Welcome to the refreshed Requirements.net. Please pardon any dust as our renovations settle.
Things haven’t been quite the same this year, have they? Lots of discussion of “strategic cuts” and the maximization of resources fill the online discussion threads. We have seen landmark companies (Lehman Brothers, Ford, General Motors, Circuit City…to name a few) face unprecedented economic challenges and in some cases, outright failure. There are a lot of discussion of how IT organizations fit into the new world order. IT professionals are scrambling – looking to see how they can positively impact their company’s bottom-line through cuts and improvement in operational efficiency.
Introducing a new Requirements.net Series: The Economy and Business Analysis
We have had dozens of emails asking us for information on how new requirements lifecycle projects tie into ROI models. Project teams are having to justify every dollar spent, and CIO’s often look for hard-data on the return of investment in such projects. The Requirements.net consortium is taking this concept a step further by focusing on how Business Analysis (as a specific role in software projects) holds the keys to these modern day challenges. Today we are launching a three month “series” on how Business Analysis is the key to IT project efficiency, and how organizations should look to empower BA’s in these uncertain times.
What does a Requirements.net series look like?
“The Economy and Business Analysis” series will be a set of focused Podcast discussion, whitepapers, and BLOG postings. From today till… say mid February… we will be looking at press announcements for corporations in the Fortune 500 that publically tie Business Analyst empowerment to counter this new economic climate. We will be pointing out key areas of cost savings and efficiency gains by employment of requirements solutions by analysts. At the end of the series, we will pull all the materials together into a “digest” which will have its own dedicated page for quick access.
How can you participate?
In many ways. If you have a specific data point, a general Point-of-View, or would like to be interviewed as part of an upcoming Podcast, please email me at Matt.Morgan@requirements.net. For each and every blog posting, we will have our comment system up and running - feel free to weigh in there. We value your opinion, and encourage you to be a part of this.
Lets get started…
- Matt
3 responses so far ↓
1 James Welton // Nov 17, 2008 at 10:28 am
Very cool. I am right now trying to argue for dollars to be spend on people on my SA (software analyst) team to help expand the BSA group. We need business case templates others have used to help.
2 Yegor // Nov 17, 2008 at 4:33 pm
A couple of crude thoughts as a reply.
First, it may be a good time for shareholders to engage. One may say it’s a CEOs who’re responsible for the results after all. But sometimes even CEOs can not cope with problems on their on, especially when major shareholders involved in business routine. How, for example, can you approach a slippery question of changing product distribution schemes, rules and policies within a retail chain if this particular part of the business is in possession of one of shareholder’s nephew? Difficult times are the best catalysts for business owners to start sorting out their priorities. The best and smartest changes possible elaborated carefully by greatest cross-departmental or cross-functional teams of business experts doomed to failure in situations when business owners are not entirely ready for them.
Another example. Has anyone ever counted closely those huge losses that retail stores having all the time they changing product line, adding or removing products? It’s unbelievable how many items you actually can sell are thrown away because it’s just easier to do things that way? Well, you may say those items cost almost nothing in comparison to other type of profits or losses retail stores have. Yes, may be. But it’s just one little example, not the through analysis. And there are much more examples like that you can easily discover if you just talk to the guys from the sales floor. The question is whether shareholders are interested in the things like that. Because they seems satisfied with the data the have from their CEO-Executive-Market-Region-District-Store channels. And I saw with my own eyes how it works. The District Manager reporting to Regional Manager the numbers of product-of-the-day sales. Now, question: how these numbers were gathered? Oh, very easy: DM just called to every store in his district with the question “how many of product X you guys sold today?” Half of these numbers are not real: “Oh, I don’t know, says manager on duty to his team member who grabbed the phone, just tell him five. I hope we’d be able to sell this many.” And I’m just wondering how many suggestions store management may have are actually reach decision makers somewhere at headquarters… No wander businesses are now suffering.
The second thought. Let’s look at buying opportunities from customer’s point of view. On the one hand we all want to have as many options to choose from as possible. On the other hand… are all these options really different? When I was a kid I loved those “find-ten-distinctions-between-these-two-pictures” games in children’s magazines. Now, question: as a customer can you find really serious differences between Bed Bath and Beyound and Linens’n’Things, between Autozone and Advance Auto Parts? Do we need all of them, taking into consideration that we can by the same very item in either of them and the prices will be very close? Keeping business requirements terms in mind – is it not a redundancy? May be it is a good time for business owners to think about new, real competitive advantages to invent? And, yes, once again, I’m talking expressly about business owners and shareholders.
Because at the very end it’s up them, not CEOs, to decide. Because many of them need to rethink their approach to the businesses they own and involved into. And that’s where business analysts should to go into action. Those of them who came out of real businesses. Because these people (with all due respect to IT teams) have more of business experience, can think in terms of living business, understand business processes, interconnections between business lines and units keeping in mind the whole picture. No questions about importance of good, reliable applications – they keep businesses going, but now it’s time for business to go first. And that’s what should be done first. The BABOK’s Enterprice Analysys from top to bottom. Rethinking, redefining, redesigning the business itself. New, fresh look avoiding stereotypes and templates which were worn out long time ago. And nobody else except business owners as strategic decision makers can really facilitate these processes.
3 Richard // Nov 18, 2008 at 8:55 am
“Difficult times are the best catalysts for business owners to start sorting out their priorities. The best and smartest changes possible elaborated carefully by greatest cross-departmental or cross-functional teams of business experts doomed to failure in situations when business owners are not entirely ready for them.”
Hi Yegor. I think you have nailed a lot of our perspective here at our shop. I work for a large telecommunication company, one you may know by “the network”, but the problem is that even though I run a large 23 person shop, no one is asking me my opinion.
I am included in many discussions at the year-end-budget-review level, but these so-called out-of-cycle spending reviews are done three levels above me.
Since I am so close to the action, I have a lot to bring to the table to help justify improvements in operations and efficiency. I am trying to put together a “Tactical Review Plan” which articulates the importance of business context in waste reductions. I focus on the re-work and waste of past projects, quantify them in terms of a cost analysis, and project future savings on the elimination of that cost.
I am actually about to share it with my direct manager. We will see if this helps people see beyond headcount freeze/reduction momentum that rules the hallways.
Our business is actually good this year, BTW, the fear of a drop off is driving things.
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