1 00:00:00,360 --> 00:00:04,400 The Better Business Analysis Institute presence the Better 2 00:00:04,400 --> 00:00:14,320 Business Analysis Podcast with Hi everybody and welcome back to 3 00:00:14,320 --> 00:00:17,160 the Better Business Analysis Podcast with Benjamin Walsh. 4 00:00:17,600 --> 00:00:20,640 Now if you haven't checked out our website, The Better Business 5 00:00:20,640 --> 00:00:22,920 Analysis Institute, then please do so. 6 00:00:23,520 --> 00:00:27,470 Go to BB A dot Institute and check us out. 7 00:00:27,750 --> 00:00:29,630 There's some courses and some materials on there. 8 00:00:30,310 --> 00:00:33,870 If you stay to the end of the podcast and those of you who are 9 00:00:33,870 --> 00:00:36,830 getting into business analysis, we've got a special deal for 10 00:00:36,830 --> 00:00:39,110 you. So if you listen at the very end 11 00:00:39,110 --> 00:00:41,470 of this podcast, then I'll talk to you about that. 12 00:00:42,020 --> 00:00:44,780 Otherwise, let's get straight into this week's topic. 13 00:00:45,140 --> 00:00:48,140 This week we're talking about a conundrum that a lot of us face. 14 00:00:48,140 --> 00:00:51,860 It's very hard to even focus on this when you're in the middle 15 00:00:51,860 --> 00:00:55,100 of a project and it's something that should really be brought up 16 00:00:55,460 --> 00:00:58,980 just after you've done some high level scoping, so high level 17 00:00:59,940 --> 00:01:03,620 requirements effectively. And it is something that a lot 18 00:01:03,620 --> 00:01:05,459 of us don't even discuss, and it's avoided. 19 00:01:06,580 --> 00:01:09,060 And you might be picked on this, you know, years later when 20 00:01:09,060 --> 00:01:12,510 you're focusing on pieces of work you may have done at your 21 00:01:12,510 --> 00:01:16,590 previous jobs. The topic I wanna talk about 22 00:01:16,590 --> 00:01:19,870 today is whether or not you should continuously improve a 23 00:01:19,870 --> 00:01:23,470 product or service you're working on, or whether or not 24 00:01:23,470 --> 00:01:27,910 you should just start again and throw it away now. 25 00:01:27,910 --> 00:01:33,350 There are a group of people, fundamental agilists, who do 26 00:01:33,350 --> 00:01:36,190 believe that you can continuously improve your way 27 00:01:36,190 --> 00:01:40,180 out of anything. They are very focused on 28 00:01:40,420 --> 00:01:44,340 evolution and the fact that survival of the fittest and that 29 00:01:44,340 --> 00:01:48,820 you can evolve a product to be the best it can be. 30 00:01:49,260 --> 00:01:52,540 And you know there is some truth to that, but that takes a lot of 31 00:01:52,540 --> 00:01:55,020 time and it involves a whole lot of waste. 32 00:01:56,340 --> 00:01:59,580 I'm going to ignore that school of thought when we get onto this 33 00:01:59,580 --> 00:02:02,260 topic. I'll start with an analogy. 34 00:02:02,260 --> 00:02:10,900 It's a story about two men who live in a village in India who 35 00:02:10,940 --> 00:02:16,460 are asked by their elder, the elder of the village, to collect 36 00:02:17,220 --> 00:02:18,980 more water. They need more water in their 37 00:02:18,980 --> 00:02:21,220 village. And these two gentlemen, they 38 00:02:21,220 --> 00:02:25,980 these two men, they say that they both have different ideas 39 00:02:25,980 --> 00:02:29,940 for how to make that happen. And so there is the first man, 40 00:02:29,940 --> 00:02:33,250 And the first man says, hey, look, what I'm going to do is 41 00:02:33,250 --> 00:02:35,570 keep it simple. I'm just going to, I just need 42 00:02:35,570 --> 00:02:37,250 more people. So, you know, men, women, 43 00:02:37,250 --> 00:02:39,930 children are going more, more of them are going to use the 44 00:02:39,930 --> 00:02:43,090 buckets we use today and they're going to go and they just, you 45 00:02:43,090 --> 00:02:48,410 just have more people walking to the lake and bringing back fresh 46 00:02:48,410 --> 00:02:51,650 water. And the secret man says that is 47 00:02:51,890 --> 00:02:55,490 that's, you know, that's not changing the world. 48 00:02:55,530 --> 00:02:58,970 All you're doing there is, you know, adding more people to what 49 00:02:58,970 --> 00:03:02,930 he believed for the problems. So the second gentleman was 50 00:03:03,730 --> 00:03:05,970 innovative. He was, you know, if you like an 51 00:03:05,970 --> 00:03:10,410 agilist. He found and sourced a whole lot 52 00:03:10,410 --> 00:03:14,610 of buckets that had been put in the back of the story. 53 00:03:15,090 --> 00:03:17,690 And these buckets were near perfect. 54 00:03:18,050 --> 00:03:21,850 However, they just that that's one slight problem with them 55 00:03:21,850 --> 00:03:25,170 which was they had a little tiny hole in the bucket. 56 00:03:25,720 --> 00:03:29,240 However, he didn't see that as a problem because his idea was 57 00:03:29,240 --> 00:03:33,360 about taking that bucket and he not only took that bucket, he 58 00:03:33,360 --> 00:03:37,360 managed to attach handles to it so that the people that were 59 00:03:37,360 --> 00:03:39,760 carrying the water, the same people that were carrying the 60 00:03:39,760 --> 00:03:43,080 water from the lake back to the village could carry it easier. 61 00:03:43,080 --> 00:03:44,600 So it was easier for them to carry. 62 00:03:45,320 --> 00:03:48,280 And then he thought, hey look, I want these people to have pride 63 00:03:48,280 --> 00:03:49,960 in the in this job that they've got. 64 00:03:49,960 --> 00:03:51,920 And so instead of the traditional buckets, they were 65 00:03:51,920 --> 00:03:55,640 just a a clay brown. I'm going to paint each of the 66 00:03:55,640 --> 00:03:58,240 buckets so they're going to have beautiful colors and people can 67 00:03:58,240 --> 00:04:01,640 feel awesome about this kind of, you know, if you like hard 68 00:04:01,640 --> 00:04:03,880 labor, job of collecting water from the lake. 69 00:04:03,880 --> 00:04:07,520 They'd feel proud that they had their individually named and 70 00:04:07,520 --> 00:04:09,360 designed bucket that they could have. 71 00:04:09,880 --> 00:04:13,680 And then later on a couple of weeks later, he said, well look, 72 00:04:13,680 --> 00:04:16,560 I could actually design A pulley system and add wheels to my 73 00:04:16,560 --> 00:04:18,880 bucket. So not only is it a beautiful 74 00:04:18,880 --> 00:04:22,880 bucket and it was easy to carry if they need to, I've also made 75 00:04:22,880 --> 00:04:27,190 it faster. I can carry water from the lake 76 00:04:27,710 --> 00:04:32,470 back to the village in half the time, so I don't need as many 77 00:04:32,470 --> 00:04:34,750 people. I need half the people or in 78 00:04:34,750 --> 00:04:36,830 this case I'll keep the same amount of people cause we'll 79 00:04:36,870 --> 00:04:40,390 double the amount of water that we are bringing back. 80 00:04:41,830 --> 00:04:44,990 And at the end of the month, the village out of called the two 81 00:04:45,390 --> 00:04:48,760 gentlemen back in to have a conversation. 82 00:04:48,760 --> 00:04:50,560 He said, look, I've seen what's happened. 83 00:04:50,640 --> 00:04:54,200 You've been adding more people to your bucket line. 84 00:04:55,720 --> 00:04:58,320 The first gentleman, that's nice, I can see that working. 85 00:04:58,560 --> 00:05:01,160 And the 2nd gentleman, I can see that you've been working very, 86 00:05:01,160 --> 00:05:04,240 very hard and you've added huge amount of features. 87 00:05:04,240 --> 00:05:07,240 These are beautiful buckets. You are, you know, you've got 88 00:05:07,240 --> 00:05:12,280 people who are moving water much faster back to the village. 89 00:05:12,840 --> 00:05:15,000 And he said, and I've made a decision about which idea I'm 90 00:05:15,000 --> 00:05:18,120 going to go with. I'm going to go was option one 91 00:05:18,120 --> 00:05:21,000 with gentlemen one just adding more people to the bucket line. 92 00:05:22,280 --> 00:05:25,400 The 2nd gentleman, the one who'd been working so hard with his 93 00:05:25,400 --> 00:05:30,840 beautiful user friendly buckets asked straight away was quite 94 00:05:30,840 --> 00:05:32,880 angry and he asked the village out of why? 95 00:05:32,880 --> 00:05:37,560 Why aren't you using my idea? It's it cuts down the journey by 96 00:05:37,560 --> 00:05:43,200 50% And the village outer said, Despite that fact, when you come 97 00:05:43,200 --> 00:05:47,010 back to the village you have a hole in your bucket. 98 00:05:47,330 --> 00:05:50,850 And so the amount of water that you're collecting is only 1/3 of 99 00:05:50,850 --> 00:05:54,770 how much I get from each bucket. I get delivered from the 100 00:05:55,210 --> 00:05:59,850 gentleman one's idea who's just added more people to the way we 101 00:05:59,850 --> 00:06:04,450 do things today. And that analogy is important 102 00:06:04,490 --> 00:06:09,180 because it shows you that it doesn't matter how hard you work 103 00:06:09,180 --> 00:06:10,540 on something. It doesn't matter how many 104 00:06:10,540 --> 00:06:12,180 features. It doesn't even matter if those 105 00:06:12,180 --> 00:06:16,060 features actually make the process better, right? 106 00:06:16,100 --> 00:06:18,140 They would literally. The wheels were a great idea, 107 00:06:18,380 --> 00:06:19,940 the color was a great idea you had. 108 00:06:20,180 --> 00:06:22,700 You know, maybe they were desirable to even do the job. 109 00:06:23,380 --> 00:06:27,660 However, if it doesn't do its prime fish purpose, if it 110 00:06:27,660 --> 00:06:30,500 doesn't solve, it's the fundamental problem you're 111 00:06:30,500 --> 00:06:34,660 trying to solve, which is more water back to the village. 112 00:06:35,030 --> 00:06:37,630 Doesn't matter how much time the the village out. 113 00:06:37,630 --> 00:06:40,830 Didn't say he didn't care how long it took, he just needed to 114 00:06:40,830 --> 00:06:43,830 solve a problem of doubling the amount of water that the village 115 00:06:44,070 --> 00:06:48,350 needed. If you don't solve the problem, 116 00:06:48,350 --> 00:06:51,270 if you don't solve the fundamental problem that you're 117 00:06:51,270 --> 00:06:53,790 trying to achieve, everything else doesn't matter. 118 00:06:54,590 --> 00:06:56,950 It doesn't matter how much time and effort you spend on 119 00:06:56,950 --> 00:07:00,470 something, and we forget that. We forget that when we're on a 120 00:07:00,470 --> 00:07:03,510 project we don't challenge it enough and This is why the 121 00:07:03,510 --> 00:07:06,470 business case and the pre project phase of business 122 00:07:06,470 --> 00:07:09,870 analysis is so important and why we talk about it so much at the 123 00:07:09,870 --> 00:07:13,630 institute. It is, it is where you know 90 124 00:07:13,630 --> 00:07:17,790 or let's lose the 8020 rule where 80% of the decision making 125 00:07:18,470 --> 00:07:21,990 you know is the most fundamental and 20 the rest is 20% along the 126 00:07:21,990 --> 00:07:23,310 way. OK, whether or not you're going 127 00:07:23,310 --> 00:07:27,110 to deliver it or not. So just remember that analogy. 128 00:07:27,110 --> 00:07:29,310 If there's a hole in your bucket, if there's a hole in the 129 00:07:29,310 --> 00:07:32,780 idea, if it's a fundamental problem, a hole, even if it's 130 00:07:32,780 --> 00:07:34,780 small and you see it, raise it straight away. 131 00:07:34,900 --> 00:07:37,740 It's, you know, some people call it the elephant in the room, but 132 00:07:37,740 --> 00:07:39,780 I call it the hole in the bucket scenario. 133 00:07:40,620 --> 00:07:43,180 OK. So that is fundamentally, if 134 00:07:43,180 --> 00:07:45,860 you're getting that feeling that we're not solving the problem, 135 00:07:46,300 --> 00:07:48,340 then you know, you need to call it. 136 00:07:48,460 --> 00:07:50,540 And so how do we, how do we get there? 137 00:07:50,900 --> 00:07:53,180 So one is to ask what the problem is that you're trying to 138 00:07:53,180 --> 00:07:54,500 solve. When you jump on a project, 139 00:07:54,740 --> 00:07:57,740 understand the problem, making sure you bring it up, making 140 00:07:57,740 --> 00:08:00,860 sure that the objectives of the project link to the problem. 141 00:08:01,640 --> 00:08:05,680 So the objectives in this case of the bucket scenario was 142 00:08:05,680 --> 00:08:07,840 speed. Then maybe, you know, increasing 143 00:08:07,840 --> 00:08:10,520 speed would have been fundamental, but the number one 144 00:08:10,720 --> 00:08:12,640 objective was around moving more water. 145 00:08:13,520 --> 00:08:16,360 So that should be your objective that this the problem you're 146 00:08:16,360 --> 00:08:18,680 trying to solve is bringing more water back to the village. 147 00:08:19,000 --> 00:08:20,920 Then the objective should be increasing the amount of water 148 00:08:20,920 --> 00:08:24,080 that would deliver to the village by 200% by the end of X. 149 00:08:24,460 --> 00:08:26,740 So you've maybe got a timeframe around it, which is a smart 150 00:08:26,740 --> 00:08:29,340 objective. So that the front do 2 151 00:08:29,340 --> 00:08:32,140 fundamental techniques that you should understand as a BA, which 152 00:08:32,140 --> 00:08:34,020 is problem analysis, which we've talked about. 153 00:08:34,020 --> 00:08:38,210 And if you don't know what that is, I'll go on to our YouTube 154 00:08:38,210 --> 00:08:40,289 page or listen to the podcast about it. 155 00:08:40,850 --> 00:08:43,130 And the other one is around objectives, using smart 156 00:08:43,130 --> 00:08:46,650 objectives, which we cover in the level one course, which is 157 00:08:46,650 --> 00:08:49,050 how to define smart objectives, which we have talked about a 158 00:08:49,050 --> 00:08:51,810 little bit last week. We were lucky enough to have 159 00:08:51,810 --> 00:08:55,130 Donna Jacobson on the show, Senior Product Manager from 160 00:08:55,130 --> 00:08:57,530 Zenergy. And he talked about the fact 161 00:08:57,530 --> 00:09:00,250 that of you know, when he was working on Share Tank, which was 162 00:09:00,250 --> 00:09:02,970 a consumer facing app, not an internal facing app. 163 00:09:03,570 --> 00:09:06,530 If no one wanted it, if if that there were some customer stats 164 00:09:06,530 --> 00:09:08,610 they had to measure and if no one was, if they weren't 165 00:09:08,610 --> 00:09:12,010 reaching those milestones they needed to, then the product 166 00:09:12,010 --> 00:09:13,690 wasn't desirable. People didn't want it. 167 00:09:14,090 --> 00:09:16,290 So you've got to make sure that you know when you've got an 168 00:09:16,290 --> 00:09:19,690 external facing app. It's quite easy to measure in 169 00:09:19,690 --> 00:09:21,570 some ways. If people aren't buying the 170 00:09:21,570 --> 00:09:23,090 product then you've got a problem. 171 00:09:23,570 --> 00:09:27,810 But we don't do the same thing when we do internal facing apps. 172 00:09:28,660 --> 00:09:30,820 So if you're working for a government department or a big 173 00:09:30,820 --> 00:09:33,380 corporation and you're working on an internal project, you need 174 00:09:33,380 --> 00:09:38,740 to apply the same kind of logic. Is this piece of work that I'm 175 00:09:38,740 --> 00:09:41,780 working on you know, worth it? Is it? 176 00:09:41,860 --> 00:09:44,500 Is it something that they really want to invest in relative to 177 00:09:44,500 --> 00:09:46,540 everything else they're doing? And remember, you won't 178 00:09:46,540 --> 00:09:49,660 necessarily know everything else that's happening at the same 179 00:09:49,660 --> 00:09:51,940 time. And by asking that question on a 180 00:09:51,940 --> 00:09:54,420 daily basis, you may even, you know, rattle some cages and 181 00:09:54,420 --> 00:09:55,820 people might get pissed off with you. 182 00:09:56,300 --> 00:09:59,860 So there is a, there is a sense of just and making sure that the 183 00:09:59,860 --> 00:10:03,460 problem you're trying to solve is a problem and the fact that 184 00:10:03,460 --> 00:10:06,020 you're solving it using your solution. 185 00:10:07,860 --> 00:10:11,060 So once you've got the fundamental and sorry, I'll talk 186 00:10:11,060 --> 00:10:15,020 about how that might relate to an agile team, how that relates 187 00:10:15,020 --> 00:10:18,300 to an agile team is that the first user story, the customer 188 00:10:18,300 --> 00:10:22,940 journey, you need to focus on that customer journey, the ideal 189 00:10:22,940 --> 00:10:26,570 customer journey with the highest level epics that need to 190 00:10:26,570 --> 00:10:29,970 be done, the must haves, those have to be delivered. 191 00:10:29,970 --> 00:10:32,210 So you can apply the same scenario in an agile 192 00:10:32,210 --> 00:10:34,610 environment. However, that fundamental 193 00:10:34,610 --> 00:10:37,490 customer journey, the jobs to be done, which may be defined by 194 00:10:37,490 --> 00:10:41,410 your epics, I think the process steps in solving the problem 195 00:10:41,410 --> 00:10:44,170 that you're trying to solve, those ones have to be done. 196 00:10:44,210 --> 00:10:47,330 So don't they have to be prioritized in your backlog. 197 00:10:47,330 --> 00:10:49,610 They are your fundamental study user stories. 198 00:10:50,020 --> 00:10:53,980 So there are some not even if you've got some really cool 199 00:10:53,980 --> 00:10:57,500 features or products or services or things you could do, you have 200 00:10:57,500 --> 00:11:01,100 to do the fundamental ones 1st and actually it does talk about 201 00:11:01,100 --> 00:11:04,420 that in the Angel Manifesto. It we do talk about that and 202 00:11:04,420 --> 00:11:07,220 Scrum, it's got to be the end to end solution you've delivered. 203 00:11:07,540 --> 00:11:12,260 So it doesn't matter necessarily how you've delivered the solving 204 00:11:12,260 --> 00:11:14,420 the problem, but you've solved the problem right. 205 00:11:14,420 --> 00:11:16,460 It may not be an efficient way and you may be able to 206 00:11:16,460 --> 00:11:22,100 continuously improve how you deliver the solution from I 207 00:11:22,100 --> 00:11:24,580 don't know, you may have started off making making it very 208 00:11:24,580 --> 00:11:26,380 manual. As we saw we solved the problem 209 00:11:26,380 --> 00:11:31,340 of increasing water through just adding more people to the the 210 00:11:31,340 --> 00:11:33,900 current process and that solves the problem. 211 00:11:33,900 --> 00:11:36,220 So that's a good place to start and then you might continuously 212 00:11:36,220 --> 00:11:39,380 improve from there. But making sure that you've 213 00:11:39,380 --> 00:11:43,380 solved the problem first, even if it's in a manual way end to 214 00:11:43,380 --> 00:11:47,650 end, is what Agile's supposed to be about, doing that first and 215 00:11:47,650 --> 00:11:50,690 then implementing continuous improvement on top of that. 216 00:11:50,810 --> 00:11:53,570 So I'm not saying you should throw continuous improvement out 217 00:11:53,570 --> 00:11:55,410 the window. You just make sure that your 218 00:11:55,410 --> 00:11:59,010 fundamental footing is there, and that should be what your 219 00:11:59,010 --> 00:12:00,810 high level requirements phase is all about. 220 00:12:02,050 --> 00:12:05,330 So something that's very similar to that, you know, should you 221 00:12:05,330 --> 00:12:07,690 throw it out, you should you continuously improve your way 222 00:12:07,690 --> 00:12:11,170 out of a situation. There's another situation that 223 00:12:11,170 --> 00:12:13,330 you might find yourself in which is very similar. 224 00:12:14,290 --> 00:12:18,320 It's when you get to a position where you're a BA and you've 225 00:12:18,320 --> 00:12:24,240 been asked to, I don't know, change a component within a 226 00:12:24,240 --> 00:12:26,200 system. So maybe you've got you're 227 00:12:26,200 --> 00:12:29,240 working for an organization and they click information, they 228 00:12:29,240 --> 00:12:35,120 survey their customers through SurveyMonkey, and then there's a 229 00:12:35,120 --> 00:12:39,760 process of exporting those results into Excel or CSV. 230 00:12:40,220 --> 00:12:44,860 That information is then sucked into a database through, I don't 231 00:12:44,860 --> 00:12:48,580 know, dropping those files onto a file share. 232 00:12:48,820 --> 00:12:52,060 It's sucked up into a database, And then then there's another 233 00:12:52,060 --> 00:12:55,060 reporting tool that meshes it up with another part of the 234 00:12:55,060 --> 00:12:58,140 database, and you pull out another Excel spreadsheet, and 235 00:12:58,140 --> 00:13:01,380 then that Excel spreadsheet is then dropped or sent to someone 236 00:13:01,380 --> 00:13:03,220 else. And then they suck that into 237 00:13:03,220 --> 00:13:06,300 their reporting server and then they produce a dashboard. 238 00:13:06,620 --> 00:13:10,790 Now that is a one example of something that's very, very 239 00:13:10,790 --> 00:13:12,390 common. You see this all the time with 240 00:13:12,390 --> 00:13:14,350 internal reporting and that journey. 241 00:13:14,350 --> 00:13:17,550 What I've just talked about, you said made it fantastical, but 242 00:13:17,550 --> 00:13:20,900 it's very, very common. Now in that situation, if you're 243 00:13:20,900 --> 00:13:24,380 asked, for example, to change the SurveyMonkey form, the 244 00:13:24,380 --> 00:13:27,420 upfront form with a new technology and new survey 245 00:13:27,980 --> 00:13:31,860 application, you could look at this and go, hey, look, I can do 246 00:13:31,860 --> 00:13:33,180 that. But you know, that's not going 247 00:13:33,180 --> 00:13:35,420 to improve the efficiency of getting the reporting out. 248 00:13:35,740 --> 00:13:38,820 So if your goal is to make sure that it's less tiresome, there's 249 00:13:38,820 --> 00:13:41,700 less people involved, it's less than efficient to get the 250 00:13:41,700 --> 00:13:44,180 information from the survey and the report at the end. 251 00:13:44,340 --> 00:13:47,540 You know that the problem is all the stuff in the middle, the, 252 00:13:48,050 --> 00:13:51,050 you know, the constant exporting of Excel and pulling into 253 00:13:51,050 --> 00:13:54,250 databases and the mashing up and the and all that stuff, All that 254 00:13:54,250 --> 00:13:58,250 data integration and ingestion and processing and 255 00:13:58,250 --> 00:14:02,170 transformation may be necessary. But you know that that's where 256 00:14:02,170 --> 00:14:04,410 the problem here is, That's what needs to be improved. 257 00:14:04,690 --> 00:14:07,850 So you should make that very clear out front that yes, I can 258 00:14:07,850 --> 00:14:10,170 do this component, but just so you know, if your goal is 259 00:14:10,170 --> 00:14:13,210 reporting, this is not necessarily going to solve that. 260 00:14:13,410 --> 00:14:15,730 Yes, it might help us using a new survey talk because there 261 00:14:15,730 --> 00:14:18,610 might be some benefits from it. But ideally your problem is 262 00:14:18,610 --> 00:14:21,330 somewhere in the middle. Now, if that middle bit becomes 263 00:14:21,330 --> 00:14:25,090 so complicated, then what you can do is something called black 264 00:14:25,090 --> 00:14:26,890 box thinking. Okay. 265 00:14:26,890 --> 00:14:29,250 So you need to make this judgment call, and this is 266 00:14:29,250 --> 00:14:31,970 something that I wouldn't suggest you do unless you're in 267 00:14:31,970 --> 00:14:34,410 a very senior position. You've been around the block a 268 00:14:34,410 --> 00:14:36,740 bit. Black boss thinking is when you 269 00:14:36,740 --> 00:14:39,940 don't worry about the middle but you say look the input is a 270 00:14:39,940 --> 00:14:42,500 survey. And we know in this case and 271 00:14:42,500 --> 00:14:45,380 this is this is a. This is an example that we don't 272 00:14:45,380 --> 00:14:47,620 usually have the luxury of saying we know that this 273 00:14:47,620 --> 00:14:50,940 information ends up in a report, you know at another person's 274 00:14:50,940 --> 00:14:53,620 desk who runs the report. Now if that was our only output, 275 00:14:53,980 --> 00:14:56,900 which is what I said, sometimes we don't necessarily know how 276 00:14:56,900 --> 00:14:58,860 information's used and we'd get worried about it. 277 00:14:59,460 --> 00:15:01,180 Then all that middle. But I talked about with the 278 00:15:01,180 --> 00:15:04,410 Excel spreadsheets and the the databases and the input and 279 00:15:04,610 --> 00:15:09,010 output and the the upload from the file share maybe irrelevant. 280 00:15:09,010 --> 00:15:13,250 Maybe to attack that problem we don't need to worry about it. 281 00:15:13,370 --> 00:15:17,090 We black box it and we say, OK, let's ignore that, let's not 282 00:15:17,090 --> 00:15:20,410 even bother doing current state analysis, let's ignore how we 283 00:15:20,410 --> 00:15:22,810 currently do it and keep it running that way. 284 00:15:23,170 --> 00:15:26,690 And in parallel, let's think about a completely blank sheet 285 00:15:26,690 --> 00:15:29,290 of paper. Start again model. 286 00:15:29,450 --> 00:15:33,360 Don't continuously improve what we do, what don't change each of 287 00:15:33,360 --> 00:15:35,200 the components. Don't spend a little time doing 288 00:15:35,200 --> 00:15:37,800 current stat analysis. They should just step back and 289 00:15:37,800 --> 00:15:40,520 go, how would we do this today? And you may even get the people 290 00:15:40,520 --> 00:15:43,200 involved who are doing that job, even if they're invested in it 291 00:15:43,200 --> 00:15:46,200 and you know, they might enjoy that to go, If you were doing 292 00:15:46,200 --> 00:15:47,440 this from scratch, what would you do? 293 00:15:47,600 --> 00:15:50,800 And you might find that the architect, the architecture, and 294 00:15:50,840 --> 00:15:53,080 so therefore include the architect in this discussion, 295 00:15:53,400 --> 00:15:55,360 might say, look, we've got a very easy way. 296 00:15:55,360 --> 00:15:59,440 Do you know that SurveyMonkey or the new tool you're putting in 297 00:15:59,920 --> 00:16:01,320 has out-of-the-box reporting now? 298 00:16:01,910 --> 00:16:04,510 Well, it didn't exist before. It does can actually get a 299 00:16:04,510 --> 00:16:06,430 report straight away. So you've now reduced that 300 00:16:06,430 --> 00:16:08,150 complexity all the way to 1 tool. 301 00:16:08,590 --> 00:16:12,030 Or you know, Power BI can report, can connect, now connect 302 00:16:12,070 --> 00:16:15,110 to SurveyMonkey output, and you can get a report straight away. 303 00:16:15,110 --> 00:16:17,830 And if you want to copy in the data warehouse, then call. 304 00:16:17,830 --> 00:16:21,110 You can also store that and it just gets sucked into the data 305 00:16:21,110 --> 00:16:24,470 warehouse straight from SurveyMonkey and that's it. 306 00:16:24,470 --> 00:16:27,230 So you've completely redesigned the architecture, But if you get 307 00:16:27,230 --> 00:16:29,990 caught up in all the steps and what happens here and here and 308 00:16:29,990 --> 00:16:32,570 here and here, sometimes you shouldn't do that. 309 00:16:32,570 --> 00:16:37,290 Sometimes you should black box it and go and be very clear on 310 00:16:37,290 --> 00:16:39,330 the input and output. That's the hard bit, by the way, 311 00:16:39,530 --> 00:16:42,290 making sure you've defined the input, the process that happens 312 00:16:42,290 --> 00:16:44,490 in the output, and then black box it. 313 00:16:44,650 --> 00:16:48,250 So that's very similar to when should I throw away the product 314 00:16:48,290 --> 00:16:51,570 or and start again or should I continue to improve? 315 00:16:51,770 --> 00:16:54,010 It's also the case when you look on projects that are quite 316 00:16:54,010 --> 00:16:57,170 complex, especially technically complex or go through a lot of 317 00:16:57,170 --> 00:16:59,410 steps. Is it worth doing process 318 00:16:59,410 --> 00:17:03,050 analysis all the way through, or is it best to say, let's look at 319 00:17:03,050 --> 00:17:08,450 what the future status straight away, So it's my top tip for 320 00:17:08,530 --> 00:17:11,849 this week. Now, for those who are 321 00:17:11,849 --> 00:17:15,970 interested, we have a free course on a website called 322 00:17:15,970 --> 00:17:17,770 Introduction to Business Analysis. 323 00:17:17,770 --> 00:17:19,569 It's a free course. It's just going to give you an 324 00:17:19,569 --> 00:17:21,930 overview of what the profession's all about. 325 00:17:22,530 --> 00:17:24,490 You do the course, there's a little quiz there at the end, 326 00:17:24,490 --> 00:17:26,609 and you get a certificate you can share on LinkedIn. 327 00:17:26,970 --> 00:17:30,580 So the course is just giving you an idea about what BA is about 328 00:17:30,700 --> 00:17:32,980 and the proper sense, the word, that's its purpose. 329 00:17:33,780 --> 00:17:36,580 You are not going to learn how to do business analysis from 330 00:17:36,580 --> 00:17:38,260 doing that course. But hopefully you'll have an 331 00:17:38,260 --> 00:17:42,500 idea about what BA is all about. Now if you do that course and 332 00:17:42,500 --> 00:17:46,140 you share that on LinkedIn and tag in the Better Business 333 00:17:46,140 --> 00:17:49,740 Analysis Institute, we've got a page on LinkedIn. 334 00:17:50,060 --> 00:17:56,180 Then we will share with you a coupon for 25% off the Certified 335 00:17:56,180 --> 00:17:58,340 Better Business Analysis Level One course. 336 00:17:59,020 --> 00:18:01,940 And that Certified Better Business Analysis Level One 337 00:18:01,940 --> 00:18:04,940 course is the course that will teach you how and what to do as 338 00:18:04,940 --> 00:18:07,260 a BA. It's not overly expensive. 339 00:18:07,460 --> 00:18:10,380 It covers the cost of our Tudor's time, who review your 340 00:18:10,380 --> 00:18:13,340 assignments, give you feedback and for the material to be 341 00:18:13,340 --> 00:18:17,770 continuously improved. And at the end of that course I 342 00:18:18,010 --> 00:18:21,290 you, you then get a certificate that can be verified, it's 343 00:18:21,290 --> 00:18:27,090 accredited by us and you will be able to, I think call yourself 344 00:18:27,090 --> 00:18:30,690 A/B A and you'll have all the toolkit about how and what to do 345 00:18:30,690 --> 00:18:33,130 at the right time and your journey as a BA. 346 00:18:33,170 --> 00:18:36,610 So if you're interested then please do a free course, post it 347 00:18:36,610 --> 00:18:40,010 and then that will help us spread the word and also we'll 348 00:18:40,010 --> 00:18:44,540 give you 25% discount code to use on the certified Better 349 00:18:44,540 --> 00:18:48,660 Business Analysis course. Okay guys, that's it for this 350 00:18:48,660 --> 00:18:50,060 week and I'll catch you soon.