Economic turbulence tends to encourage short-term gain, often at the cost of the longer-term strategies, and results in increased ambiguity in the definition, communication and execution of business strategies. In these circumstances, Business Analysts can play an even more crucial role to ensure the survival and long term sustainable competitive advantage of the organization. In this article, I discuss how BAs can engender the linkage and alignment with Business and IT Strategies that will result in direct value to business.

The gamut of business analysis (BA) in an organization covers a wide range - from simple data gathering and modeling spot requirements through to conducting comprehensive needs analysis for major divisions and the organization. A matured BA works closely with the business to develop strategies and corresponding technology systems and processes – transcending the traditional BA role confined to developing requirements for IT systems. Recent turbulent economic events has brought sharper focus to ‘managing under crises’ and reacting to rapid changes in the back-drop of increased scrutiny of short-term financial performance. In these circumstances, the BA plays an even more crucial role to ensure the survival and long term sustainable competitive advantage of the organization. In this article, I discuss how to engender this linkage and alignment that will result in direct value to business and, at the same time, provide further understanding of the role of business analysis.

Alignment of BA with IT & Business Strategies

Business Strategy focuses on where an organization should be going (i.e. defining the goal) and on how to get there (i.e. execution). Economic turbulence tends to encourage short-term gain, often at the cost of the longer-term strategies. A good business strategy obviates such approach by synergizing viewpoints of different stakeholders through varying degrees of engagement and understanding of the organizational direction.

Expedient decision making becomes increasingly both critical and difficult. There is increasing tendency to both procrastinate and to make hasty business or organizational decisions, that rely more on individual judgment and intuition or that drives purely personal agendas. In aligning with business and IT strategies, BA work involves both testing and building evidence behind  business decisions, and defining and implementing organizational changes, for example BPR, IT systems.

In either case, ambiguity in business strategy significantly impedes BA work. For example, an uncertain strategy will delay getting clear answers to specific questions, continued revisit of the same set of topics, reduced involvement or delayed sign-offs from stakeholders. These scenarios drive up frustration and more importantly, undervalue the BA work.

BAs can enhance their critical role in the organization by being more proactive in helping to define, clarify and/or communicate the business strategies themselves. As a result, communication aspect of BA role comes into focus. Based on my understanding and experience, following are some techniques (that are largely under the purview of questioning techniques) that can be adopted to increase the value of the BA role.

BA work should inculcate ongoing questioning to gain understanding of and to demystify some of the strategic intents. I provide below some techniques to help increase the clarity.
 
•    Be clear of the objectives and time-horizon of the topic at hand and consistently document this. This helps align stakeholders who may be anchored to differing timeframes and objectives. For example, for a one-off short BPR exercise you may not want to invest in sophisticated modeling tools, but this would make sense for building internal strategic capability over the longer term.

•    Pursue relentlessly the core reasons for and importance of each requirement. Constantly questioning ‘why’ will help surface unstated or ill-stated strategies. For example, with reduced clarity, stakeholders ‘pet’ requirements may not in fact align with the current organizational context.

•    How creative does the solution need to be? This tests the stakeholders’ or organization’s appetite for doing something entirely different. For example a conservative stakeholder may be looking for incremental change, while the organisation may want radical transformation.

•    Bring sharper focus on the implications of ‘doing nothing’. This helps clarify the business direction and what is important and what is not.  For example, contrary to stated beliefs, ‘do nothing’ may well be the most prudent option.
 
•    Have a clear dividing line between mandatory/highly desirable and rest of the requirements and constantly question the need for, and related benefits and trade-offs behind each requirement. This will often demystify ill-conceived needs and help build a tighter solution.

•    Be bold and with support of sponsors  ‘engineer’ to surface positional or other conflicts between stakeholders and effectively facilitate issue resolution. Handling conflict resolution well will bring tremendous credibility to the BA.

•    Concisely and specifically document ‘your understanding of the Business / IT Strategy and how your  piece of work supports it’ and use this as a wide and effective communication tool. For example, putting the strategy in your own words will test the shared understanding of organizational vision and objectives across multiple stakeholders.

•    State upfront materially sensitive assumptions and often this triggers rich and constructive conversations. For example, an assumption such as “there will be no product rationalization for the next 2 to 3 years” may in fact force a discussion on the need for such rationalization.

Organizational Leadership and Stakeholder Engagement

It is imperative for BAs, when faced with ambiguous strategies, to play close attention to stakeholder engagement. Cast the net wide and early to identify stakeholder interest groups as well as other impacted projects and initiatives. Go out of the way to seek inputs and to surface and clarify differing organizational views. This adds significant value and credibility to BA Work.

Often it is useful to go up the organizational leadership to clarify strategic intent. The questioning techniques here are more open ended and should focus on aspects such as:
•    What are the organizations issues?
•    What is important and what is not?
•    At a minimum what should we achieve and in what timeframe?
•    How would you measure the success of the strategy/this initiative, and what happens if we fail?

This also helps gain support to undertake additional analysis to help support or demystify stated strategies.

Frequent and clear communications to stakeholders is critical to marshal support and involvement, particularly from those charged with executing the projects and making the critical transformations. Change management implications should not be underestimated particularly when it involves difficult tradeoffs.

Context of IT Strategies

IT Strategy is more about establishing core internal capability and about how this technology and automation capability should work. Due to the complex nature, IT Strategies are typically focused over the medium to longer term; however, organizational turbulence focuses decisions on shorter time-cycles and this necessarily creates disconnects and conflicts.

Range of technologies also place differing implications in terms of reacting to turbulent business needs. For example legacy systems impose different constraints compared to current day web technologies; there are differing paradigms for medium sized enhancements compared to core system replacements or major new systems.

Again, BA work helps to clarify and communicate both the possibilities and constraints in supporting the business strategies; often this may force a rethink of the business strategy.

In the midst of ongoing change and turbulence, a well documented Business and Technology Architecture of both the current environment and future direction, provides a valuable tool for the BA work to develop these communications and help ensure both stability and change.

Challenges & Risks

Under turbulent environment a key challenge that needs explicit recognition is the trade-off of the long term in favor of short term survival. BA work often involves long term organization change and value creation. Refocusing to address short-term needs places some significant risks such as loss of talent, single person dependency, reduced enthusiasm and staff morale, data quality and compliance risks.

While there are no easy answers, BA work at a minimum can play a significant role in surfacing and communicating these risks.

Presented above is more a situational management of BA work. This work can be supported by developing tools and communication/questioning techniques to support different organizational settings and scenarios.

Different types of technology environments pose varying requirements on BA Work. For example, legacy system changes require different communication style and approach compared to a significant new build based on current day technologies. It will be useful to map out for each type of technology environment/scenario,the associated constraints and risks and the areas/aspects BAs should focus on and corresponding skill sets and techniques that may be adopted.

Conclusion

In this article, I have explored some techniques that BA can use in order to bring together a synergy between business strategies and corresponding technologies and processes. This closeness of business and IT is even more critical in the midst of rapid change. BA work plays a significant role in helping to define, clarify and/or communicate business strategies and brings to bear the ‘effective communication’ aspects of BA work.

REFERENCES:

1.    http://www.modernanalyst.com/
2.    Enterprise Architecture as Strategy, Jeanne W. Ross, Peter Weill, David C.. Robertson,
       Harvard Business School Press 2006 (See related review here!)
3.    Flexible Strategy Under Uncertainity, http://workstar.net/library/flexstrat.htm