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Communicating Posts

On day 1, we look great. It’s day 2 that kills us!

Posted: March 22nd, 2011 by Andrea Brockmeier. Comments »

In_a_hurry!I heard this from a project team member in a training class recently.  He was referring to the schedules for the projects he works on.  What he was getting at was that the team really doesn’t have a chance from the get-go.  They are behind on projects before they even begin, and it doesn’t take long for that to be evident.

Why do we do this to ourselves? 

Project managers know they should be getting input from the team on planning and the estimates for their work.  And they often do.  It’s what happens after that that’s problematic – namely, the input is ignored.

Continue Reading: On day 1, we look great. It’s day 2 that kills us!

Body Language: Social Skill and Powerful Tool for Success

Posted: September 10th, 2010 by Bob Prentiss. Comments »

Hello – BobtheBA here!  Have you ever wondered why someone would be looking you directly in the eye one minute and then suddenly turn away?  Did they lose interest in what you were saying?  Had they made up their mind already?  Perhaps and perhaps not…  It may be that culturally they believe it is a sign of disrespect to look you in the eye.  Then again, they may be getting ready to tell you a whopper of a lie!  Perhaps they are just naturally submissive to authority figures.  Body language – it does a body good to know how to read it and use it.

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Increasing Chances for Sponsorship Success

Posted: September 2nd, 2010 by Andrea Brockmeier. Comments »

Of all the things that threaten project success, poor or non-existent sponsorship is at or near the top of the list.  No sponsor?  No project. 

Below are three keys for increasing chances for sponsorship success in your organization:

1. Show small successes.  You’d probably like to see huge, sweeping change in this area, but let’s be realistic.  Our organizations and sponsor-level folks simply don’t have the bandwidth for that.  Our best bet may be to think small.  In fact, create an experiment that you can use to slowly, organically grow the idea of sponsorship in your organization.  

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Are You My Sponsor?

Posted: June 28th, 2010 by Andrea Brockmeier. Comments »

iStock_000006230006XSmallIn 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!” 

Continue Reading: Are You My Sponsor?

What to do with Meeting Saboteurs?

Posted: April 14th, 2010 by Andrea Brockmeier. Comments »

FistIn 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.

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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!

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Culture and Communications

Posted: March 22nd, 2010 by Andrea Brockmeier. Comments »

Keyboard Globe XSmallProjects 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. 

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Four Tips for Avoiding Conflict Between the PM and BA

Posted: March 10th, 2010 by ElizabethLarson. Comments »

 Business confrontation.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!”

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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.

people2Thought 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.

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Five Tips for Estimating Requirements

Posted: February 10th, 2010 by ElizabethLarson. 4 Comments »

Years ago I worked on a large effort to reengineer a distributionEstimating 2010.04 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!”

Continue Reading: Five Tips for Estimating Requirements
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