The Better Business Analysis Institute presence.
The Better Business Analysis Podcast with Benjamin Walsh.
Hi everybody, and welcome back to the Better Business Analysis
Podcast with Benjamin Walsh. And we continue on with our
Business Analysis Unleashed series.
Last time we covered our strategic objectives which was
off the back of strategic analysis work.
We've got our strategic objectives defined by our
executive, by our program team. You know depending on your
organization they are defined, they are there.
So now business cases can be written, we can start to ask for
money to do some stuff. And we talked about the fact
that that stuff we can do needs to map up to our strategic
objectives. And best way of doing that is to
kind of have a highest level story, an epic, we call it
epics. The stories just like user
stories and pre, you know the agile revolution we called them
business requirements. Now the confusing factor with
using the term business requirements, and why I've kind
of moved away from that myself, is that people kind of, you
know, thought their business requirements might just be
requirements functional requirements from the business
as opposed to technical requirements.
So I like the idea of Epic because it suggests size.
The other thing that's really important to talk about when we
talk about Epics is that a lot of people think it's a grouping
of user stories, and I guess technically it is.
However they come first, these are the big chunky kind of, if
you like, process level one or two task things we need to get
done. They're the what they are, the
things we need to get on with. And then of course they can be
broken. They can be evolved, but mainly
they get broken down into user stories, which of course can get
it broken down again into other user stories or evolve into how
we do things once we work with the development team.
So we're now in the phase of what we call high level
analysis. So we are between the strategic
analysis, enterprise analysis phase.
We will touch on that a little bit more just in terms of how
these two phases connect and we're really moving on to high
level analysis here. So this is the highest level
business requirements if you like epics, these are the we're
defining these and then they can be broken down and by our
project team, OK. So sometimes enterprise business
analyst or a senior business analyst would do this phase and
then the detailed requirements once the project's more defined
and the scopes defined, then maybe you'll just get ABA or a
specialist BA working within the project team.
So we're in this this kind of window.
There are some other enterprise analysis techniques that we can
use. But right now I just want to
talk about the strategic objectives down to Epics and and
what are Epics really? So I've already I've already
just stated that Epics aren't the we we start with Epics and
then we break down the user stories.
OK and and what how do you define an epic?
Well firstly you write an epic just as you would write a story.
It is a story. It's just a big chunky story.
It's the the big what that we need to achieve and there might
be a number of these. Usually there's probably
somewhere between 5:00 and 10:00 of these that relate to maybe
helping us achieve the strategic objectives that we've defined a
specific one generally. So if we wanted to increase our
acquisition of new customers by 20% by the end of 2023 for our
mechanics store, one of the epics we talked about last week
was engaging with a marketing firm.
But I'm going to move to more and and Epic now another epic
which joined along that journey which might be more relevant to
you if you've come from an IT background.
So one of the epics we could define is launching a new
interactive website that allows us to capture dynamic content
and for our customers to contact us easily and book services
directly from the website. OK, so that's a big long kind of
comic book description of what the Epic is.
And of course we might write that in now in Epic format as a
mechanic store. I would like my customers, new
existing and potential customers to learn and book services
online so that they can quick and easily book a time, schedule
it without any human interaction, saving US money and
being convenient for them. So that could be the Epic format
for our mechanical store. Now though, we're going to move
on to our specific case study, which is around the UN.
So what we're going to focus on with our strategic objectives
moving to epochs and starting user stories is we're going to
focus on the UN, the United Nations.
And so we're going to talk about a smart objective that has been
defined, which is around, I guess the theme, like I said,
the paraphrased focused area will be about promoting
sustainable development. So that might be the topic of
the meetings that the UN has with our bodies.
But specifically we're going to define that in smart format,
which is around increasing the public awareness of sustainable
development by 10% within the next year, OK.
And so that that would be our strategic objective.
You can measure, we could measure things like public
awareness by conducting a survey across different countries.
We think it's achievable. There are a number of resources
we can invest in it. We can, you know, we know how to
get there through channels like public education campaigns and
social outreach and partnerships.
We think it's relevant because sustainable development is good
for the rest of the world. It's, you know, essential for
addressing the global challenges that we face such as climate
change and poverty and inequality.
And it's time bound because we've said within the next year.
So this might be a goal just for the, you know a year focus.
So it's around increasing public awareness of sustainable
development by 10% within the next year and that would be
something you in the new the UN could come up with, OK.
So that's our strategic objective.
So what does that mean now in terms of breaking that down in
terms of it's epic. So I guess epic one we could,
I'll give you 2 examples. One could be enhance, it could
be in terms of public awareness and promoting sustainable
development. We could enhance knowledge
around the lack of access to clean water and sustainability.
So it could be as a UUN body we would like to promote and
enhance access to clean water and sanitation by the end of
2024 so that the world is more educated and there is some
initial benefits for those who don't have access to clean water
and sanitation. So that's epic.
That's a very long statement. Of course we could paraphrase
that in terms of enhanced access to clean water and sanitation
and you know and educate the world on on this topic.
So that would be the epic. Another example could be around
improving education opportunities.
OK. So that could be you know, epic
format as aun body, I would like to improve education
opportunities to the to the world so that they understand
the challenges that the world is facing in terms of equality and
poverty and climate change. So the two epics that are around
our strategic objective, which is around promoting sustainable
development, does that make sense?
So that they're actually tangible actions, big chunky
ones by the way. You know, enhancing access to
clean water and sanitation and even promoting that and
educating people around it is hard.
And then including educational opportunities online that could
be a website, it could be a social marketing campaign.
So both of these two epics are programs of work, OK?
So they're really, really, really important initiatives and
they could be programs. And then we then drop that down.
In terms of possible user stories, let's focus on our epic
one, which is enhancing access to clean water and sanitation,
for example. The user story there could be as
a community member in a country which doesn't, you know that
that is a developing country. I want to have access to clean
drinking water so that I can lead a healthy life.
OK. So that's a really good example.
And so that's from the perspective of the person, the
persona and which needs needs to be supported, which is the
customer in in this case. So it's a really, that's a
really good example of user story.
Again, you'd say, well, that's not going to help the
development team, that's way chunky.
But the whole point of user stories is for you to break that
down when you get into detailed analysis.
But at the highest level, the user story is as a community
member, I want to have access to clean drinking water so that I
can lead a healthy life. And that in itself could be a
whole project, right. And you could break that down,
work out how to do that. And then you know that's your
backlog starter. So just a note on this, a side
note, you you're kind of working in Excel at this point, really
something like that. Or you know Google Sheets, yeah,
or or Mural Board. You've just got your strategic
objectives, your epics and then your study user stories on a
map. So that's it.
And then once they're defined, then you kind of move on from
your requirements traceability matrix or you're mirror board to
a product like Jira or Azure DevOps or whatever you're
managing for the development process.
And I hope that makes sense because people get confused
about when you should start using those tools.
The audience at the moment is your greater level stakeholders
and the people that own the strategic objectives to make
sure that they think that your plan on how you've broken this
program down, you know matches will help achieve the goal.
And then there are things that go off in terms of the
enterprise analysis phase, which we're not going to cover today,
which is things like getting money and funding, which is like
business casing and justification and all the rest
of it. So that's all happening in
parallel. But the BA focus here at this
high level requirements phase is to have these starter user
stories. So another user story under our
enhanced access to clean water and sanitation for the UN it
could be as a a sanitary worker I want a system to effectively
manage waste disposal so we can manage a clean environment.
So that could be around the people that are not just the
people that are serving the community member.
And so they equally might be from a developing country or a
place where there isn't clean access and sanitation.
And so that could be a great example in terms of how do you
manage waste disposal. Again, hugely chunky item could
be sold many a ways and that's one that's important to have at
this at this high level and not talk about solutions because of
course you know the an Elon Mask or another kind of solution
provider out there who's you know like who's quite a public
figure could say, you know we've got this great, great way of
solving this. These are the kind of chunky
items that the Bill Gates of the world, you know, go after or you
know finding a cure for AIDS. These are chunky items.
And so this is this, is this just the level where you can
then start taking these users with solution providers.
But again you're ABA, you, you're not specifying a solution
here. And and again a side note, once
you get into project phase, the delivery, the project delivery
phase, you know there is types of BAS who you know technical
BAS and what who are now maybe talking about the functions
within the solution. And so there is a room for that
in the BA world. But what I'm talking about right
now is defining the project and this is really where the value
is locked in. This is where you you're really
looking at the items that are going to meet your goals.
And this is the best place for ABA to play.
Another example for an epic that's meeting our strategic
objective, smart strategic objective around promoting
sustainable development would be improving education
opportunities we talked about before.
And two example user stories could be as a student or as a a
world learner, I want access to quality education materials
online so I can continue learning and finding out more
around sustainable development for my community and for the
rest of the world. You, another user story could be
as a teacher, as a teacher who promotes sustainable
development, I want a platform to easily train my students, see
their progress in their learning and so I can provide guidance
and continued opportunities when it comes to promoting
sustainable development. So these are just a few examples
of, you know, the actual strategic and epoch and user
stories for UN initiatives. So you know these this is, this
is this is how we should be defining things down.
And again of course all of these will have processes associated.
So we talked about the fact that the business case, the
justification for doing these pieces of work will have money
behind them and that usually leads to a decision of you know
how much you're going to invest or how you're going to tackle
this from a solution point of view.
So that's happening in parallel, but as ABA what your job could
be in this phase, not only defining these is literally
drawing in a very very high level non solution focus level,
the process that that that currently exists and any
opportunities or pain points in that process where we could
improve these proves these goals.
So for example with the access to clean water, it might be
really useful to see what is the journey today for a community
member in one of these developing nations to access
water because some of those steps might remain.
It might just simply be the fact that they need to have, you
know, collecting water from a well.
For example, a clean well might actually happen today.
It just might be the fact that the access side is the fact that
it's miles away and they have to walk there with, you know, pans
and buckets, whereas it could, the solution could simply be the
pain point around the fact that the well is, you know, needs to
be closer to the village, you're right, or there needs to be more
wells across more villages in this area.
So that's how processes come into place here too.
And just a reminder that when we come to user stories and Epics,
we write them as a type of user persona.
I want you know to perform a function, achieve a goal.
So that and then the reason behind it, right.
So we've covered off strategic objectives for the UN, how they
break down to epochs and then start a user stories.
And next time in our series we're going to get into the
transition to detailed the T delta analysis phase and then
how do we actually do some of the typical kind of BA
activities at this point.