business value – Vireloup Pty Ltd

February 20, 2022

Is Business Analysis the next big thing?

Beautiful, but not tulips — Route de Vireloup

Business Analysis is the next big thing – or so they say! But are we sure it isn’t like the tulip mania of 1637, the railway speculation of the 1840 or the dot com bust of the 2000s?

Well, I for one have taken the punt and thrown my whole energy into a career in business analysis over the last 15 years. On balance I would say that I have ended up with a “Win”, but life is complicated and it might help if I took you through my story.

In a land far, far away, a long time ago I graduated as an engineer and spent 20 years progressing up the corporate ladder and enjoying work immensely. Over the time I was dragged into the IT universe and left my engineering role to become a Chief Information Officer and travel the world.

CIO roles are somewhat bruising and after a while I decided on a third career change. I had seen time and again the challenges of delivering effective technology solutions. I had always recruited great project managers, but the penny dropped that pairing strong project management with excellent business analysis was important for project success.

As time went on I realised two more things – firstly that projects are not always the best way to develop successful technology; and secondly that excellent analysis early on in an initiative was critically important, but often lacking as the skills were not available.

My final career move was from CIO to business analyst (easier to do than the other way around). I grew my career again through some challenging periods and arrived at a destination which gives me great pleasure. I now run my own Business Analysis consulting company (Vireloup Pty Ltd) providing the quality advice that I found so hard to source as a CIO. I have the flexibility to choose interesting projects and work when it suits me. Financially business analysis has been good to me.

One consistent thread through my career has been engagement in industry associations. Paraphrasing Max Weber “civilisation is created through the slow boring of hard boards”. I have done a lot of this, reaching the zenith of President of the Australia Chapter of IIBA for 3 years. It may just be coincidence that my career succeeded while I put immense effort into voluntary roles, but I don’t think so.

So my gamble on business analysis seems to have paid off. I’m not sure that everyone can say that, and I would be interested to hear your experiences.

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.

October 23, 2014April 16, 2016

Unleash the analyst in you

I have recently made a big change in my life, leaving a CIO role to join a top notch consulting firm. My business card calls me a Strategic Analyst, I get half the pay and have twice the fun. So how different are the jobs of an analysts and a CIO?

I have come up with 4 areas that highlight the similarity:

The CIO as a strategist – The heart of any strategy is analysing current state, developing a vision of a future state and working out what is needed to get from one to the other. The future state is developed with the help of research, providing insight into trends in customer, marketplace, regulations and technology.The output from this enterprise analysis work may be a strategy and roadmap or a business case, all of which need to be bread and butter for a CIO
The CIO as a builder – Much of the executive focus goes into the projects that IT are working on. While these typically represent only 30% of IT expenditure, projects are exciting and presage business change. While many see the skills of project managers and business analysts as the key to success, the CIO should be thinking at the program level. A well designed program focuses on how to integrate many initiatives to deliver an outcome that furthers the business strategy.Pulling good programs together needs enterprise analysis. CIOs need to be thinking about how all the moving parts of projects, programs and BAU knit together to deliver an outcome. The more components that are in motion, the greater the risk and the more strategic the analysis needs to be.
The CIO as an operator. IT systems are not much use if they are not working! CIO careers can easily come unstuck when outages and security breaches cause embarrassment to the businesses.
To operate IT systems well, the analysis effort needs to go into the IT processes up front. With a good service management framework in place, the CIO needs to ensure that operations are adequately resourced with skilled people committed to outcomes
The CIO as a leader. One key skill for CIOs is as a leader of their team and as a networker / leader of stakeholders. Leadership is open to analysis. There are management techniques that are known to succeed and some CIOs develop a formal relationship architecture.In the end, relationships are about people and your personality type has a big impact here. You don’t have to be extrovert to be a CIO, but you do need empathy and excellent communication skills.

For me, CIO as an operator was my Achilles heel. I could never see how fixing the CIO’s phone was more important than keeping a mine site running or ensuring the intensive care ward was operating. I can now focus on what I am really good at – enterprise analysis, strategic thinking, business case development and program formulation.

So how many of the areas above does your CIO tick off?

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?

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?