Technical details in a requirements document

The thought of writing about how much technical information should contain in a BRD (Business Requirements Document) came to me yesterday when I was working on a requirements for a new feature for our product.

I come from a technical background, but not all business analysts comes from programming or technical background, I feel both categories of BA have advantages and disadvantages, especially when you are working for a software company.

Let me stick to the topic and focus on BA with technical background, I feel when you start the requirements document it should be entirely based on business outcome and you should not think about the solution or any other technical details, this ensures that your document covers all the business needs and is not compromised by technical limitations.

If your company promotes and allows JAD (Joint Application Development), then you will have to talk to the technical team, I found it very handy if you are able to talk the technical language, but getting too much technical could risk the business focus. On the other hand based on my experience technical team are a bit reluctant to document technical details in that case documenting technical information can be very handy (QA team will thank you for that).

Personally I would rather focus on defining requirements clearly and free from ambiguity then worry about technical details, but BA needs to understand the design concept, in past I have experimented with semi technical document by adding Workflows, UI, Data Modelling and sometime ERD diagrams, that has worked in some cases some and some cases it did not, you will have to use your judgement as to how far you need to go on the technical side, it may also depend upon your audience, too much technical details makes it difficult for a business user to review,understand and verify the requirements.

There is also some overlapping between functional and technical, what is technical to BA is functional to the development team, BA usually have to write functional and non functional requirements so sometime there is no way out but to write technical details.

So in short depending on the willingness, skills and experience, BAs can choose to be more on the technical side or stay focused on the business side, a balance of both side is what I will recommend.

Managing release day

Typically in a software company there is a dedicate 'Release Manager' - a person who manages all the projects and make sure they all come together in the software and that the software gets shipped on the release day, but does the buck stop at s/he ?
I think companies should have release team where there is more than one person to manage the release cycle (now of course that depends upon how big is the release cycle and how often it is done).

Software release can be very complex, may involve many small projects, to coordinate, scope of the project can change based on available resource and customer priorities, the main role of the release team is to ensure that the software being released meets customer requirement, all small project are included, and the most important thing is to release on time with highest quality possible.

The software release team should be decided earlier on the project and each person should have a clear responsibility within the release cycle. Often QA team leader or project manager is the best person to be the team leader of software release team. Software release team leader should be expert on interdependencies and various integration issues, s/he should be very familiar with the product to be able to analyse the impact of release on each and every customer, this information is very crucial when the software has to be released with known bugs (I know no one accepts this but it has been the fact of software release)

Some of the role/things to be managed by the release team are as follows

• Who is the Build Master (ideally there should be one complete build every day)?
• Who is responsible for the installer?
• Who is responsible for releasing the software and ensuring the software is delivered to the customers?
• Who is in charge of the release/installation document?

If all (or most of the above) is planned and executed there may not be any surprises on the release dates.

Quality Of Software

Many placed I have worked in past, software quality is often talked about but in reality it is always compromised mainly for cost and time reason. The usual explanation is that since the turnaround time to fix the bugs are not that high, there is no need to spend more time on testing. Market research has shown that organization, who invests heavily in testing procedure and tools, reduces cost long term since they are not constantly going backwards and fixing things over and over again.

Even in an organization where this is a QA team, often quality starts and finishes with them, I feel quality is responsibility of the entire team, which includes management and BAs, and of course developers. Try looking at your development cost and chances are that 60% of the development resource is spent on identifying and fixing defects. By not introducing defects in the system and implementing proper tools and procedure to identify them earlier on, development cost can be reduced and eventually increases team productivity.

Quality should be enforced right from the beginning of the project (yes even in requirement gathering phase), project leader should focus more on quality rather than quick delivery.

To conclude this blog, there are various level of quality required for software, some mission critical software needs to have close to 0% defect, where as some software can handle more. Quality is an ongoing process, which should be built in to the SDLC, quality should not be looked as burden and requires commitment right from the top level management. Any testing tool can identify the defect but only the ones which falls under the testing criteria, most software are so complex (at least the ones I have worked with) that there is no way you can test the complete software, in this scenario implementing good quality business process (along with testing tool) is the way to go.

Shorter Release Cycle

Quality of software can be improved over a period of time by introducing shorter release cycle (I am experiencing it first hand at my current workplace). It is a known fact that software has defects, there could be many reason for that, bad requirement, poor coding and not enough testing, fortunately over the last decade or so people are so use to defect they have started accepting it in some form or another.

Defects which are left in the software too long becomes an undocumented feature and when it is fixed you are bound to upset some of the customers.

Introducing shorter release cycles ensure that software gets out of door more often and chances of identifying defect increased, which in turn means more (and timely) opportunity to fix them. This also means that no defect is left long enough to become a feature.

Shorter release cycle also means more excitement to the development team, users and market, it enables team to release new feature in a controlled fashion to get a feel from the market before you invest heavily in any given functionality. It also give you more opportunity to catch up with your competitors.

Releasing web based software could be much easier, fix has to be deployed only once, and is available to everyone instantaneously, but there is also a downside one defect introduced and everyone is affected immediately, frequent release can also upset web users as no one likes to put up with changes every day, but it gives you an excellent platform to change user habit slowly over a period of time.

Releasing software more often can also pose some challenges to the internal team as well as customer, since customer has to upgrade more often it also creates a sense of uncertainty (as they say 'known enemy is better than unknown friend’), but over a period of time team and customer will get use to the release cycle and will start seeing the value. The key is to release software timely without compromising innovation and stability.

On the final note regularity = reliability = happy customers.

Walkthrough Process

Performing a walkthrough process is very critical during analyzing phase, it helps the stakeholder, business user and development team to understand the proposed solution and identify any potential shortfall.

Walkthrough should not be just conducted before the beginning of development; it should be done regularly (as and when needed) during the entire lifecycle of the project.

Some benefits of structured walkthrough are as follows

• Helps stakeholder to believe and take ownership of the project.
• Business users can visualize the solution and propose any changes or highlight any potential problems.
• Reduces ambiguities and identify missing functions earlier on the project.
• Helps the team agree on objectives of the proposed solution.
• Validates the current and complete understanding of the analyst(s).

Planning and Organizing Walkthrough

Make sure that relevant people (preferably one person from each department and/or level) attend the walkthrough meetings, keep the meetings short and distribute material to every participant before they attend the meetings.

Facilitating a Walkthrough

Rules observed during any business meeting should be followed during a walkthrough meeting, such as

• Make sure you book the meeting room well in advance.
• Setup the meeting room before the meeting starts.
• Arrive on time, and most importantly finish on time.

Below are some more tips when you are facilitating walkthrough meetings

• Give every participant a fair chance and time to speak.
• Do not interrupt when someone is talking and don’t let anyone else do that.
• Use terminologies which are familiar to the group and/or organization.
• Take notes of all the proposals, questions and problems identified during the meeting.
• Try to stay away from fixing any problem and/or bugs identified during the meeting.
• Nominate yourself or someone else to resolve any conflicts arises during the meeting.

Always remember the cost of fixing and/or changing anything after the development is complete is very expensive and time consuming when compared to identifying it early on the project. Please let me know if you have any questions and/or comments.

Got a presentation to give ... read on

Anyone can create a presentation, but presenting a presentation is totally different game, I am going to talk about some of the skills you may need in presentation.

The main part of the presentation is content, if the content is right and catered for the audience, you are guaranteed a great turnout. You have to make sure that you have done enough research on the topic well in advance, you never know who is going to ask you a question and about what.

One of the thing which is very important in a presentation is to keep in charge, there will be occasion when someone will ask a question which is unrelated to the presentation or perhaps out of scope, in that situation you have to gracefully acknowledge that question and inform the person that you will address that question outside the presentation.

If you know the audience before the presentation it is a very good idea to send them the agenda of the presentation in that way you are absolutely sure you get right people and gives others a chance to gracefully opt out of the presentation.

I think visuals are great in presentation, make sure they are not very small and do not contain lots of information, it can be very distracting for the audience, you don’t want people to lose focus while you are talking.

Make sure the slides are in logical order; there is nothing worse than having to jump from one section (or slide) to another.

Font size should be appropriate, it may be useful to actually project you presentation before your meeting, sometimes text looks quite different on a computer screen then projector screen. Avoid writing text in presentation exactly what you are going to speak. I have attended some presentation where the presenter is just reading the slides; you can have bullet points to highlight items you are going to talk about in your presentation.

It may be very handy to print slides and give it to the audience, in that way they can refer to previous slides and write notes on it, also very handy for latecomers or people leaving early. One more reason is that some people take it with them and keep it for their future use (you may want to email your presentation to everyone who attended the presentation), on that note it may be good idea to mentally record names of people attending the presentation (this may not work if you have a very big audience).

Make sure you do not spend too much time (or too little time) on each slide; my guideline will be about 2 slides per minute.

The most important part of the presentation is YOU, make sure you stand straight, don’t move from one side to another, use less hand movements and the most important thing is your tone, don’t use same tone throughout the presentation (it may sound like a robot and puts people to sleep), show some emotions in your voice, if you show that you are passionate about what you are presenting your audience will feel the same. Practice some breathing techniques; a few deep breaths can reduce the tension and helps relaxing.

Below are some of the things I would discourage you from using in a presentation

• Video
• Sarcastic comments on product/people/team etc
• Animated text
• Multi color text
• Share joke (very unprofessional)
• Black (or dark) background

In the end of the presentation, you may want to open the floor for questions and answers, make sure you thank everyone attending the presentation, give your contact details and ask them to be in touch if they have any questions and/or feedbacks.

If you follow the tips mentioned above I am sure you will give a great presentation... all the best.

Critical Success Factor (CSF)

Critical Success Factor (CSF) are defined based on individual organization’s goal, objective and mission, a good CSF are the ones which can be measured, and when I mean measured I don’t mean by a score, there needs to be a baseline defined for each CSF to be measured against.

One of the CSF for a project I worked for in past was 'ease of use', immediately when I looked at the CSF I told them, that’s an interesting CSF and I posed them a question, how are you planning to measure that?, and guess what I did not get any tangible answer, the reason was that everyone agreed that we want to deliver a software which is easy to use but did not know how to measure it? that does not mean it is not a good CSF. The moral of this story is that if you cannot measure something how you will decide if it was successful or not, sometime we do not have to categorize a CSF as success or failure it could be how effective it was and that’s good enough (at least for me).

One another CSF I came across was 'increase in sales by 20%', which was later changed to 'increase sales by 20% from last year', now this can be measured, do you agree?

Identifying CSF (oops measurable CSF) at the begining of the project is very critical for project's success and for stakeholders confidence in the project.

Some of the typical CSF is as follows

• Solution will be delivered by so and so date.
• Solution needs be able to install via an installer.
• Software needs to be up and running with no (or absolute minimum) configuration.
• Sales order should be placed within X minutes.
• Quotation needs to be generated within X minutes.
• Implementing this solution needs to save X dollars in operational cost.

Sometime there could be different CSF for different team, but an experienced BA will ensure that every teams individual CSF can be used to measure organizational CSF.

It is very important to constantly keep an eye on CSF, the progress needs to be recorded correctly and more important timely, very recently I saw people in my organization using burn down graphs and backlogs, the tool was very simple to maintain and enabled the whole team to act in time and monitor progress, that’s what I like to see.

Bye for now…

'Team' the sacred word

I bet you have heard that word a million times, perhaps few times every day, we all know what team means and there is no need for me to explain that term, but sometime I still ask myself the question "What team means to me?"

So I am going to talk about what team really means (to me), for me "team is a group of likeminded people thinking, analyzing and working together for a mutual goal". Most companies (no offence) think a team is a bunch of people thrown together in a room to complete a task. Now you may argue what is the difference, the difference is more of philosophical, when a group consists of people who have different view and different goal; often it is difficult to increase the productivity and delivery of the group. Why do you think these "Team Building Programme" are getting popular, that’s because more and more companies realizing the true meaning of a team (a good team).

Following are some signs of a good team

• One team member supporting other team member (or group of member).
• Tolerant to each other’s short come, uniqueness and opinion.
• Team Leads are passionate to teach and help team members.
• Team member are open to share their expertise & insight to other team members.
• Team member often stop to see how other team members are doing.
• Team member treat each other with respect.

Remember a team is as strong as its weakest team member.
Something to think eh?

Is Business Intelligence a threat to Business Analyst ?

In the past 5-6 years I have seen Business Intelligence (BI) getting very popular and powerful too. For those of you who are new to BI let me first explain in brief what BI is, the official definition according to Wikipedia is "Business intelligence (BI) refers to skills, technologies, applications and practices used to help a business acquire a better understanding of its commercial context. Business intelligence may also refer to the collected information itself."

Now you may think that this is some new cool technology but you will be surprise to hear that BI existed since late 1950s in one form or another.

BA are very integral part of creating BI, interacting with customer, identifying reports, analyzing data, this information can then be applied to the BI, it does not make sense to apply rules to data if you don’t understand the data.

There is one thing everyone needs to understand that BI are great for reading data, massaging data and applying decision and generally does all this very fast, but one thing they lack which is "thinking" (until they perfect artificial intelligence of course), for now BA will do the thinking.

Business Analyst Vs Project Manager

Well as much as the title suggest that I am going to talk about who is important over the other, let me settle this before I talk more, the answer is very simple (and you know it) "Both". Now that it is settled I can relax and continue, BA and PM and like two side of coins, depending upon which angle you are looking from, one may seem more important than other, but in reality the only way to guarantee success of any project (big or small) is to have a very experienced PM and experienced BA.

In a project BA manges business stakeholders and PM manages resources (hardware, people, cost), it is very crucial for the success of a project that both role are clearly defined and planned for (unfortunately sometime BA are expected to do both ... but that is a different story).

In the beginning of the project both roles will overlap to define and agree scope, mission, objective, risk (along with mitigation plan) of the project (sometime called "Terms of Reference"), but as the project moves on the roles gets it real shape and each focus on their particular responsibilities and tasks.

It is very crucial for the success of the project that both role are working towards an agreed goal and never lose in touch with the business stakeholders and business users.

Some of the tasks performed by BA are as follows

• Bridge between business users and technical teams.
• Knows (or in the process of) the business in and out.
• Regularly feeds progress back to business stakeholders.
• Resolve conflicts and implement change management process.

Some of the tasks performed by PM are as follows

• Manage resource (people, computer and much more)
• Create a proper (detailed) plan of the project.
• Motivate the team members and resolve any conflict as arises.
• Document change request.
• Keep an eye on the risk and take timely approach to resolve it.

Now as you must have guess that sometimes it seems that BA and PM have conflicting goals, for PM it’s more important to deliver project on time and within budget, for BA it is more important that the business outcomes are achieved, I personally like that kind of tension and that’s where experience comes in.

Bye for now...

Why Business Analyst ?

Over the last 10 years or so the technology focus has moved away from IT to business users, it is no more about product, software or hardware it is all about solution (not any solution - A business solution).
Business Analyst is a bridge between technology and business, the one who can see and understand both sides, to support business procedure which in turn increases revenue and decreases operating costs.

An experienced BA will involve business users and technical people from the very beginning of the project; this ensures that both side gets an opportunity to express their views and contribute ideas, this process is called JAD (Joint Application Development). There are various tools which can be used during the various stages of projects some of them are

• Process Mapping
• Data Modeling
• B5 Matrix
• Design Sessions

BA must also be skilled at system testing, user training and project management.I am going to leave you with a final closing statement that today companies need good BA more than ever if they really want a solution for their business users and to keep up with this fast moving global competition.

How Business Analyst fits in Agile Environment

There is a lot of information and talk these days on agile development, so I am not going to bore you with agile software development principals.

But one thing I hear a lot is that most (if not everyone) in agile environment thinks that there is no need for a BA. Well I am going to be up in their face and say "Mate you are wrong”, there is more need for an experienced BA than ever and I will try to explain why.

Most of the agile project (if not all) gets disconnected from the business stakeholder over its development course and BA forms a very important link to ensure this does not happen.

Since Agile development is very organic and does change its shape and form, BA has to be constantly on their toes to make sure all the changes are well document, discussed and agreed. Since BA has tremendous business knowledge they are in better position to evaluate every option in terms of their business benefit for the business users and in the best interest of the stakeholders.
Some of the questions you can expect from a BA are

• What about this, have you thought of another option?
• Why this option?
• Do we really need this option?
• How does this change the user experience?
• What is the advantage of this option to business users?

BA will also ensure the team is solving a business problem, keep them aligned with stakeholder's goals, with that thought I will take your leave ... see you next time.