management tasks as creating work breakdown structures, activity lists, the estimating, the scheduling, and now a body of knowledge was saying that the BA was supposed to do this work? I could see heads butting already.
