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Those who don't know, I've spent
a large chunk of my career 

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working across the education 
sector here in New Zealand. 

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Everything from data strategy at
a national level to redesigning 

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frontline systems that impact 
students and schools and funnel,

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which means family in Maldi here
in New Zealand. 

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So in this episode, we're going 
to talk about what makes 

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education a unique beast for 
business analysts. 

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Whether you're already in it, 
thinking about a role or just 

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curious, here are 10 essential 
items that you need to know the 

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Better Business Analysis 
Institute presence, the Better 

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Business Analysis podcast with 
Kingman Walsh. 

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Welcome back, everyone. 
We are going to be covering 10 

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things every BA should know 
about working in the education 

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sector and I think what I'm 
going to do is follow up with a 

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couple of other sectors that 
I've worked in. 

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So this will be a series that 
will help you if you're 

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interested in that sector, 
you're working in IT, or you 

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just want to expand your 
knowledge. 

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These are 10 tips that I've 
picked up and please comment if 

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you have any tips yourself. 
Number one is that education is 

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primarily around policy and 
people. 

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The education sector exists in a
political spotlight. 

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That's really important. 
Every budget, every reform, 

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every funding model shift comes 
from policy. 

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And so there is a massive 
political overlap in the 

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education sector, but your work 
hits real people, which is 

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what's growing me to this area. 
That's teachers, students, 

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families, and they have an 
emotional investment in what we 

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do. 
So an example might be you're 

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working on a system to report 
student well-being metrics. 

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The ministry or your education 
department wants scalable data 

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for national insights. 
Schools want flexibility and 

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privacy, and you need to 
translate both into your design.

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So the tip for you as ABA here 
is don't just gather business 

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requirements. 
Gather human context, who's 

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impacted and how. 
Talk to someone who actually 

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does the mahi in the classroom, 
which means they'll work. 

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So talk to teachers, talk to 
Farnoo, not just the principals,

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and elevate that up, communicate
it through the channels to 

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political decision makers #2 is 
that in the education sector 

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because it's a public service 
outcomes Trump outputs. 

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So in education, success isn't 
that the system works, it's that

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kids are getting better off 
because it works, right? 

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They're learning more or they're
feeling more engaged. 

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You need to link every 
requirement, the process 

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improvement you do, or dashboard
KPI back to the learner's 

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benefit. 
What are they getting benefit 

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from? 
And sometimes as I've worked on,

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for example, attendance or 
truancy, the the, the learner 

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may not realize that it's good 
for them to, to go to school. 

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So it's not always directly that
a learner is asking for it. 

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So just be aware of that fact. 
An example might be a school 

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platform that automates truancy 
reporting, SMS systems, we call 

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it student management systems. 
It saves admin time. 

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Cool. 
But does it actually reduce 

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absences? 
That's what matters as ABA 

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always ask what student outcome 
is this enabling? 

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If it doesn't have a clear 
answer, go back and redefine the

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problem. 
And the voice of the learner, 

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even if the requirement, like I 
said, hasn't come from them #3 

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is data is everywhere and 
nowhere. 

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Very hot topic for me. 
Expect a mess of fragmented data

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sources. 
SMSSLMSSHRISS, the ministry data

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or the department data. 
Data feeds, third party 

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applications and data quality 
like just varies wildly all over

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the place. 
So you need to do definitions. 

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You need to figure out what the 
word enrolled means. 

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Is it the day they start? 
It's the day they signed up, you

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know. 
Can you be enrolled in more than

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one school at one time? 
Well, you actually can if you 

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look at the data. 
Doesn't mean that it's correct. 

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And you'll get like 5 answers if
you ask that question. 

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So if you were tasked with 
building a dashboard on student 

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achievement, it turns out that 
achievement means test scores in

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one school and in another school
it might mean if an engagement. 

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So they might just mean two 
different things. the BA tip 

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here is always define your terms
upfront in any data heavy work 

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and run a quick data source 
audit. 

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OK. 
It will save you sanity later. 

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And what I found is an extra 
extra extra tip and this may 

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apply to your area of the world.
It definitely applies in New 

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Zealand and most likely in 
Australia. 

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The more layers of data 
interfaces you have from source 

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to reporting system, the worse 
your data is going to be. 

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OK. 
And worse, the finding that 

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term, I mean, in terms of its 
quality, time to market, 

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accuracy, ability to audit cost,
all the rest of it now #4 is 

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that the teachers are your 
secret weapon. 

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Teachers are the frontline 
experts that have been in IT 

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people. 
People do not become teachers to

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earn lots of money, 
unfortunately. 

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OK. 
So they know what works and what

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waste their time. 
They really do. 

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They're really experts in that. 
So if you ignore them, you'll 

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get ignored. 
And if you involve them, you'll 

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get traction. 
So an example here is you might 

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be designing, I don't know, a 
new student notes feature, 

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right? 
And a teacher tells you that 

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they need it to work on mobile 
because they do all their notes 

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between classes. 
They don't have APC that they 

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have access to. 
That's the game changer. the BA 

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tip here is that you need to 
treat the teachers as your 

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design partners, real proper Co 
design partners. 

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OK, They really are 
knowledgeable of this as as 

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opposed to some other sectors 
we'll talk about in the future. 

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They tell you things that no 
policy document will ever, well,

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right. 
And policy is written generally.

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Don't get me wrong with this 
hierarchy of policy writers, but

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a lot of these people come out 
of academia. 

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They work in there. 
They hopefully do spend time 

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with their customers. 
But policy is is such a 

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political base. 
It's very, very, very, very 

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difficult for the policy writers
to know everything that's 

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happening on the ground level. 
And so they estimate, OK. 

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And then our job is sometimes to
make that policy real. 

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And we'll get to that point in a
minute #5 is that pilots? 

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Be careful of your definitions 
here. 

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Pilots don't equal progress. 
Proof of concepts are something 

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different. 
We'll come to that. 

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And sort of prototypes. 
But I'll explain what I mean by 

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pilots. 
The sector loves a pilot. 

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They the education sector loves 
a pilot. 

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They try a system. 
It's very solution focused, OK, 

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but pilots often fizzle out 
because there is no true path to

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scale. 
They haven't thought about 

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operationalizing these systems. 
There's simply a SAS system 

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call. 
You can try Salesforce, but then

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if you want to scale it, you're 
now working from a $20.00 a 

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month charge that you tried for 
your trial license or $100 a 

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month and now you've got 
$1,000,000 asset you have to 

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invest in. 
If your analysts are only like 

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fits for five pilot schools, 
it's not fit for a national roll

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out. 
And, and, and look, I've 

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literally been involved at the 
Ministry of Education in New 

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Zealand and I heard about a 
piece of work, I won't name it, 

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but literally, you know, these 
focus groups might be the best 

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people with the most engaged and
you and then then they put their

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hand up for a pilot. 
That pilot doesn't equal 

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results. 
So be careful about that. 

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So if you had like a well-being 
checked tool and it might work 

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really brilliantly and it'll 
diesel 9 Auckland school or area

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which is affluent doing well, 
then it might crash and burn in 

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a rural one, which limited IAI, 
sorry, AI, Wi-Fi or even the 

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diesel's different. 
It's there's different needs for

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those students. 
On average, the BA needs to 

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always ask what would this look 
like at 2 1/2 thousand schools, 

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OK. 
Or whatever the demographic 

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numbers are in your constituent.
And in America, I know that 

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Trump's currently getting rid of
the Ministry of Education, the 

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National service, but each state
will have the supplied. 

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And think about it in your 
state, if you're in the America 

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or Australia and then in the UK,
they will probably just have 

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different regional areas that do
it. 

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You need to include scale 
reading readiness as part of 

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your requirements validation. 
OK, could, can we scale this? 

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That's got to be part of the 
pilot. 

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OK. 
It's, it's, it's just a testing 

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the water. 
Use that as a focused, focused 

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exercise on checking some of the
common patterns, but not the 

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detailed requirements that need 
to come later with a much bigger

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sample set. 
Number six is that language is 

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totally loaded, OK. 
Words like assessment, 

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inclusion, attendance, they come
with years of emotion and 

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historical language and baggage 
attached to them. 

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Assumptions about shit 
understanding are are risky. 

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I had one where there was a 
truancy code the other day and I

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was working with ABA and we were
talking about it. 

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I said the schools don't use 
that code. 

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We don't use that code, but and 
she was querying if we could get

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rid of it because it wasn't 
really providing value. 

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And I said, well, you know, this
is the new term we use and and 

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we both knew that it was going 
to be a nightmare for her to try

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and remove something just 
because of the historical 

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baggage associated with it. 
You might have an example where 

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ministry or staff member, the 
analyst asks for real time 

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attendance. 
I've talked about this before 

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and the school thinks that means
period by period and the analyst

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means once per day. 
OK. 

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And so you now have a scope 
implosion. 

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So that's a really good example.
What you should probably do in 

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education, and I haven't been 
that good at it, but I do have 

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it in my requirements 
documentation or business case 

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is to run a glossary session 
literally like you have a 

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glossary terms a 15 minute. 
What do you mean by and it will 

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prevent so much work and 
interpretation of those words in

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in in your context. 
OK, there isn't a common 

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understanding. 
The seven is that tech is often 

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held together with duct tape. 
Legacy systems are the norm. 

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There's not much money in this 
sector. 

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You'll deal with platforms built
before you had a LinkedIn 

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account like they will be 
platforms that have been there 

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forever. 
OK, it doesn't mean they're bad 

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That's but their interfaces need
to be good to help their 

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ecosystem. 
So easy integration, right might

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be something you suggest it 
could take six months or a 

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miracle. 
An example might be you want to 

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plug in a national SCMS system, 
so student management system to 

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track absence, right? 
And it turns out that it's, it's

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batched only once per day in 
flat files. 

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And, and this is an example that
we've kind of hit, I've 

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paraphrased the problem, but 
it's effectively what what a 

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problem that we hit as ABA. 
Document your constraints as 

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clearly as your requirements, 
OK? 

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It's not being pessimistic, it's
being realistic. 

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People need to understand this 
because the business case or the

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money that you're investing, a 
lot of it might not be on the 

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new. 
It could literally be getting 

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rid of the old or migrating the 
old, right? 

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That becomes 60% of the project.
And that costs a lot of money 

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and there's no value generated 
from it. 

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There's value in terms of risk 
mitigation, there's value in 

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terms of the cost to run those 
systems. 

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But sometimes they don't look 
good on a balance sheet. 

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So you really need to be really 
clear about that. 

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And also the value of moving 
away from it #8 is that 

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compliance isn't optional, 
right? 

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So education data, children's 
data privacy rules are strict. 

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And for good reasons. 
You can't chat student data onto

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the Internet, into AAI tool. 
You can't do that. 

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OK? 
There's no way. 

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And you need accessibility, 
equality and privacy rules 

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aren't just check boxes, they 
are actual ethical and sometimes

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legal responsibilities and 
legislation. 

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So you have to make sure you've 
covered all these bits and 

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pieces. 
So there was an example where we

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released a product and I asked 
around it's web standards in 

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terms of accessibility and you 
know, it wasn't that great. 

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And I thought, well, in 
education, that's just not good 

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enough. 
An example is you might build a 

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new parent portal, right? 
It's fast and flashy, but it 

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doesn't meet, like I said, those
web standards, the WCAG 

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accessibility standards. 
And now in America, it's a 

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lawsuit risk. 
The tip here is to add 

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compliance checks into your 
requirements packed early and 

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it's better to prevent those 
problems upfront then refit. 

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So if you're working in an agile
way, these are must have 

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requirements you need to get on 
to sooner and later. 

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They can't be done as an 
optional backlog item or at the 

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end, they have to be designed 
into the solution. 

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So in education, you find that 
that it isn't unless you're 

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building on an existing product,
very segmented and not worrying 

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about the rest of the world. 
And you're just adding features 

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that don't change legislation, 
which is very rare because you 

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don't have the time to do that. 
You're usually responding to 

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change. 
I would highly recommend you 

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have design sprints or you know 
something outside of the scrum 

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agile environment and and you do
some waterfall upfront planning 

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before going into your 
development phase #9 is that 

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governance be This is so true 
and this is one of the reasons 

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why my recent engagement is 
done. 

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My head in is that governance is
political education systems 

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often report to ministers, 
boards, cabinet. 

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This means your work isn't just 
operational, it's like decision 

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support, right? 
It needs to be sharp and 

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succinct and strategic. 
And so an example is you're 

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writing a paper on funding 
options for a student transport.

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Your artifact isn't a wireframe,
it's a briefing note that feeds 

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into policy. 
And I'm well aware of that part.

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So the fact that your words can 
be re litigated or your packs go

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across the road if you like to 
the government, that's fine. 

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Great about that. 
But there's another another 

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important element here. 
So I'm going to give you the 

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first BA tip and then I'm going 
to give you my BN tip. 

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The first BA tip is that you 
need to learn to write like an 

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advisor, 1 pages, exec sum, cost
benefit, language and matters. 

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And so that's fine. 
And there will be your executive

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team when want to add their 
spin. 

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I'm quite good at that. 
And I think that's a useful tip,

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all BA. 
In addition to this, though, 

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that internal governance, the 
more layers of middle management

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makes this hard. 
And because they want to manage 

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risk and they want to manage 
reputation, and it's not clear 

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who's accountable or 
responsible, this internal 

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process can be a nightmare. 
And I've had it a number of 

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times in education #10 though is
that the work is personal, which

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is why I continue to come back 
to education people and 

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education care. 
OK? 

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Your changes aren't abstract. 
They actually touch light. 

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Be aware of the emotional impact
of that, especially when a 

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change effects teachers or 
parents, vulnerable learners, 

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OK. 
Or even people that work in the 

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ministry who really care about a
topic of number of times have 

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had some of these personal 
emotions come out because a 

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change or religious special 
legislation is against someone's

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feelings. 
The example is you might be that

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you're proposing removing a 
manual form to streamline 

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workflow, go to automation, and 
it turns out it's the only way 

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that some families feel heard. 
OK, so you need to pause or you 

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need to rethink. 
So make sure you use empathy 

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mapping, understand the 
emotional landscape, not just 

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the logical 1, and will make 
your work more human and more 

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effective. 
So there you have it, 10 real 

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world truths from the trenches 
of education. 

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And I've got some battle scarf. 
If you're ABA already in the 

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sector, I hope you feel sane. 
And if you're thinking of moving

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into education, just know it's 
some of the most meaningful, 

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complex and human centered work 
that you will ever do. 

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You're not just analyzing 
systems, you're influencing 

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futures, and that's a damn good 
reason to sharpen up your craft.

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But be aware that it is very 
political and there is layers 

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and layers of governance and as 
a result, bureaucracy. 

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If this hit home for you, share 
with another BA who needs to 

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hear it. 
And as always, keep asking 

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better questions.