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More than 600 business analysts attended the World Congress for Business Analysts (WCBA) at Disneyland on November 15th and 16th.
iRise was the Executive Sponsor of the conference and we posted the following blog entries on the conference proceedings:
- Thornton May on How to Thrive in the Age of BIG Information
- Patrick Lencioni Highlights The Five Dysfunctions of a Team
- Cynthia Froggatt Leaks “Secrets” of High Performance Distributed Teams
- Building BAs That Any Business Sponsor Would Fight To Have On Their Project
- Delivering Effective User Acceptance Testing
- How NASA Uses Storytelling to Promote Success
- Richard Sheirer on Lessons for Leaders from 9/11
- Building a BA Center of Excellence at Wachovia
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At the World Congress for Business Analysts (WCBA) today, Dr. Ed Hoffman from NASA shared how NASA uses storytelling to share knowledge and develop leaders. Ed is Director of the NASA Academy Program which is part of APPEL or Academy of Program/Project & Engineering Leadership.
Ed started out by describing NASA’s new mission statement which can be summed up in one word – “Exploration.”
Ed showed a short video about NASA’s mission to return to the Moon by the year 2020 which highlighted some of NASA’s challenges, such as:
- what is the “story” of the project?
- how do you plan a 30-year project?
- how do you build something robust enough for technology that isn’t developed yet and you know is going to change?
- how do you pass knowledge along to the next generation?
The Academy was established to build leadership capability for individuals and project/program teams with the goal to:
- provide a common frame of reference for all NASA employees, provide and enhance critical job skills, support program and project teams
- supplement for all educational programs
Ed talked about what makes a good story. A good story:
- starts with a problem/conflict/challenge
- describe a unique experience
- describe concrete actions by people
- makes a point
- arrives at some basic truth
To illustrate his point about stories, he showed another video about Gene Krantz who was program director for the Apollo program. The video didn’t show their greatest success of putting a man on the Moon, instead it showed their greatest failure which was the Apollo 1 fire which killed astronauts Grissom, White and Chaffee. In the video, Gene remembers what he told his team on the day after the disaster. “No one said no – and this won’t happen again. In the future we will be both tough and competent. We will write that on our blackboards and we will never erase it.”
Ed’s team sponsors a number of knowledge sharing activities, such as conferences and forums, multimedia, and publications that emphasize the vital role of stories. Ed said that it is important to discuss both successes and failures and he likes to see a 7 to 1 ratio of success stories to failure stories. People need to think about what’s going right and what’s going wrong – and the community needs to learn that it’s ok to share and collaborate.
In the end, it comes down to trust and the social connection between people. People must trust one another enough to share their successes and failures. In addition, you must impact social norms that learning is ongoing, that there are resources out there to help you, and to get teams to understand how to go beyond the boundaries of their expertise. Finally, it is critical to build a network and community where knowledge sharing and collaboration is the norm.
[go to the APPEL website for more information and stories]
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At the World Congress for Business Analysts (WCBA) in Disneyland today, Richard Sheirer from Guilani Partners shared lessons learned from 9/11. Richard was the director of New York City’s Office of Emergency Management (OEM) at the time of the crisis.
His message was that there are similarities between the business community and public safety. He stated that planning, preparing, practicing and execution are as important in public sector as in the business sector. In addition, communication is the key to success during a crisis.
In terms of practicing, Richard noted that simulating events is critical and that NYC held drills and simulations for many different potential castastrophes – and that practice was critical to their response on 9/11.
Before concluding with a photo montage from Ground Zero, Richard highlighted 10 lessons from the events of 2001:
- think the unthinkable
- factor in for Murphy’s Law
- appreciate that catastrophic events don’t recognize turf
- accept policies over reason/science
- be prepared for the knucklehead factor
- value and encourage strong leadership
- rely on your frames of reference
- appreciate the need for redundancy and think outside the box
- recognize the importance of communication
- commit to relentless preparation and practice
Richard wrapped up by saying that America and American companies are and will continue to be major terrorist targets - they will likely strike something unlikely and we can never let our guard down. Natural disasters like Katrina and the Southern California wildfires will pose greater threats. Finally, planning, preparation, and practice contributes to prevention.
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In the Modeling, Testing and Design track at the World Congress for Business Analysts (WCBA), Jonathan Kupersmith (Kupe) of B2T Training (and formerly of Turner Broadcasting) described how to deliver effective User Acceptance Testing (UAT).
UAT represents the final approval by the customer and is typically conducted by users with assistance from the project team with tests derived from day-to-day operations, use cases and process workflows. UAT validates that the final solution meets the needs of the customer.
First, Kupe pointed out that UAT is not the same as usability testing. And a project is doomed when it substitutes or replaces usability testing for user acceptance testing.
In the traditional approach, project team members, business analyst (BA) or quality assurance (QA) write test scripts, users get a quick demo of the new application and then walk through test scripts step-by-step.
Kupe described the shortcomings of the traditional approach including:
- project team members pressed for time
- users were not fully vested in UAT
- users did not fully understand how new functions should work
- tests are often generic
- high pass rate (because the BA wrote the scripts), but risk of major issues not being discovered until production
Kupe confessed that he came up with his more effective approach based on a bad experience he had with the traditional approach. He described the more effective way to approach UAT as:
- involving key users early
- providing users with hands-on system training
- facilitating sessions that create the test plans
The end results from this revised approach were that:
- users took responsibility for project success
- users were comfortable with new functions
- test scripts involved real life scenarios
- issues formerly caught in production were caught in UAT
- no major issues made it to production
- users felt they were part of the team and helped champion the release
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At the World Congress for Business Analysts (WCBA), Cynthia Sniezak from Disney Parks described how Disney Park’s IT Academy “Builds BAs and PMs That Any Business Sponsor Would Fight To Have On Their Project.”
First, I want to point that I love how Disney refers to all of their employees as Cast Members. It clearly demonstrates that everyone is part of the ’show.’
Disney views talent management as a business differentiator and the mission of the IT Academy is to “make our cast wildly successful.” Disney uses an approach they refer to as HILL which is an acronym for:
- Hire the very best
- Invest strategically
- Lease rising skills
- Lease setting skills
Cynthia also shared their “Leadership Framework At a Glance” which is a generic way to view all jobs on a consistent basis. The key elements of the framework are:
- Delivery and Action (delivery, initiative, organizational stewardship)
- Personal Dynamics (flexibility and adaptability, impact and influence, interpersonal understanding, relationship building)
- Managing Others (developing others, team leadership, teamwork)
- Thinking and Solving Problem (analytical thinking, conceptual thinking, technical expertise)
In terms of training, the IT Academy makes sure that their training is consistent for both the project managers (PMs) and business analysts (BAs). Their training is vendor-delivered (ACC Learning), aligned with the PMBOK and BABOK, and aligned with Disney business objectives. The core PM training is 11 days with 6 days of electives which is completed during an employee’s first 12 to 18 months with Disney. The BA training is a subset of the PM training.
Cynthia also shared some of the tips that they use to reinforce training which includes laminated cheat sheets, note cards and resources such as their internal BA group called BALOO and the external Catalyze community.
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At the World Congress for Business Analysts (WCBA) today, Patrick Lencioni from The Table Group, Inc. spoke about dysfunctional teams. Patrick wrote The Five Dysfunctions of a Team in 2002 and his latest book, The Three Signs of a Miserable Job, just came out in September.
Patrick started out by saying that “life is simple and hard” and that “it’s important to do simple things well day in and day out.”
He then went on to discuss the two key requirements for success:
- Be Smart – which means a company should be good at strategy, marketing, finance, technology
- Be Healthy – which means that a company should have minimal politics and confusion, high morale, high productivity, low turnover
He expounded on the keys to creating a healthy organization:
- Build and maintain a cohesive leadership team
- Create organizational clarity
- Over-communicate clarity
- Reinforce clarity through human systems
Finally, Patrick wrapped up with the five dysfunctions of a team – presented in a triangle with “Absence of Trust” at the bottom. The role that a leader should take is noted in parentheses:
- Absence of trust (go first)
- Fear of conflict (mine for conflict)
- Lack of commitment (force clarity and closure)
- Avoidance of accountability (confront difficult issues)
- Inattention to results (focus on collective outcomes)
Teamwork is a choice – you have to sign up for the costs and sacrifices in order to gain the benefits.
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Thornton May, Futurist and Dean of the IT Leadership Academy kicked off the World Congress for Business Analysts (WCBA) conference this morning with a fast-paced, entertaining and thought-provoking session.
Wearing his signature bowtie, Thornton started out with a series of slides and open-ended questions showing how technology and the world are changing including:
- how will you deal with a more interactive world?
- how will real-time information processing impact you?
- why do projects fail?
- do you always have the best and brightest on your projects?
- do you grade project team members?
- should we be able to “vote them off the island?”
- are we allowed to fail?
- will you be aware of all the information available?
Just before wrapping up, Thornton offered these nuggets of wisdom:
- “the questions we ask will bias the answers we get”
- bring the future to the present
- go to the endpoint of your analysis and work the problem backwards
- remember the power of end-to-end perspective
Thornton ended his presentation with a slide of a rocket tied to a dog. He mentioned that the rocket represents technology change and asked, ”Is the puppy going to be happy if you light the rocket?”
Save the puppy!
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The iRise team will be live-blogging from the World Congress for Business Analysts (WCBA) this week. Check back later for blog posts summarizing the keynote speeches and some of the great content from the concurrent tracks:
- Business Analyst (BA) Core Competencies and IIBA Body of Knowledge
- The BA and the Enterprise
- Modeling, Testing and Design – Drill Down
iRise is the Executive Sponsor of this conference. The Catalyze community will also have a booth in the exhibit hall.
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