Is Your Delivery Approach Fast and Responsive?

Is Your Delivery Approach Fast and Responsive?

We need to speed up the delivery process in a way that is responsive to rapidly evolving technology and ever-changing user needs and expectations. All too often, our teams end up rapidly delivering, but not getting the expected outcomes from a user and customer point of view. 

This need for a responsive delivery approach will inspire many BAs and organizations to focus on these three goals this year.

1) Increase Knowledge And Awareness Of New Technologies And How They Can Improve The Customer’s Experience.

As organizations wrapped up 2017 and set refined priorities for 2018, one of the most common things I am seeing in portfolios and spending is a shift to artificial intelligence capabilities.

If you think your industry isn’t impacted by all of this, think again! Artificial intelligence, machine learning and robotics are already part of our daily lives—consider the fraud alert you receive when someone makes an unusual purchase on your credit card, the map app that suggests a faster route for your commute, or the ever-improving spam filter in your email.

If these technologies haven’t appeared in your project work yet, they will soon, and likely this year! Your customers and users will start asking for these advances soon, if not already. So, get ready to respond by increasing your awareness of how these technologies might influence your work.

For BAs, this means new customer interactions, new business models and new business processes that will replace existing processes that we thought were working fine. It also means helping our business stakeholders think differently about their own requirements and helping them understand the latest capabilities. Think about how these capabilities could provide a better solution than what a stakeholder may be asking for. They may be providing requirements that are using outdated technologies and there may be AI capabilities that better align to providing the user a better experience while helping the organization with their strategic agenda. I am betting our backlogs are full of requests that could be re-imagined and strategic!

BAs who are ready will have a ton of fun on these projects. BAs that are not ready might be left behind.

What can you do to get ahead? Make time to learn about AI capabilities. How can these capabilities help your customers meet their goals faster and improve customer interactions with your organization?

2) Define Smaller Increments To Experiment Or Get Feedback.

In addition to being responsive to new technology, effective teams need to be hyper-focused on their backlog management processes.

BAs and product owners are often in the driver’s seat when defining and prioritizing the backlog. They should consider the size, scope and value of each item. Each increment should also be an opportunity to experiment or get feedback from stakeholders and/or end users.

Feedback loops are king, and we need to get feedback FAST in today’s business environment. Organizations that do this well learn faster and please customers at a faster rate which is critical to success in fast-paced, complex and ambiguous environments.

If your team is struggling with backlog management, consider these tips:

  • Backlog items should express the WHO, WHAT, and WHY, in terms that the end customer understands and can be prioritized by business leaders.
  • Make sure the backlog is not just something the technical team is managing; it needs to be aligned with the business. The right business drivers should guide the backlog prioritization.
  • Backlog items should be “feedbackable.” When you deliver the item, will your users or stakeholders be able be able to see or experience the change and provide feedback?
  • Slicing backlog items does not mean dividing it up into tasks, components, or technical design details! Instead, slice by decomposing the item into smaller, but still user-valued pieces. Recently this is my favorite thing to help teams with, there is so much value in slicing backlog items strategically!

3) Collaborate Deeper And Just In Time.

Another way be more responsive to stakeholders and end users, is to explore the quality and timing of collaboration. Teams that actively collaborate with their stakeholders deliver better products and solutions.

So BAs, your call to action is to ramp up your collaborative games skills. Both remote and face-to-face elicitation sessions should include facilitation techniques that deepen the discovery and learning cycles. Effective collaboration helps attendees move from good ideas to great ideas and from wishy-washy decisions to confident decisions.

But timing is important too. Defining too many details too soon, results in lengthy backlogs. If an item has been on your backlog for a few months (or years, uh oh!), it’s likely your assumptions/shared understandings are out of date, and a more advanced and innovative solution is needed to compete and please customers.

You can prevent rework and be more responsive to change by collaborating at a high level initially and defining details as close to delivery as possible.

Every team will deliver better solutions faster, when they stay on top of technology trends and refine their delivery processes to get immediate feedback from stakeholders and end users. It’s this responsive approach that will continue to delight your customers and give your organization a competitive edge in 2018. #linkedinlearning

要查看或添加评论,请登录

Angela Wick的更多文章

  • Where Do Business Analysts Fit Into Agentic AI?

    Where Do Business Analysts Fit Into Agentic AI?

    Let’s be honest — traditional Business Analysis, the way many of us learned it, won’t survive the AI wave. But here’s…

    1 条评论
  • AI is Changing Business Analysis Tools!

    AI is Changing Business Analysis Tools!

    I have been following Business Analysis tools for decades! For many years, requirements and analysis tools have…

    1 条评论
  • What View is Out of Your Window?

    What View is Out of Your Window?

    As the wildfires burn in southern California (about a 90 min drive from where I live), it's a heavy week. My aunt…

    1 条评论
  • How Is a Knee Replacement Like Being a Business Analyst?

    How Is a Knee Replacement Like Being a Business Analyst?

    When I recently went through knee replacement surgery, I found myself marveling at the parallels between my experience…

    3 条评论
  • Looking at a 2025 Forecast!

    Looking at a 2025 Forecast!

    As we wrap up 2024, it’s time to look ahead and prepare for a transformative year in business analysis. In 2025…

    3 条评论
  • Can You Imagine Your AI (Jr. BA) Agent?

    Can You Imagine Your AI (Jr. BA) Agent?

    Most of you are already experimenting with GenAI tools to help you get some tasks done faster, and leverage how GenAI…

    9 条评论
  • What Do BA's Need to Know About AI?

    What Do BA's Need to Know About AI?

    Let’s be clear: BAs need a strong understanding of AI to thrive and help organizations successfully implement AI…

    3 条评论
  • BA Career Growth, BA Manager Group Connect and more!

    BA Career Growth, BA Manager Group Connect and more!

    The pace of change is heating up and as we dash forward through the last half of the year, we are all feeling it! This…

  • Are We Talking Enough About AI and Business Analysis?

    Are We Talking Enough About AI and Business Analysis?

    ?? In an AI world we need to rethink #BusinessAnalysis and the #BusinessAnalyst role. We need to rethink what skills…

    10 条评论
  • June Newsletter

    June Newsletter

    I have been traveling a lot lately and the fascinating part is hearing the challenges and successes of…

社区洞察

其他会员也浏览了