Solutions - Establishing a Center of Requirements Excellence

Requirements play a vital role in engineering IT systems. It is well known, for example, that the top reasons for project failure are tied directly to poor requirements. It is through the leadership of the business analyst that requirements are captured and communicated to the technical team so that solutions can be designed and implemented. As projects become larger, cross-functional, global and more complex, the role of the business analyst becomes even more challenging and critical.

A Center of Requirements Excellence , or CoRE , can serve to directly improve the skills of business analysts, increasing the quality of requirements and, ultimately, the quality of delivered solutions. While CoRE may be called by various names – a Competency Center or a Business Analysis Community – its purpose is the same – to enable business analysts to do their job effectively.

Doreen Evans Associates has worked with a number of clients to establish a CoRE. Our offering has several components, illustrated in the figure below.

Step One: Business Analysis Competency Assessment

The place to begin is to understand the current state of requirements and business analysis. Our assessment is a packaged service, with standardized deliverables and pricing. A typical assessment takes 10 weeks. It includes interviews and investigation of:

• People
  • How many BAs are there and where do they report in the organization?
  • Is there a business analyst job family with job descriptions and a career path?
  • What skills and competencies are required?
  • How are BAs recruited?
  • What training is available?
  • How is performance management handled?
    
• Process
  • Is there an established requirements life cycle methodology?
  • How is the methodology documented and at what level of detail?
  • Are industry best practices being followed?
  • What templates are provided for deliverables?
  • What guidelines and quality checklists are available?
    
• Technology
  • Are modeling tools used during the requirements life cycle?
  • Are tools used for collaboration and review of requirements?
  • How are requirements managed?
    
• Organization
  • What is in place to govern the requirements life cycle process?
  • How are best practices communicated to BAs?
  • What resources are available to BAs?

Our deliverables include findings and recommendations, as well as a plan for what to do when.

Step Two: Business Analysis Pilot Project

A pilot project provides help from highly experienced business analysts working with your in-house business analysts work to improve their competencies. DEA consultants can serve as mentors or work beside your team as business analysts, demonstrating how to use best practices and helping the team achieve success. Pilot projects provide a test bed for the techniques, and help to prove the concept and demonstrate the value of a robust, integrated requirements life cycle solution. During a pilot project engagement, DEA would:

• Provide a tested methodology to guide the project phases
• Conduct just-in-time training for project team members
• Assist in tailoring templates
• Work with the overall project manager to manage the requirements aspects of the project life cycle
• Mentor on best practice approaches and on use of tools
• Serve in project roles such as facilitator, requirements manager and/or business analyst

Step Three: Business Analysis Improvement

At the same time as carrying out pilot projects, you work on improving the business analysis environment itself. This means focusing attention on the process being used, on the tools that will support success, and on the business analyst role. The work you do here feeds back to pilot projects, and vice versa. During this portion of the engagement, DEA would:

• Document the types of projects being carried out at the client site and detail how the methodology should be tailored depending on project type, length, and complexity
• Build out detailed process flow maps to document the methodology
• Develop a training curriculum for business analysts
• Build and deliver courses and seminars
• Develop templates for deliverables
• Create guidelines and quality checklists
• Create standards for business analyst performance management and skills assessment
• Assist in creating a business analyst career path and in writing job descriptions
• Develop requirements for requirements life cycle tools and requirements management tools
• Assist in tool selection

Step Four: Business Analysis Competency Institutionalization

Institutionalizing a business analysis competency center means building an organization that can:

• Grow and share business analysis capabilities, including education, templates and guidelines, to all business analysts
• Centralize and standardize methodology deliverables and common BA project activities
• Provide governance of and a framework for leveraging requirements best practices
• Provide governance for the quality of business analysis project deliverables

In order to create such an organization, an infrastructure must be established. DEA can help guide the work to:

• Form a leadership team to guide decisions and to advocate for the organization
• Assist in determining where the organization should report and how it should interact with other groups, in particular project management
• Define roles within the organization, for example, a process manager or a project quality manager, and write job descriptions
• Define the internal processes and procedures that the organization needs to carry out, for example, participating in project planning, managing requirements publication, or maintaining project archives
• Build an infrastructure to house templates, samples, and guidelines
• Purchase and install tools for BA use
• Build a web site as a single resource center for BAs to find everything they need for carrying out projects as well as for professional development
• Define the metrics that will be used to measure success for the organization as well as for the requirements process
• Develop an enterprise business architecture to act as a guide for future projects
• Build and maintain project artifacts for documentation and reuse

Step Five: Business Analysis Competency Maintenance

Once the processes, organization, tools and people have been established, the work is not done. You need an ongoing program that will provide continuing improvement in order to foster the highest level of competencies. Our clients have used DEA to operate their centers of excellence while they build their internal staff to bring the work in-house. There are two models which can be implemented:

1. DEA operates the center of excellence. During this period of time, DEA will:
   • Provide training to BAs
   • Manage requirements for active projects
   • Provide a web service to host requirements for review, collaboration and tracking
   • Continually improve the requirements life cycle process
   • Build enterprise business architectures
   • Provide tool expertise
   • Lead and/or participate on requirements projects
   • Manage the asset library
     
2. The client operates the center of excellence. During this period of time, DEA will:
   • Provide workshops to serve as “refreshers” or to introduce new techniques
   • Describe key developments in the requirements life cycle
   • Recommend new tools and techniques
   • Serve as mentors