In anticipation of his presentation at Building Business Capability in Vegas, Oct 31, – Nov. 4, 2016, we asked Richard Larson, President at Watermark Learning, a few questions about pursuing business excellence. Check out his interview in relation to his BBC presentation entitled, Bulletproof Business Cases: 5 Critical Things Every Project Proposal Needs.

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

A: Being a training and skill development company, we’re always focused on pursuing business excellence for our customers and ourselves. Like many organizations, we’re working to become more agile, in both the software development sense and the just-plain “nimble” sense. We don’t develop software except for our Online Study Exam, and we’ve used Agile and lean principles to guide us in adding new features. We’ve also become more agile in our operations and sales, using scrum-like backlogs, daily standups, retrospectives, and other techniques that have helped us in the pursuit of excellence.

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

A: Let me follow-up the point about changing processes and approaches. You might call it a business transformation, and that is a huge challenge no matter the size of the organization. It’s not merely about re-designing a process or introducing a new tool, which we’ve done and realized is not enough. To transform any entity, the human component is often if not always, the most challenging. I could expand at some length what it takes, but the point of doing it is to focus on things that provide the most value to our customers and for us.

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

A: I’d like to see all our meetings be more agile in the next year, not just pockets.  I’d like to improve our backlog handling to be better at prioritizing it and pruning some of the older items. A loftier goal is to have shorter and more focused meetings.

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

A: Wow, I feel like I’ve learned so much this past year it’s hard to choose! Maybe it’s that people are really receptive to a leaner way of doing their jobs, but they may not often initiate the changes themselves.

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

A: I’d say it is for BAs to work more like consultants and entrepreneurs, both topics I’ve presented on at past BBC events. Our businesses need good advice to avoid making dumb decisions that end up being “jumping to a solution.” Too often we are forced into order taker roles, and the business suffers for that. If we can politely challenge assumptions and ask consultative questions, we can recommend better solutions. This year I’ll be speaking about business cases, which I think is an essential technique to help function as a consultant or entrepreneur.

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 use Trello for virtual standup meetings and for communicating backlog items.

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

A: Become agile even more quickly than you did!

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 best show to take in while in Vegas during BBC? I’m being a bit flippant here, but I’m actually unsure which show to go to with my wife, Elizabeth, and would like some advice.

Seriously, the question I hoped you would ask is: What direction could a BA go to advance their career? My answer is twofold: One is product management. I have been the product manager for our Online Study Exam and I use many BA skills to manage it. A second is Business Relationship Management, which is a natural progression for BAs. BRMs use many BA skills and the job provides more opportunities to participate in setting business and IT strategy.

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: People will learn a simple (although not always easy) and repeatable approach to developing business cases that scales from the smallest to the largest size initiatives.

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Don’t miss Richard’s presentation, Bulletproof Business Cases: 5 Critical Things Every Project Proposal Needs, at Building Business Capability on Wednesday, November 2, 2016 from 4:50 to 5:50 pm. Click here to register for attendance.