I was teaching a business analysis course recently and noted that few students had used a Fishbone Diagram along with the Five Whys for root cause analysis. This motivated me to write an article on root cause analysis using the combo method along with a short example.

BPMS has evolved and has come a long way over the past one or two decades. It's quite interesting to take a peek into the BPMS journey then and now. Business needs and technology, both have gone through a huge change in the meantime.

Right since the earlier days of BPMS, I always found working in this space quite an intriguing thing. The very capability of BPM to model, design, automate, run and track any process seemed to be extremely useful.

As a business analyst you will have to communicate internally and externally. Many channels and type of communication may be used. Except ensuring that all the parts have understood correctly the message as you have it in your mind, you need also to perceive what you are saying as important, correct and insightful. You need your communication effort to have impact and many times to trigger specific actions.

   So, what can you do to improve your workplace culture? A possible way to start is with the notion that culture is usually local. It is impossible to change the entire organization unless you’re the CEO, and even then, it’s hard. But it is not so hard to change local culture. Your team is a good place to start.

     We said that the first driver is about the value of people. Take the people in your workgroup and have lunch together. Every day. Talk to each other and talk about your work. We know you have a daily stand-up, but that is about progress and status of the work, it is not about the value of the work and how one person might be doing something that others do not understand. You can also talk about other things, there’s plenty to talk about. The intention of these sessions is to bring the people together and for them to understand the value of each other. It also makes a group more cohesive, and thus more likely to be forgiving, and so improve the behavior towards each other.

This article covers examples of how tools are becoming extremely important in today’s world for Business Systems Analysts; continuous learning and exploration of various tools are becoming indispensable to work efficiently and contribute towards the team success.  As more and more new technologies/tools arrive in the market, from a BSA perspective being able to appropriately understand and use them will not only emphasize the value of the BSA role, but also the force the change in mindset to align more towards the Agile way which is the common forte nowadays.