In anticipation of her presentation at Building Business Capabilityin Las Vegas, Nov. 2 – 6, 2015, we asked Angela Wick, CBAP, PMP, Founder and CEO of BA-Squared, LLC, a few questions about pursuing business excellence. Check out her interview in relation to her BBC presentation entitled Making Your BA Techniques More Agile –  How to Change Behaviors not the Technique; Patterns in Agility and Collaboration.

Q: How is your organization advancing the pursuit of business excellence and how does it impact your business units/departments?

A: BA-Squared is passionate about helping organizations modernize their requirements practices. We believe that businesses truly innovate and excel when their requirements practices focus not only on skills and techniques, but also on value, organizational culture, leadership, mindsets and behaviors.

Q: Can you describe the challenges you face or have already overcome in establishing a more cohesive and productive company or organization?

A: We work really hard to keep pace with changes in the industry. Our model includes consulting, training and industry thought leadership. Our consulting practice helps us monitor the evolution of requirements management and business analysis. We see how organizations adapt and guide them to effective mindsets and behaviors. We keep a sharp focus on new and developing practices, and share them with students in our training classes and with members of leading industry organizations.

Q: What are your near term goals for creating a more agile organization at your business or company?

A: We will continue to explore, experiment and work with client teams in a few agile areas:  1) The evolving use of Product Owner and BA roles on agile teams, and 2) As an organization’s agile practices mature, many find a need to focus on the product and value management rather than strictly agile ceremonies and technical practices.  We have been helping clients with requirements, value management and collaboration practices for many years and are excited to continue to bring innovative thoughts and practices in this area.

Q: What’s the most valuable thing you’ve learned in 2015 thus far? What’s the most important goal/trend for [pick one or two: business analysts, business architects, business process managers and/or business rules managers] to keep in mind?

A: It’s all about adapting to change. Things are changing so fast in the context of business analysis. Bringing agility to an organization is as much about our individual practices, behaviors, and mindsets as it is our leaders. Many organizations are struggling while leaders and team members point fingers at each other. Continuous improvement and the shift to agility need to happen as a team, at all levels. Leaders need to challenge, coach and mentor BAs, and BAs need to appropriately challenge leaders.  Leading BAs in a complex, multi-approach, more agile environment is as much about leaders changing as it is BAs.

Q: What’s the latest method/process/tool you have implemented to help your organization or business run more efficiently and effectively?

A: Besides continually exploring new techniques for elicitation and collaboration, we experiment with techniques (in virtual and live scenarios) that help teams operate with a “value” mindset. We encourage teams to explore product/solution value from multiple perspectives including the organization as a whole, the end customers, and the internal users. Creating a shared understanding of solution and product value boosts the efficiency, effectiveness and buy-in of every organization’s requirements practices.

Q: If you could give your five-years-ago self insight and advice about this industry, what would you say?

A: Five years ago, I was speaking a lot about BA Centers of Excellence and BA competencies.  While these remain popular topics, they focus on organizations defining practices rather than adapting practices. Today, organizations need to learn how to adapt to an ever-ever changing, increasingly complex environment. BA leaders and requirements leaders need to become facilitators of change and value delivery. We need to sharpen our focus on mindset and behaviors, over holding tightly to strictly defined requirements practices.

Q: Sneak preview: Please tell us a take-away that you will provide during your talk at Building Business Capability.

A: My session is called “Making Your BA Techniques More Agile – How to Change Behaviors not the Technique; Patterns in Agility and Collaboration.” I will encourage attendees to rethink their approach to requirements techniques (traditional, hybrid, and agile). Applying an agile mindset to current elicitation and analysis techniques, even in a traditional project environment, will dramatically increase the value of the product/solution. BA value is typically not achieved by the document, model, diagram or deliverable created, but rather by the quality of the team’s dialog and light bulb moments when using the technique collaboratively. Attendees will learn how to modify their current techniques to facilitate change, engage stakeholders, create shared understanding, and increase efficiency and value.

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Don’t miss Angela’s presentation, Making Your BA Techniques More Agile –  How to Change Behaviors not the Technique; Patterns in Agility and Collaboration, at Building Business Capability on Thursday, November 5, 2015 from 2:10 to 3:10 pm. Click here to register for attendance.