Compounding the BA mindset
This is another chapter on my defense of presenting Business Analysis as a Mindset. I’ve advocated that the BA mindset must surpass the boundaries of the business analyst’s community and expand its horizon to other professional communities.
A mindset is not restricted to a set of tasks, practices, or responsibilities. Mindsets may be easily composed with other mindsets to create something bigger. As a professional, I developed my personal skills compounding different mindsets over the years.
In 2008 I was certified as a business analysis professional (IIBA?-CBAP). As a BA and can’t do anything without questioning the rationale and understanding the real needs. Always start from business requirements, then to stakeholder and solution requirements and design That commitment to business outcomes and the alignment of execution to strategy is essential to me.
In 2009 I was certified as a project management professional (PMI?-PMP). Every time someone calls me to do anything I analyze the scope, resources, time, risks, budget… Even in silence my mind is planning and structuring the efforts needed to get things done. WBS's and Gant's charts shape my mind. I can’t avoid it. It is stronger than me.
More recently I was certified in Agile analysis (IIBA?-AAC) and I stopped committing to long plans without validations of the related assumptions. I learned how to develop and test hypotheses and avoid big risks by delivering value in small iterations. Now I can’t do it differently.
Those mindsets do not compete. They complement each other and make me a better professional in any role I play.
Take a look at the below graphic to see how the Business Analysis Mindset is stronger when combined with the Project Management Mindset.
Despite the four quadrants in this graphic may give the idea of having a mindset as a binary option (YES or NO), that is not true. I used a scale from LOW to HIGH meaning that the development of a mindset is a continuum.
For agilists, it may be hard to think about Agile without Business Analysis, but I must say I’ve seen it very frequently and it doesn’t work well. In fact, Business Analysis without Agile may be problematic too. The next graphic shows how they are stronger when combined.
To complete the third dimension of this mindsets combination analysis, the next graphic shows how the Project Management and Agile mindsets must be combined to deliver value. Some people think these two mindsets are opposites. They are wrong.
I will stop here with these three mindsets that are so important to me, but this composition game may be played with many other mindsets such as Enterprise Architecture, User Experience, Quality Assurance, Sustainability, Product Ownership, Cyber Security…
I am using the word “mindset”, but you may call them “disciplines”. I am ok with that. In the way I see it, those are just different moments of the same thing. The difference between a discipline and a mindset is that the discipline can be found in books, while the mindset is in your head. You shape your mindset from the discipline. And your mindset guides the way you sense and react to the world.
Final thoughts
I’m writing this article from the airplane on my way to the Belgium and Netherlands conference BA&Beyond 2022. The theme for this year's conference is “Unleashing the BA mindset” and I hope the work I have done so far may join the efforts of others who are thinking about the BA Mindset as Yulia Kosarenko, Filip Hendrickx, Stefan Bossuwé, and Jared Gorai.?
May we seed Business Analysis in the mind of as many different professionals as we can find and help more and more organizations to reach better business outcomes.
Other publications about the Business Analysis Mindset
Consulting and Strategic Management
2 年Fabricio Laguna, CBAP, AAC, CPOA, PMP, MBA A very valuable article. Could you please share the graphic showing the value of combining the BA and agile mindsets (the one showing the value of combining the BA and PM mindsets was duplicated in lieu of the desired one).
Autor, Palestrante, Mentor e Instrutor | Fundador e Chief Methodologist na ABO Academy | Especialista em Agilidade de Negócios | Criador do Framework for Agile Business Ownership?
2 年Fabricio Laguna, CBAP, AAC, CPOA, PMP, MBA, I understand your intention, but you should consider a mindset as a set of values, principles and other beliefs that model the way you do something. When I propose the 7 guidelines to the group of the Agile Extension to the BABOK, I was thinking about the way I practiced business analysis the agile way. When working from the Business Owner's perspective, Analysis must be truly business-oriented. With Product Owners, product oriented. Agile Coaches? People and process oriented. I ran a talk at the Agile Brasil 2012 called "Business Analysis and Agility, a Successful Combination!". I proposed that Agile Business Analysis should integrate the perspectives of Business, Product, Process, Project and People to be successful. Today, I recognize that all this can only be done from top management, from the Strategy Analysis, which is why I have been working for 4 years with Business Analysis in the role of Business Owners. But you know that story ... ;-) All the best!
Business Analysis and PMO Manager at Canada Life Assurance Europe plc
2 年Another great contribution Fabricio Laguna, CBAP, AAC, CPOA, PMP, MBA .