In anticipation of his presentation at Building Business Capability in Vegas, Oct 31, – Nov. 4, 2016, we asked Michael Callahan, Partner at AgileLayer, a few questions about pursuing business excellence. Check out his interview in relation to his BBC presentation entitled, Integrated Strategy-to-Delivery: Connecting the Business Model Canvas, Business Architecture & Agile/SAFe.

Q: In what ways do you see your group helping your organization pursue business excellence?

A:  In our capacity of helping enterprises adopt a Capabilities-based Planning approach, we see a range of use cases related to the advancement of enterprise business excellence.  Of particular interest today are the applications of our Capabilities-based Planning methods and tools to Digital Innovation programs and to the Customer Experience Management discipline.

Q: Can you describe the challenges you face or have already overcome in establishing more robust business capabilities for your organization?

A: One challenge we continue to face pertains to staffing our organization with “MMA” talent – people with strong and deep skills & experience across a mix of disciplines and roles, such as Digital Technologist, Innovation Program Development, Strategic Planning, and Business Architecture.

Q: What are your short-term goals for becoming more agile?

A: We will continue to shorten our planning cycles; and are in process of moving to monthly iterations for most of our planning domains.

Q: What’s the most valuable thing you’ve learned in the past year?

A: The increasing importance of focusing on high-leverage innovations and initiatives.  We get exposure to a wide range of activities in the marketplace and are getting better at defining the high-impact opportunities and the best go-to-market/delivery approaches.

Q: What do you see as the most important goal or trend for business analysts and other professionals to keep in mind?

A: With the advent of Capabilities-based Planning and Business Architecture, we see an opportunity for Business Analysts to move to an “Early and Up” position in the overall Strategy-to-Execution process; becoming engaged earlier in the process and operating at higher levels, organizationally.  To effectively leverage Capabilities-based Planning, strong Business Analysis skills are essential for performing Capability-level Assessments, Ideation Workshops, Needs Analysis and Target-state Road mapping.

Q: What’s the latest method/process/tool you’ve implemented to help your business operate more effectively? Have you seen any results yet?

A:  We’re using our Capabilities-based Planning Software-as-a-Service and related methods & best practices to define and manage our Operating Model and associated Roadmaps. This is providing us with a better level of clarity and alignment across various functions.

Q: If you could go back 5 years in time and give some professional insight or advice to yourself, what would it be?

A: Be more aggressive about taking on the “high risk” multi-disciplinary roles, both internally and in our customer engagements.

Q: What’s one question you wished you were asked in this interview but were not? And how would you answer?

A: “What is the ‘sweet spot’ for leveraging Business Analysis skills over the next 3-5 years?” My answer (no surprise): “Leverage the Capabilities-based Planning/Business Architecture disciplines to move the BA role ‘Up & Early’ in the Strategy-to-Execution process!”

Q: Sneak preview: Please tell us a take-away that you will provide during your talk at the Building Business Capability (BBC) conference this year?  

A: I’ll be reviewing the Business Modeling outputs from a number of briefings we held at east coast IIBA Chapter meetings during the 1^st half of this year (we used the Osterwalder Business Model Canvas to drive discussion around the Chapter’s target-state Business Model and the required Capabilities).

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Don’t miss Michael’s presentation, Integrated Strategy-to-Delivery: Connecting the Business Model Canvas, Business Architecture & Agile/SAFe, at Building Business Capability on Thursday, November 3, 2016 from 8:00 to 8:50 am. Click here to register for attendance.