Business Analyst Best Practices

Learn the Customs of Your Customer

Describe the benefits of creating a business process flow diagram. Explain the importance of learning the language of the customer. Recognize the danger of focusing only on responsive teams.
  • Business Analyst skills are found in a variety of rolls, included those of admins who are responsible for adding functionality to a Salesforce instance.
  • When called upon to improve a business process, biggest challenge is to understand the current state and why there’s a need for improvement.
    • One of the best way to get a deep understanding of current state is to create a business process map
    • Business process map: visual representation of every step and decision made to complete a process from start to finish
    • Universal process notation (UPN) is a simple way to document processes
      • Example showing top level lead-to-cash process with all activities, handoffs, people, and systems shown below.
      • Possible to drill down into the detail

  • Okay to start with incomplete rough draft of process flow diagram.
    • Need to meet with the actual works who go through every step during their regular jobs to flesh it out and fill in gaps.
    • Filling out the diagram is often a good source of information about what causes frustrations, inefficiencies, and pain.
  • Once all detail has been collected, take the time to create a polished version.
    • The initial state is part of your documentation.
    • Also serves as a starting point when eliciting business requirements
    • Having a “before and after” set of process flow diagrams can help illustrate how things have improved over the course of the project.
  • Learning the customer’s language is important - use it when you document business requirements.
  • When working with the customer, some people are likely to be very responsive and reach out often. Others may be more busy and unavailable.
    • Danger is those who are easiest to work with may not be the ones who can help with the most important priorities.
    • Need to put in extra effort to follow up with those who have the info you need.
  • In summary, connect with the right people, use the right language, and use visual tools.

  • Business process flow diagram is meant to represent the detailed steps of the current business process.
  • One trap to avoid is spending too much time engaging with the most responsive team - their tasks may not be the highest priority.

Schedule for Success

Lead meetings that are more productive and appreciated. Recognize the danger of solutioning before knowing all requirements. Describe the benefits of delivering a quick win early in a project.
  • Business analysts hold a lot of meetings, and busy people generally don’t look forward to more meetings
  • Meaningful Meetings
    • Most people appreciate meetings that are productive, so job as a business analyst is to make meetings as meaningful as possible
    • Most important part of a good meeting is the agenda, which should be provided before the meeting starts
      • Best medium for an agenda is a “slide presentation”
      • Agenda tells people what you hope to accomplish with their time,and sets expectations for your time
      • Helps people show up prepared, so they have questions and comments and are ready to participate
      • If things go off track, you can return to the agenda to restore order
      • Meetings also:
        • Makes you look prepared and in control
        • Provides structure for the meeting
        • Acts a signpost - people know where you are in the meeting
        • Gives people something visual to focus on, which can help retain attention
    • Record meetings, if possible, so you are less reliant on notes
    • Near end of the meeting, recap what was covered and summarize what was gained from everyone’s time together
      • Identify who’s responsible for next steps, and if anything from the agenda needs to be revisited again
  • Understand, then solution
    • Need to finish understanding a problem before you begin to solve it. For business analysts, this means gathering all requirements before solutioning.
    • Watch out for two scenarios:
      • Preemptive solution - A stakeholder comes to your initial meeting already bearing a solution.
        • For example: they’ve seen a product demo and want to use it in the business.
        • Try to help stakeholders think about what they want to accomplish or do differently in generic terms
        • Focus on “Why,” not on “How”
      • Admin with a new set of skills wants to start tinkering with the platform, so they forget to do their due diligence and solidify the business requirements before building.
  • Build Trust while Building a Solution
    • Eventually, you will have your requirements in order, and a place for a solution, and you can start building.
    • Demonstrating that you can deliver a good part of the solution early on in the project has a lot of benefits.
      • Shows that there’s a good reason to engage with you.
      • Builds momentum for the overall project, getting buy-in from other teams

  • In summary, a little strategic timing in producing, waiting for the right time to solution, and running meetings professionally will help ensure project is successful

  • Tools that help keep meetings on track: a slide presentation, an agenda.
  • Sequencing your deliverable strategically help the project because an early quick win can develop trust and buy-in from the customer.

Advocate for the Customer

Explain why it’s important to consider the whole organization while working with a single team. Recognize the danger of taking orders without question. Describe the benefits of thoroughly testing a solution.
  • Be on the Lookout
    • As a business analyst you’re more knowledgeable about a customer’s processes than most people outside their organization
      • Step in when you see something happening that might not be in their best interest
      • Sometimes the customer is their own worst enemy - be on the lookout for this as well
  • Consider the whole organization
    • Customers tend to start projects that focus on one area of their business, often because that is where they can invest and get the greatest return
      • Trouble is they’ll treat one unit of the business as though it’s the only one that exists, but one project for the first team can greatly impact other teams
    • As a customer advocate, always be considering the larger organization. You might find they have some common business needs and you can plan accordingly.
    • You may find teams have conflicting requirements or priorities - get a decision before moving ahead.
  • Dig deeper
    • Always ask why something is done a certain way, don’t just follow orders without question
    • Even if a customer is adamant about doing things a certain way, make them explain. You need to know the “why” and make sure there isn’t any danger lurking behind the request.
    • When its time to start developing solutions, make the effort to investigate different ways to solve a given problem
      • Often there’s more than one viable solution, each with their own pros and cons
      • Don’t develop solutions in a vacuum, bring the customer a choice of solutions so you can discuss which one will best suit their needs
  • Test Like you Mean it
    • Do a thorough job of testing the solution before it’s released to the general public.
      • To be a good tester, you need to be creative. Don’t just test the ideal, expected path that everyone would follow in a perfect world.
    • Find volunteers who are willing a try the solution without any guidance, then, just watch what they do. Anything they struggle with is an opportunity to improve the solution or plan for it during training.
    • Test related functionality that should not have changed. Interconnected systems sometimes result in something else being out of place.

  • Risk of including one business unit in the discussions for your first project: you might miss opportunities to meet common business needs.
  • The expedient, immediately-obvious solution is not always the right solution. Do not just save time, try to make the right decisions.

Commit to the Habit of Improvement

Explain why it’s important to develop testable benchmarks. Describe how you can benefit from receiving feedback. Make a plan for improving your skills through various learning channels.
  • Reflect and Improve
    • No one is perfect on their first try at anything.
    • There’s a huge return on investment in taking the time to seek feedback and expand your knowledge for the sake of your next project and for your own career.
  • Measure Success
    • One of the first conversations you have with a customer is to discuss why they want to change how they do business
      • Establish some benchmarks to test what the customer cares about
        • Minutes for a sales rep to make a quote and email it to their customer
        • How often service agents needs to make a return visit after installing a home appliance
      • Run benchmarks on the existing process
        • Make sure tests produce something reliably quantifiable
        • After solution is improved, run the benchmarks again
      • Customers want to know how much things have improved because it’s how they calculate their return on investment
        • If you delivered significant improvements in your deliverables, the customer is likely to want you to keep working on their behalf
  • Seek Feedback
    • Over the course of a project, you will produce a lot of materials: documentation, presentations, solutions, test cases
    • Whenever possible, ask for feedback on the documents
  • Expand Your Knowledge
    • Learning from Trailhead and other resources should be a lifelong habit
    • If you have an opportunity to observe a project happening in real time, take it
    • Watch how seasoned professionals manage their BA duties
    • Try to attend post-mortem meetings held at the end of a project
    • Attend user group meetings to hear how things are going, and what they would have done differently

  • Run benchmarks on the existing business processes in order to gather a baseline set of data to compare with later