Business Analysis Professionals Still Verify and Validate

Generative AI is doing some amazing things for both our work and our careers. Regardless which application you enjoy playing with, having a resource to generate ideas on requirements, design options, to potential conflict resolution ideas and even what decision options you might want to consider next in your career. The thing to using generative AI is to remember that it is still growing itself. I love the comment that

AI is the worse version of itself it will ever be.

What that means is that AI is only going to get bigger, faster, better! So I'm using it frequently as the starting point of my work. There is no such thing as writer's block any more as I have a starting point every time I sit down on the computer to work (and actually wherever I'm on my smart device - the photo features are amazing! My friend Leslie Hughes I saw posted a great example of taking a photo of an issue and having ChatGPT help solve the problem versus searching all over YouTube for the answer!). So regardless which application you are using, definitely search out the AI features being integrated.

The example in this title is something I generated in Xmind.ai in a matter of literally 3 seconds. I put the topic of Business Analysis in the middle and see what it came out with. Now for me, I was actually not happy that the techniques it wrote were limited to PESTLE, SWOT and MOSCOW. Now I know that there are no bad techniques, but seriously? That's it!?! Okay so what did I do? I asked a great business analysis item:

Tell me more.

Everyone should have this question in their toolbox. This just keeps you focused on the topic and especially in discussions prevents you from jumping in and putting your own bias on when you are truly trying to understand. But okay, back to my mind map, I selected the techniques and asked Xmind to generate some more topics. And here is the result:

Now if you look closely in here I'm seeing a small issue. Generative AI is just not very creative! It simply repeated the same techniques and added a few more.

This is exactly why you hear

Trust but verify!

But this is EXACTLY what business analysis work is! Verification and validation are key areas of focus for a business analyst! Sure, I could use generative AI for my work, but we always need to ask if we really NEED it! In my verification work, I'm now going to spend more time trying to get a few more ideas. Whereas if I just stepped back and marveled that AI generated 80% of my work for me in a few seconds. That good ol' Pareto rule - spend the rest of MY time focusing on the quality and validation of the work. I have a bunch of great categories to START my work that I can now dive in focused and specific on my goals of the work in general.

So again, just a quick thing to think about in your excitement to try new tools or even hesitancy to share anything in public spaces. Think back to what you need specific help with and have the technology get you going. Then you can let your own analysis skills and talents and knowledge take over to deliver a quality result. AI and technology in general are still tools in our toolbox. The trick is then to simply use the right tool at the right time for the right reasons (and the right security in mind too!). As that is when you can truly deliver business value in all you do!