Stakeholders Buy in into an Approach : A Key Leadership skill for all Business Analysts

I have been working on a software project in the requirement Elaboration phase . The biggest challenge the BA team was having an Approach to requirements. And the even more bigger challenge was having all the stakeholder 'Buy in' to the approach. I think this capability of 'buy in' , getting an acceptance of all stakeholders in your point of view , your way forward is a key capability of leadership for all business Analysts. I speak Business Analysts as that my profession . Fortunately on this project i got a glimpse of what it takes to get a 'buy in' from all stakeholders of the project . In my case is the was the business for whom the software was being built, the IT department of the organisation and of course our BA team. This is what i observed were the key skills that we demonstrated in order to role out a successful solution to an unknown problem.


1) Observing what's going on : I read somewhere that the mark of intelligence is to hold 2 contradictory point of views and remain unbiased. This skill is required to observe what exactly is going on. In today's information laden world it's easy to apply concepts /jargon /styles/methodologies to so called problems without even identifying the real problem. Observing what's going on was the first step.We observed , heard each stakeholders point of view /concerns and arrived at certain probable problems. Why i say probable is because it's not easy to identify a problem upfront , you need observation , detachment and patience for the problems to surface.

2) Arriving at an approach to surface the problems : It was identified that the key problems are not surfacing. Even if they were, people were in a mode of denial to accept the problems.Most of the times projects fail due lack of proper escalation of the correct problem at the correct time. People rarely understand what's happening. To arrive at proper indicators to identify where the problem lies was the next step to be put in place. This approach brought to surface the real challenges of the project . we could clearly identify whether the problem was unclear business processes or capability issues or bandwidth issues .


3) 'Buy in' into the Approach : You might have the best of the solution to a problem , you might have resolved things in your mind but if the team who is living the problem day in and day out does not believe in your solution , it's bound to fail. Therefore the biggest challenge we faced was the buy in from all the stakeholders. Building trust that this approach will work and keeping a space of revisiting the rolled out approach. The Approach was communicated to all types of stakeholders. Their concerns were heard . Approval was sought . Even if there was a single team member who had issues with the approach was invited to put their points across . Stakeholder by Stakeholder , person by person , this approach gained acceptance. We all together in the end believed that the approach was our own !! And now it's internalised in each team member and rolling .


4) Fine tuning the Approach : We can never begin with 100% clarity . We have to roll out a solution , observe , learn and implement improvements . With the new internalised approach , problems kept surfacing and the approach was fine tuned to build in efficiency into the whole process of requirements elaboration.Again all stakeholders were heard and accommodated.

The take away for me as business Analyst were these four skills that i need to inculcate in order to be an elegant business Analyst. However the key skill where most effort , energy and patience required is the skill of building 'buy in' .And now i know !!..Knowing always the first step.

The Division of Humanity -- An Illusion

It's been 20 odd days that I have been staying in UK. I am at Reading which is a small city in UK.

This is the first time in my life that I am seeing so many nationals at the same time British, french, indians, pakistanis , nepalis , cubans , chinese , americans...One thing i realised all the colonies ruled by British had people from that place settled in UK.... That is the reason probably for so many nationalities under one roof...

What I noticed was how my mind was biased towards these different nationals.... My mind is already so conditioned by origins of people .... In India it was a division of states bias and now in UK it is a division of Nationalities bias....My mind is trained to create biases....

It's only when I have a deeper connect with individuals that I realise that every human being is the same with same set of ambitions , likings for good living ,good food, passion of some sport , cribs about traffic and weather.....

And a step deeper from the same conversations into people's heart , i find people as lost as I am in finding the life's purpose. Some claim to know, some given up, some still searching and some truly enlightened.

For me it's been a thrilling journey so far to find out my mind's own Illusions and my own strenght of defining these mind games as Illusions.

Building Domain Expertise for the Organisation

I have been struggling to get the definition of 'Domain Expertise' for an IT Organisation. Software companies in order to show case their expertise get on board Domain Experts who can speak the customer language.Though this might help in the short term , how do you sustain and spread domain knowledge within the organisation at junior levels.
Only Certifications is NOT the complete answer. Text book answers are normally skin deep and customers are quick to grasp the lack of knowledge.

A few things that come to my mind are :

- Building a language for the Domain Area. This glossary can be a wikipedia where software professionals working in the projects can keep updating.

- Also creating industry point of views will help build the depth of knowledge in the Area.

Any more suggestions to quickly help an IT company build domain expertise are most Welcome

Following the Nano Innovation

Used to read in science and history books as to how when Galileo discovered that Earth moves around the sun and not vice versa ,he was rediculed . Also when Columbus discovered America ,people refused to believe him. With the Innovation of Nano happened , I feel the same sense of disbelief in people. Getting to hear things like that 'Car is made of plastic' , 'is not safe at all'. 'How can a car costing 1.5 lakh be safe at all 'and stuff like that..... People just simply refuse to believe it!!

According to me it's a sheer design innovation. Design is a matter of choice and the Choice made by TATA was to 'Make the travel of family on bikes safe' . And design has lived up to the promise.

I have been following the Nano story for quite some time now and realised that the car is not only a design innovation but also a marketing innovation. The car is on sale in Tata's Retail outlets like westside and Croma . Completely thrilled by the idea.

We Indians need to believe in ourselves . We need to be proud of our innovations and believe in them .Just because a US or a Japan has not made is happen , we refuse to believe Innovations can ever happen. It's time to lead the World and not just follow it.3 Cheers for the Nano invention !!

Recession and Insecurity !!

In these recent times of recession , a lot of people are gripped with the fear of insecurity . This insecurity clearly reflects in people's work. It has really made me wonder which are the kinds who are most insecure in such times. I have been observing people's conversations very deeply and have realised ,people with less exposure to things other than their jobs, people who look at their jobs as 9-5 work are the most insecure. These are the people who have no identity other than their work.Where as people having vision larger than themselves are looking at ways to create new Business Models. Individuals who have confidence in their capability and faith in their relationships are not that perturped . For them it's definitely a set back but also an opportunity to invent new ways of doing business. The curious minds are even more curious. The Mad are even madder... This is the time we will have disruptive Business Models ,which completely change the economy . Just wait and watch.

Matter of Convinience

In the morning while across my colony garden , I heard a Koyal singing in it's most beautiful voice . I was delighted to hear the Koyal and then suddenly I got present to the cacophony around me created by us humans in the form of convinience for walking ,the automobiles. The automobile industry serves the purpose of creating a convinience of travelling by foot. Then it occurred to me that we humans have created so many luxuries around us in the name of convinience. So many machines ,electronic goods built for saving time ,giving the convinience for automation.

Bribing in the name of convinience .Killing , hurting each other for the convinience of not having to make an effort to have a healthy debate and making some one see our point of view and forcing our point of views on others.

I was wondering whether have we really progressed and applied our minds in the right direction ? Or some times I wonder have we applied our minds a bit too much ? All these thoughts sound pessimistic to me ,but at the same time looking at what we have brought our earth to, I feel somewhere we collectively have gone wrong.

Is life so difficult that we need to make it convinient to live and survive?
Then was the state of earth meant to be the way it is ? Or we had the power to make our earth the most beautiful ,peaceful place in the universe ? Does humanity still have a chance?

Paper Paper every where at Stamp Duty Office

Last time I had an interaction with the government as a citizen ,it was with the RTO office and i was impressed by the use of technology in that small office of RTO.
My impression of the government would have stayed the same if I wouldn't have had to interact with the stamp duty office for the amnesty scheme 2008 paper work.

The government had put up stalls (literally stalls outside the MMRDA office bandra in one of their verandas).
I landed up at 9 am in the morning to realise that tokens will be issued only at 10 am. There were people waiting for the token from 6-7 am in the morning !!

As soon as tokens were issued crowd broke the line in order to collect the tokens .There was a lot of hue and cry for the tokens. Around 300 tokens were issued for the borivali area and my turn was around 175 .... My turn would be called around 5 , I realized at the pace at which the work progressed. Since I had to finish certain formalities of the document I hurried to bandra court to complete them.

Reaching MMRDA office back around 1 pm i realised the officers had taken a break for lunch .

My turn came around 4.30 pm and to my surprise there were only 2 staff managing the complete area of borivali and another 2 officers for the andheri area.

I did not see a single computer around and all our details were manually written in a Big register which actually got over by the time my turn came .

While the officer went to collect a new register , the papers started flying every where as it was an open air office !!! The security gaurds started running around to collect the papers.

The same security guard who was managing the crowd was made responsible to collect the files in lots and keep them in storage area. As soon as the guard used to go for keeping the files ,the agents and other applicants who did not believe in queue used to creep in with their files.
We had to wait for 15 minutes till some one could hunt for a new register to capture our details. There was no acknowledgement receipt . The photocopies were stamped and returned to us as acknowledgement receipt.

There was no consideration for senior citizens and I could see old uncles and aunties (Some with sticks in their hands , some with support for neck and back )waiting in queue in the heat whole day long. There were agents all around trying to break the line and were being shwed away by the crowd as they tried to creep in.

Not many people had the clue of what exact documents are required as proof and different officers were actually telling different things to different people.

Over and above I saw lights and bulbs being fitted in the verandah for work to progess during the night . I was completely spell bound by this act and the dedication to make the citizens wait even late in the night and also expect the staff to work over time !!!!

It was the best example of how lack of planning and thinking through the whole process of how the scheme will be handled can create so much inconvinience to the staff as well the citizens.

It actually looked like the intention was to create chaos so that some people can fill up their pockets and benefit from the plight of citizens. The only people enjoying this chaos were the lawyers , advocates ,notary and photocopiers . For them they are making merry while the amnesty scheme shines !!

I seriously wonder how can we become a developed country when basic access to information and convinience to submit documents cannot be provided by the government.The Stamp Duty Department showed complete lack of sensitivity towards the citizens as well as to the staff.
I am truly ashamed !!!!!