Making business work – Vireloup Pty Ltd

July 15, 2022July 16, 2022

So which is the best analysis method?

Some of us like to do things differently

As the digital space pervades more and more of business, decision makers are taking more of an interest in analysis. There are sufficient battle scars amongst the leaders of today who have suffered from software projects run by developers that they have got over the “do we really need the expense of analysis?” That is the good news.

The next step is of course to ensure that analysis is done correctly, and again there are battle scars from initiatives that have not gone to plan. I worked with a regional Council that was looking for a new IT service management system. They had an analyst develop a large number of requirements from innumerable workshops and put out a tender. Not a single vendor responded!

The key to successful analysis is to align the analysis technique to the specific project. The benchmark international standard for business analysis is managed by the International Institute for Business Analysis. They produce the Business Analysis Body of Knowledge (BABOK) Guide and have further developed a series of approaches in their specialisations – Business data analytics, Cybersecurity, Agile and Product ownership.

Having a global standard to follow and people who are certified certainly improves the chances of success for any initiative. The most critical step however is to document how you will do your analysis – the Requirements Management Plan, sometimes integrated with the overall Project Plan.

The key components of a Requirements Management Plan are:

High level approach – this aligns the approach with stakeholder expectations and with good practice. It details how current state will be recorded and analysed and how to go about developing a future state. It needs to align analysis with overall project methods such as agile, waterfall or procurement related.
Stakeholder engagement – how does the project engage with stakeholders and what are the expectations on both sides?
Process elicitation and documentation – what standards are being used? Do we include user stories and personas? What level of detail is being documented?
Requirements lifecycle management – how are the requirements being classified and managed through the lifecycle of the project?

Even with all this in place, getting analysis right is challenging. You need good people who can interact effectively, bring sufficient understanding into the workshops and work efficiently to manage the volume of detail that good analysis inevitably entails.

Have you had good or bad experiences with business analysis?

March 26, 2018

Why do you need a business analyst?

As a seasoned business analyst, a lot of my work involves uncovering the real value of initiatives. I am often a thorn in the side of managers who want to “just get it done” when I ask questions like: What are you really trying to achieve? Have you assigned adequate weights to all the risks? Is your optimism about this project really justified?

My sense of integrity requires that I ask the same questions of myself. I advocate for the use of good business analysis in business as Vice President of IIBA Australia Chapter and Chair of IIBA Brisbane Branch. I need to ask (and answer) the question – what is the real value of business analysis?

I like this definition of business analysis: “Business Analysis uses proven tools and techniques to analyse business performance, evaluate the impact of change and advise the best course of action.” Why do we need to spend money on this effort, for a profession that didn’t even have a name 20 years ago?

The answer I think lies in the changing nature of business investment and in particular in the “IT project”. The graphic below shows the amount of effort expended in different categories of work. The technology project has dramatically higher levels of decision making compared with other investments.

Decision making needs to be informed by good analysis. It is unreasonably optimistic to think that any individual in an organisation has sufficient understanding of current and future state to proclaim “the answer”. It needs those proven tools and techniques to discover the reality of the current state, develop models of the future state and advise on the right decisions in areas as diverse as “What is the likely return on investment” to “How should we configure this input screen?”. The business analyst is your key resource to do this and you need to invest in this area to be successful.

Of course other professions are clamouring for resources, from architects and project managers, to change managers and software developers. All are important and you probably don’t have enough money to fully resource all of them; but with decision making being the key to success in technology projects, business analysis should be the first investment to be prioritised.

December 14, 2017March 23, 2018

Is cyber security going anywhere?

It seems to be the new gold rush – everyone wants to get into cyber security. It isn’t surprising given the salary differential between IT operations staff and IT security staff. There are new education options popping up, all with a hefty price tag. I have a friend who printed a business card, registered for a course and got a gig working in IT security for more money than he could get in IT operations.

While I accept that there is a specific skill set for IT security, I am cynical as to how it is approached in industry. I can understand why the considerable investment in cyber security is not reducing the problem!

So let me give you my perspective on how cyber security influences senior management. The first thing to say is that it does have a place on the agenda of boards and senior executives and this is a good thing. Typically it will take more time than questions about how IT is improving productivity or how technology changes are influencing the current business model, and this is a bad thing.

The initial triggers have come from either a security breach, news of breaches in similar organisations or the regulatory changes being introduced (such as mandatory reporting of certain breaches). A consultant might brief the board and executive and tell them that there is a significant risk that is not being effectively managed. The potential for dire consequences will be spelled out followed by a proposal for an expensive consulting engagement to determine current state and propose rectifications.

The board may feel relieved that they have dodged a bullet and fulfilled their duty by getting in expensive “experts”. Fast forward a couple of years and the whole cycle will repeat. There is little evidence that things are getting better despite the resources devoted to cyber security – an overhead that doesn’t by itself deliver business value.

The trouble is that the experts are expert in the wrong things. They might know about firewall policies, denial of service attacks and (maybe) IT management frameworks. All these are needed, but not sufficient. What you really need to know is how your business manages its data.

The truth is that modern businesses manage data everywhere in their operations. There are staff with laptops, tablets and devices throughout the business collecting, processing, sharing and deleting data. Any system that considers the data without understanding the business processes that act on it is doomed to failure (read ISO 27001).

If senior managers want to manage the cyber security risk they need to put more effort into understanding how their business really works. There is precedence for this; most organisations have a significant effort on understanding their financial data. The accountants and book-keepers who delve into financial transactions generally have a good understanding of data around money. Imagine putting the same resources as are applied to finance into all the other data sources in the organisation – asset, customer, people, health and safety, environment, social, suppliers etc.

Fortunately there is a way around this. Many business areas do have a good understanding of their business processes, their skills and their technologies. Rarely, however is a consistent view available to the executive.

The answer to managing your cyber security risk is therefore to manage your business better – on a holistic level rather than a financial or compliance approach. Putting in place consistent approaches to documenting and monitoring business activities is a good start. Many departments will be undertaking business analysis work within their current scope, so we are not talking about a brand new expenditure line.

Do good business analysis, broadly and consistently throughout the organisation. Collect and leverage the information through some (uncomplicated) architecture. Insist that the effort improves business performance. These are the key tenets for success. With this in place your cyber security consultants can add value and advise on solutions that don’t break the bank.

August 29, 2014April 16, 2016

The four faces of IT

The times they are a changing, and as businesses adapt to the new reality of technology driven value creation, IT departments are changing too (finally)! The scenarios that I am about to paint are not new; what has changed is the scale and ease of action.

These days almost every business function can be enhanced with cloud based information systems – from rubbish collection to retail. The business unit managers are being approached continuously by salesmen with products, and there are compelling business benefits available. Managers can sign contracts and have working systems in place in a matter of weeks with no interaction with IT. Everything is available through the browser.

Of course problems arise through time – the cost of the system may escalate as more users are put on; the business department has to manage user names and passwords; the reports from the system are limited unless other organizational data can be added; the supplier may have regular outages; and finally the IT department may upgrade systems or security and the system stops working.

If this happens with just one business department, IT can help to resolve the issues; but when it happens everywhere, IT has real resource limitations and cannot respond effectively. This of course drives a further cycle of bypassing IT (maybe by contracting external help).

So how do we deal with this new reality? The answer is first to get on the front foot and work out between the executives what sort of IT department they want from the choices below:

Fixer – The business units drive their own agenda, and only occasionally take advice from IT. Often IT cannot influence the outcomes, but has to resolve issues as they arise. The IT department pours its resources into reactive capability and loses control on strategy and architecture. This is happening to many IT departments today.
Governor – In this approach, the IT department takes a governing role, collating a single list of technology projects, identifying interactions and pre-requisites but not holding the budgets. IT may set policies on security and service requirements and is likely to get involved in technical negotiations with suppliers. Depending on IT’s ability to influence (and the quality of its advice) this might improve the outcomes but does not deal with issues such as funding for components to tie the initiatives together.
Integrator – Here the organization accepts that businesses do not have the skills to procure and manage IT systems. Executives assign responsibility to various departments and ensure that they have the right competencies. For example procurement may need to develop specialist IT procurement skills; compliance would have staff who could take a close look at the technology; audit may verify supplier performance; and IT would take on integration, service desk and other functions. IT is just one of the team with certain key accountabilities. In this model IT has a clear (but limited) accountability and may have to release resources into other parts of the organization.
Orchestrator – In this (somewhat scary) model, IT acts like the conductor of the orchestra, ensuring that all components are identified and actioned. The CIO takes accountability and pulls together all the necessary components in a program approach. The IT department has to be agile to meet the expectations of the business and the CIO needs hefty support to ensure that the business department is serious about delivering on benefits.

The key to success in this whole debate is to decide – then do. If you just drift into a particular scenario, it may be very difficult to change to another model.

So are you ready to have the discussion with your executive on which face of IT they want to see?

June 25, 2014April 16, 2016

What they don’t know

Have you ever been to a dinner and known that one of the guests is about to get a surprise? The tingling excitement seeing their normal carry on persona until “it” happens and everyone shrieks in laughter. Well I sometimes feel IT / Business meetings are a bit like that – each side sharing what they think is important and when problems happen they ask “how could they have not known about that?”

The big IT decisions are taken in leadership governance forums, structured to get the right level of input about the opportunities and threats from the business, and likewise from technology. The trouble is that they don’t know everything that we know (on either side of the table). In fact often we don’t think they have sufficient understanding of the realities of the world we live in (again common to both sides).

People have to take decisions based on their understanding of the relevance and quality of the information in front of them. And if you want to get good outcomes, you have to take good decisions. So how do you develop effective governance in the organization. I have a few tips:

The business side needs to see technology literacy as a core development requirement of its leaders. This is not about giving them an i-pad, but teaching them about the value of frameworks, the role of enterprise architecture and service models. Formal courses are required here and an increased technology focus in MBA courses would be a good start.
There just has to be less optimism around IT solutions and more realism. Yes they are the free lunch that accounting firms drool over (while the IT folk work through lunch); but miracles don’t happen, they are dragged out by strong leadership teams steering a steady course and holding to realistic business outcomes – just like the team did with the Collins Class improvements.
The people mix has to be right. You need governance teams with perceptive insight. These may not be the operationally focussed IT staff who have been promoted for brilliantly resolving the ceaseless IT outages. More likely it is the analysts or architects who will develop to GOVN7 competencies.
The information that is shared has to be just right! The governance meetings may take up only a few percentage of the working week. What information to share and what to leave under the covers becomes very important. For project governance, this is reasonably well understood. As you move to programme, portfolio and business process governance, it comes down to having the right leaders with the perceptive insights of what is really important.

I have been a member of a State Government programme board for one of the largest IT projects in the country. We used to receive 300 page board packs, supplemented with consultants’ reports that ran to 100 pages each. Fortunately we had perspicacious board members who knew where the really important information was – and it was very rarely in the executive summary!

So how do you think we can improve knowledge on both sides of the table?

January 28, 2014April 16, 2016

To interim or not to interim?

There is an approach that is gaining popularity in Australian organizations called “Executive Transition”. This is where the departure of an executive leads the organization to take stock of where it is, where it wants to go and what kind of executive it needs to get there. They might bring in an interim specialist manager who can immerse themselves in the organization, reviewing existing strategies and updating them to reflect contemporary thinking. The interim can then paint a picture of what the replacement executive should look like and assist with recruitment and ongoing support once appointed.

So how well would this approach apply to replacing a CIO?

There are some real positives for the organization:

Many executives have real frustration over the performance of IT in their organization. Complaints are often met with the mantra that IT does not have enough resources, yet they see money being wasted on ineffective IT projects and high third party costs. Getting a reliable and reasoned perspective from an experienced interim CIO is very valuable
There are basic practices in IT that are widely accepted as fundamental to an organization realizing value from technology. These include a business case approach, project management, IT governance, enterprise architecture and service management. An interim can assess the performance in these areas and in a short timeframe restore broken processes.
Different organizations needs different CIOs. In some cases, the CIO is there to keep the infrastructure running – particularly when a business feels that there is little threat from IT enabled market pressures. Where IT is a key part of a transformation agenda, a strategic CIO is needed to ensure that the broader opportunities from IT are leveraged.

Of course there are also down sides to this approach:

Developing an IT strategy involves stakeholders from throughout the organization. To be effective, the stakeholders have to hold a degree of trust in those implementing it. If the replacement CIO does not feel that they own the strategy, the strategy can become a hinderance rather than an enabler.
A critical part of any IT turn around is the IT team. To perform consistently at a high level, the IT department must have the right people with the right motivations, meaning a career structure and associated accountabilities. An interim only has so much influence here as this is the critical work of the permanent CIO.
The time that an interim is in place may seem like treading water. The interim must balance the need to take long term decisions against the reality that they will not be in place to implement them.

I have held roles as interim CIO and as permanent CIO. I believe there is an underutilization of executive transition in Australia. As an interim CIO I can bring a range of experience and knowledge that you would not normally find in the market. Developing strategies, creating relationships with stakeholders and engendering turn-arounds are all high on the list for my “high satisfaction” days.

Do you think your organization could do with an executive transition program for IT?

June 26, 2013April 16, 2016

Innovate in the Cloud

One of the hallmarks of the digital world is the ability to innovate. People can convert a good idea into a saleable product with much less investment than 10 years ago. There are all sorts of digital tools being made available in the cloud either for free, or very inexpensively, in every area from knitting to customer relationship management.

Our new generation of digitally enabled workers, see the opportunities from these tools and want to apply them in the business context. Individuals with a passion to improve the quality and quantity of their work will put in the extra discretionary effort to utilize cloud solutions in the workplace. Unfortunately if they ask the IT Department how they can do this, the answer is often “NO!”

In my CIO roles, I was constantly challenged with finding ways to enable these digital evangelists to innovate. Unfortunately we really did not understand the information that might be shared using these tools. It could be as benign as a list of building defects, or as sensitive as the plans for a military base. There are real risks from putting unknown information in the cloud with minimal opportunities for contractual redress if it is shared or stolen.

So how can an IT Department enable cloud innovation and manage the risks? I have a few suggestions:

1. Categorize information. Make sure that the organization has a single categorization of sensitivity (e.g. unclassified, restricted, confidential, and secret). The ideal way to implement this is through an enterprise content management system, but make sure you get an intuitive system that your Grandmother would be comfortable with.

2. Educate the managers. Most managers deal with business risks on a day to day basis. If they are informed of the risks inherent with the cloud, they should be able to balance that against business value, and assume accountability. This is not about frightening managers with worst case scenarios but about realistically assessing and documenting the risk in the enterprise risk framework.

3. Simple business cases. Staff who want to trial cloud based solutions should be encouraged to document the outcomes that they hope to achieve. They should undertake a post implementation review and evaluate whether solution should be maintained, scaled up or discontinued.

The paradigm required to successfully innovate in the cloud is a co-operative relationship between stakeholders. Businesses are using technology to evolve outside the purview of IT, and this isn’t going to stop. There will always be information and systems that require the robust processes of an IT Department. Where this overhead is not justified, the business should be given every opportunity to hop on the digital bus through easily accessible cloud solutions.

Does anyone out there think they have control over innovation in the cloud?

May 24, 2013April 16, 2016

The idiot’s guide to going digital

As an independent consultant I work with different sized companies who are all have the same challenges. They are fighting a war to survive and prosper in an environment where every dollar is precious. Meeting targets is a hard slog and at the same time the digital economy is transforming the world they know.

So how can business owners jump on the digital bus when their energy and precious resources are focused on keeping their head above water. The typical IT project would involve a strategy, a business case and one or more projects run by consultants and specialists. While this may be the right way to do things, it does not fit the reality of many businesses.

I was recently asked to put together a cut down digital strategy for an organization of 3 people. It was clear that many of the issues were common to larger firms (unclear requirements, conflicting expectations, lacking policies), but the opportunity to properly address these was limited. In their favour was flexibility and a tolerance for risk. They were looking for a trusted adviser (myself) to give them an answer – an idiots guide to going digital.

Here is what I recommended:

1. Pick a social platform and establish a presence. In their case it was LinkedIn, but other organizations may prefer Facebook, Google +, Reddit, Twitter or some other

2. Develop a web site based on WordPress. Linking this to blogs was important to them. A commercial content management system such as Sharepoint or VistaPrint is another option

3. Start using Yammer for internal collaboration. Knowledge management is a big part of the business

4. Develop an online policy (I start with the ABC Social Media Policy) and decide who decides on content

5. Put in place some basic tools to manage the systems – a password file, documentation, training and backups of core data

The recommendations fitted the capabilities of the organization, as did my bill.

Do you feel like you need an idiots guide to going digital?

May 15, 2013April 16, 2016

The wrong trousers

You may have seen the Wallace and Grommet animation “The wrong trousers”. It is foolish and funny, but many business leaders feel like their IT systems are the wrong trousers. The technology that is supposed to enable their business is not sufficiently flexible, is not user friendly, takes too long to change and costs too much. So how did we end up here and what do we do about it?

The core reason for this poor fit is mis-alignment. The business wants one thing and the IT systems deliver something else. It is likely that when the systems were purchased they did not properly incorporate the business requirements. Then as the business has changed over time, there has not been an effective feedback loop that modified the systems. Other systems may have been added, with dependencies that make any changes very complex. Once this mis-alignment becomes severe, the system is often replaced rather than modified.

So how do we stop Groundhog Day when we decide on a replacement? Here are a few tips:

1. Business change. Any technology project must be seen as a business change project. The real costs of change will almost be much higher than the cost of the technology.

2. Business process approach. Identify the business processes early on. They will provide clarity for the business case and are critical in selecting the solution.

3. Service management. Ensure that one of the outcomes is a set of IT services. These should have defined performance, cost and governance for future changes

4. Value delivery. Drive change in the business to deliver on the business case benefits. Make this value visible and the CEO may be less likely to chop the IT budget next year.

The core to this advice is that any IT investment must be strategic and not tactical. I have heard business managers railing against the strategic approach – “We just need to do this..” or “Doesn’t such and such a system do what we need?”. It is tough for CIOs to stand up to this and propose a more comprehensive (and more expensive) approach.

I recall a time when a mining executive wanted specific software to manage stocks of tyres. He pushed for an accelerated project to install the software on the basis that it would deliver significant savings. The lite business case stacked up with a low IT investment and a high return.

I insisted that we did a more thorough business analysis. We mapped the business processes and compared the features required against that available on the market. At this level of detail, it was evident that the projected return on investment would not be delivered by the systems available. We could create a better outcome with spread sheets.

We saved some costs from cancelling the project early, but more importantly we did not hobble the business with a system that was not adapted to their needs. Of course no-one thanked me for this.

So if your organization is wearing the wrong trousers, will you tackle your next technology investment any differently?

May 14, 2013April 16, 2016

The reluctant CIO

There is a lot of focus in Queensland right now on getting on board the digital bus. The Chamber of Commerce and Industry completed its digital readiness study and Brisbane City Council has its Digital Brisbane Strategy. These initiatives highlight that Queensland businesses have a long way to go to capitalize on the digital economy. This set me thinking about who should be dragging their organizations into the technology age.

In many organizations this is not the Chief Information Officer; it is either the Chief Executive Officer or the Chief Financial Officer. Very often these people are reluctant CIOs, forced to become the IT strategist because the IT department is 100% focused on day to day issues. So how do reluctant CIOs achieve success?

1. Insist that IT becomes transparent: open up the opaque layers that technologists use to obfuscate issues. Projects running over time and budget, dissatisfied customers and investments with poor or no return must be identified and fixed. The business needs to understand how their actions drive costs through a granular recharge arrangement.

2. Invest well: these days this does not mean servers and data centres. The areas that do need the right investment are strategy, architecture, processes, documentation and training. It is hard to put money to these areas when there are other immediate priorities. In the long run, these areas bring order and discipline to IT spending.

3. Get help: doing things wrong in IT is a very expensive mistake. Selecting the wrong system not only stymies the business, it means the investment must be repeated. In the most extreme cases the cost can exceed the initial investment by factors of hundreds

Many reluctant CIOs would like to find that silver bullet that repositions technology in the organization as a true enabler. While a slick app on an iphone may provide some gratification, the true path to success is through a good IT strategy, implemented with vigour and patience.

It takes a long time to put the right technology in place and create real business value (Gartner believe up to 15 years ). The new cloud based platforms might accelerate this, if you pick the right platforms in the first place.

For the reluctant CIO to become a digital leader they need to identify and realise opportunity for business improvement and value through IT. This might be a whole new set of skills and finding a trusted advisor is the key to success.

Is your organisation likely to get on the digital bus?