The Path to BA Greatness Requires Fewer Models and More Deliberate Practice
Agile, BPMN, UML, BPR, Kaizen, Kanban, Six Sigma, value stream mapping, impact mapping: the list of tools, techniques, frameworks, approaches, methods, and models pertaining to business analysis is endless.
High-performing BAs know the importance of diversifying our approaches to avoid the man with a hammer syndrome. As legendary Peter Drucker said:
There is no universal medicine. The stuff that is good for my arthritis would not help me at all with a broken leg, even though it’s in the same general area.
On the other hand, look around and you’ll find many BAs who treat new approaches and frameworks like “collectibles”.
They are always reading articles and books, taking new courses, and getting new certifications without ever making the time to actually learn anything through deliberate practice. They are merely developing what Charlie Munger dubbed chauffeur knowledge:
While they’ve learned to put on a good show, they lack understanding. They can’t answer questions that don’t rely on memorization. They can’t explain things without using jargon or vague terms. They have no idea how things interact. They can’t predict the consequences.
Confirming the Pareto rule, in my business analysis career 80% of the projects were successfully completed using the same limited set of tools: decision analysis, use cases, user stories with acceptance criteria, glossary, and three types of visual models: fact models, user flow diagrams, and state diagrams. I’m sure other BAs have achieved great success in their own careers using a different set of tools and techniques well-suited to their skills and project needs.
Regardless of their preferences in models and techniques, a pattern I’ve noticed among successful BAs is that they know enough to embrace flexibility while avoiding unnecessary complexity. Paul King illustrates this well in his article Ten Tips for Business Process Mapping, saying:
Technical geeks like myself can get caught up arguing between standards (BPMN vs. UML). When working with business professionals, I tend to use simple 20th century techniques that are most effective for communication. For instance, a rectangle for an operation and a diamond for a decision point. Even with that simple notation, there are different types of maps and charts to choose from depending upon your DRIVER. If the goal is regulatory compliance or education, techniques like the top-down flowchart and cross-functional (swim lane) process map are most useful. If, on the other hand, the goal is to reduce cycle time or eliminate non-value-added steps, then techniques like the physical workflow (spaghetti) chart or the value analysis table are a better fit.
Of course, finding the right balance between simplicity and adaptability can be hard. For example, the very first comment in the article about fact models that I linked to criticizes the approach saying, “There really is no need to invent a whole new class of communication for an issue that’s well served already.” The commenter suggests that use cases would suffice to convey the same information. While I agree that we should be conscious of the utility of the business analysis tools we adopt, to me fact models are one of those invaluable tools that cannot be replaced by use cases. In many of my projects I was able to avoid bad decisions by giving the developers a fact model that conveyed information that would’ve taken reading several pages of use cases to digest, so don’t count on me to give up on this “class of communication” any time soon.
If your goal is to join the ranks of top-performance business analysts, the first trap to avoid is to become a collector of “chauffer knowledge”. Anyone who keeps reading articles and books about the latest tools and techniques without dedicating time to practice and get better will fail to develop the real knowledge that the best BAs exude.
And this kind of pretend knowledge is more common among business analysts than one might expect. In last year’s ATX-BADD (Austin Texas Business Analysis Development Day), after Ronald Ross encouraged the audience to try fact models during his presentation on business rules, I chimed in with a warning for analysts who think that reading a book or blog post is enough:
When I was teaching the program Crafting Better Requirements, I’d ask participants to create a fact model for our simulated project. After teaching the program to hundreds of analysts, I can count on one hand the number of participants who built a valid model the first time. Despite having a solid example to use as a reference, most analysts would end up with a mix of state and process diagrams in their first attempt. And at least one third would have to redo the exercise twice before they finally produced a valid fact model.
The way to get really good at any business analysis technique is to study it via deliberate practice. It takes time and effort, but the rewards can be astronomical. It’s through deliberate practice that we learn the rules — and consequently how to intelligently break them. If you do a great job at writing acceptance criteria for user stories, but also know how to create solid use cases, you’ll be more persuasive when you recommend the latter to your agile team because it makes more sense for a particular project.
Finding time to dedicate to the purposeful and systematic practice of skills you’ve identified as valuable for the work you do can be challenging. Strategies to ensure you’re constantly improving include:
Become more intentional about how your workday unfolds
In order to find time for deliberate practice, you need to restrict the time you spend on tasks that don’t make you better at what you do.
Create a list of hard-to-change commitments (e.g., providing status updates to the project manager on a weekly basis) vs. highly changeable commitments that you can modify to save time (e.g., replacing ad hoc interruptions every time the project manager has a non-critical question with a daily 15-minute Q&A at a specific time of day).
Be diligent about avoiding distractions
The best efforts can be derailed if you don’t develop the willingness to reject shiny new pursuits. For example, if you subscribe to a weekly newsletter that is constantly sharing new analysis techniques, consider automatically routing the messages to a folder you only check once a month. By becoming more selective with which links deserve your attention, you can dedicate more time to practicing a narrow list of skills you are focused on getting really good at.
Constantly seek feedback
It’s tempting to read an article or book about a new technique and check it off our to-do list. But it’s through honest, sometimes harsh feedback that we accelerate the growth of our ability and learn where to retrain our focus in order to continue to make progress.
High-performing BAs go through great lengths to keep a constant stream of feedback coming. They know that sharing a work product and getting back a list of questions that highlight gaps or conflicting information is what will help them pass the plateau of mediocrity to achieve peak performance. To get there, volunteer for projects where you’ll be forced to allow your work to be read and dissected by others for immediate feedback.
When the goal is to join the ranks of the star-performer BAs who maintain or increase their value in this produce-or-perish economy, real knowledge of a few proven approaches will take you much farther than superficial knowledge on a vast variety of techniques. And since becoming really good at something takes time and effort, focusing on a few skills to build and ruthlessly stretching yourself beyond what you’re comfortable with will dramatically increase your chances of success.
Only you can make it happen.
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Photo by Todd Quackenbush on Unsplash
