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New Post 2/19/2020 8:14 PM
User is offline RyanCallum
2 posts
No Ranking


Identifying the Right Approach and Tools for a Business Problem 

Hi, 

I'm prepping for an interview panel and I am overwhelmed on creating my presentation and the types of tools I will use... 

I need some help on what type of approach I should use with my stakeholders to identify in the requirements they gave me are true challenges in their business for Enablement, Sales Exec, and Customer Success team?

Context: Company X hires 200 people every month.  It's super important that they provide the best experience for their new hires and onboard them seamlessly and quickly.  

I am working on a project to streamline the new hires learning experience supported by some technology and currently the end to end process are done manually by the Operations team from registration to completion of the program.  This is no longer scalable for the Ops team and there are several data challenges.

Step 1: Course registration tracked in a spreadsheet, same with rescheduling and is prone to error.

Step 2: Course Assignments: done manually today as well.  No governance is in place for new hire learning criteria and there are no standard user fields across the systems they use. 

Step 3: Course Attendance: manually tracking and reconciliations between attendance and registration is difficult. 

Step 4: Course Completion: Learning completion is inaccurate due to system integrations from different platforms

Step 5: Notifications/Communications: sent manually by the Ops team.  It's hard for new hires and managers and leadership to track progress. 

This is all the context and data I got.  Aside from writing user stories, should I use gap analysis? Another follow up question is, how do I know the technology their implementing will optimize their learning experience and how do we measure that? In this case, I think I need to define the KPI's but I am again in a quandary in answering confidently how I know it will work.

Any suggestions are welcome.  Thanks in advance!

 

 

 
New Post 2/23/2020 8:09 AM
User is offline Usman_chiefoftheglen
9 posts
10th Level Poster


Re: Identifying the Right Approach and Tools for a Business Problem 

Hi Ryan, 

I would start off by documenting the AS-IS process (which is the steps mentioned). Then identify the major pain points in each step. This will give you the client’s needs. You could use a mind map for this or even a SWOT. 

 

Your user stories will cover the requirements but you could go down the waterfall approach and list the requirements as functional, non-functional etc.

 

Does your presentation require you to come up with a solution(s)? If not, then I would just stick to the requirements. I guess what they are looking for is how you get from the business problems to the requirements. Is your approach logical, do you have a good rationale for the tools you have used etc. They will probably also ask you difficult (sometimes unreasonable) questions to see how you react. 

 

Good Luck


 
New Post 2/26/2020 1:12 AM
User is offline Stewart F
119 posts
7th Level Poster


Re: Identifying the Right Approach and Tools for a Business Problem 

Hi Usman, 

In relation to the answer you gave to Ryan, I have one comment/question about what you put. This relates to one of your last points "They will probably also ask you difficult (sometimes unreasonable) questions to see how you react".

As a Change Director and BA Manager, if I found out that one of my managers was asking such questions, I would seriously consider their future at the company.

An interview is all about both sides making sure that they fit each other. Typically for a BA, I would ask questions to see if he/she knows how to work in the current methodology that we use, see what they know about our company (Always do your homework about the company you are about to join), and lastly see what there experience is compared to what my requirements are. For example, do I need a BA with a more technical stance?

I would never ask a question that I wouldn't expect the candidate to know. What would that achieve? There may be some instances where the candidate doesn't know the answer - that happens to us all and there are certain techniques you can employee to answer those (See below). 

Ryan, 

May I suggest that you take a look at two of the Interview 'questions' that I put in the 'Careers' section of this website. They are:

https://www.modernanalyst.com/Careers/InterviewQuestions/tabid/128/ID/5370/How-to-answer-a-question-that-you-dont-know-how-to-answer.aspx

https://www.modernanalyst.com/Careers/InterviewQuestions/tabid/128/ID/5388/How-should-you-prepare-for-a-business-analyst-interview.aspx

The first relates to questions that you don't know the answer to, and the second is about preparing for an interview. Hopefully these may help a little. 

 
New Post 2/28/2020 11:08 PM
User is offline RyanCallum
2 posts
No Ranking


Re: Identifying the Right Approach and Tools for a Business Problem 

Thanks.  No they do not require for me to come up with solutions.  I think they are looking at how I am able to gather requirements and what my thought process is.  And obviously testing me on the tools that I need to use.  

So far, I have created an as is flow, gap analysis chart, and then made up some data to define my KPI by doing some baseline measurements on how long it takes to send the said notifications that the team is manually sending.  

Thanks for your suggestion.  I think doing a SWOT might be good too. 

 
New Post 4/8/2020 6:17 AM
User is offline Anthony Constantinou
4 posts
No Ranking


Re: Identifying the Right Approach and Tools for a Business Problem 

 

Building the team, describing the problem, implementing a temporary fix, identifying and eliminating the root cause, implementing a permanent solution, preventing the problem from recurring and then celebrating team success seems to be the right approach.

 
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