The question of efficiency in business analysis and, what is more, of potential obstacles that prevent an analyst from being efficient, has always been considered very important. It goes without saying that there are some more or less objective reasons that prevent analysis from being done properly, such as lack of information, absence of key stakeholders, problems in management etc. There are however some types of problems that are caused by
not so obvious reasons.
I first came across the term "analysis paralysis" in a book by Barbara Carkenord. She describes it as "the situation when you keep thinking about and analyzing a problem, doing more research, documenting it, and then repeat. Think, research, document, think, research, document. It is the BA’s equivalent of an infinite loop in programming. You get stuck in this cycle and can’t seem to get out." [1]. The essence of analysis paralysis is in failing to move forward due to an inability to get the desired result despite the hard work. But, at the same time, there are situations which are not covered by this term, e.g. when the progress is slowed down by the performers themselves. An analyst starts postponing tasks or decisions, thus slowing down the overall process. There is a special term in psychology standing for constant postponing things, which leads to more problems. It is called procrastination. In accordance, I call procrastination in analysis, or procrastinalysis, situations when postponing things in analysis results in losses or additional risks to the whole project.
This situation may be defined as a usually subconscious attempt to sabotage the progress of analysis. The procrastinalysis is not something that one faces at once - it tends to accumulate over time. One day they decide to do a task tomorrow, not today, as there is plenty of time left - the deadline is in a month and there are not so many tasks, so why hurry? Nothing bad would happen given the whole work is done on time. Then they schedule a meeting for the next week, although it could have been planned for tomorrow, so that everybody could get more prepared (at least, so they are telling themselves). Next time they write a letter but send it not sooner than next morning so that everybody could read it in the morning with a fresh mind. Another ringing bell is adding a hundredth slide to a presentation, when the idea could have been presented in just 10 of them. Still, one adds and adds additional graphs and tables to illustrate the idea (in fact, delivering slides instead of delivering the presentation).
The same thing happens in the field of requirements development. The concept of minimal viable product is applicable to requirements documents. Once the team has just enough requirements in just enough detail to start working – they should do it straight away. There is often no need in over-analyzing to reveal and document the tiniest aspect as the effort to do so might cost several times more than the result of it all. Another example is documenting obvious requirements. E.g. for a team creating typical products there is no need to re-document same requirements every time. However, an analyst might try to do so, thus increasing the analysis phase, postponing other phases and involving themselves in a never-ending analysis endeavor.
These little (or sometimes not so little) things are not bad by themselves; moreover they can easily be reasoned. Still, this is a trap better to avoid, unless you want to find yourself one day snowed under with work and with no physical ability to do it all on time. Let us try to understand how such situations occur? And how can the poor analysts (not to say, patients) struggle against them?
The main and most usual reasoning for procrastinalysis (that is, how the patient explains his own actions to himself) is optimization. Spending more time re-reading an email for the third time before sending it out or taking more time to prepare for a meeting than it is really needed, all of these may at first be seen as means to get the work done better. But in reality, how much added value do they bring? Well, one may correct a tiny typo after the fifth rereading, but does it really improve anything? I mean anything valuable? I highly doubt it. And the same goes practically everywhere. So, instead of optimization the patients are in best case doing sub-optimization (improving local results with no effect on global ones). What they do most commonly is executing "vampire" processes, i.e. those processes that consume resources without bringing any value in return at all.
Another reason might be the misleading sense of being overwhelmed with work. "I'm so much overloaded with UI decorating tasks that I have no time to develop the requirements dictated by the law". This could have sounded hilarious given it wasn't that sad.
Last but not least reason, that you might hear, is the one resulting from analysis paralysis: "I'm miserable at this, I don't know what to do. That is why I will do nothing". Very often I saw great specialists trying to persuade everybody including themselves, that they give up and don't know what to do, when all they needed was to have a good sleep and start thinking from the very beginning.
Everything described above is just the reasoning, but what is the root cause of such behavior patterns? To my mind, the real cause for procrastinalysis lies in the field of human nature and inner constitution. It may be based on one or several of the following points, most of which are human cognitive biases:
- Fear not to meet the expectations or to seem incompetent. Under this emotion it is extremely hard to finish the job right now, it always seems more desirable to do something later, and facing the music is therefore postponed too.
- Omission bias - the tendency to judge harmful actions as worse, or less moral than equally harmful inactions due to the fact that actions are more obvious than inactions. Usually applicable to stress or crisis situations when the decisions may seem or have a chance to become harmful. Under such circumstances a patient wants to avoid making decisions, sometimes even fairly believing that doing nothing is more acceptable.
- Status quo bias - a preference for the current state of affairs. People are afraid that things may change and even more, they don't want to initiate the changes. That is why if they have to (and analysts are the ones to drive organization changes), their mind (das Es, or Id in psychology) shouts as hard as Id can.
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Curse of knowledge - the inability to assess the situation from the point of view of those less experienced it the field. If an experienced analyst can do a task in a day, so they can easily postpone it, other team members may need more time to deal with the results or finish their part of work. Thus, overall progress slows down.
- Perfectionism - for perfectionists it is two times harder to start doing something. These people know, that once they started, they have to finish the task ideally. Not only it is a reason to postpone the finish (to polish every minute detail), but it also is a ground for putting off the start.
- Mismatching of what you want to do and what you have to do. I would call it the most crucial of all, as people tend to avoid unpleasantness in their life. The necessity to do stuff one doesn't like makes them feel undervalued, sometimes even offended, which results in instinctive impulse to distance.
All these could be just personal things not worth mentioning from a professional point of view unless they didn’t have such a great effect on projects' results. Even though procrastinalized tasks may finally be finished on time, they still carry additional risks. The main one lies in the field of the opacity of real workload. When expecting the workers to be already finishing their tasks, a PM or a team lead may be extremely surprised to find out, that the tasks have only been started yet! What makes it extremely relevant to the business analysis sphere is the very essence of the analysts' job. It is highly intellectual with a noticeable degree of intuition and even art involved. That means that progress often can be measured only approximately or with some assumptions, which leaves a scope for action for procrastinators.
Of course, procrastinalysis should be addressed in general. It is not that every act of postponing must be examined and eliminated, as sometimes there are real reasons why the task should be better done later. However, once the postponing possesses the systematic approach, it is high time to take measures?
What measures can be chosen? That really depends on who wants to act. If it is an analyst feeling that they are falling victim to the disease, I would recommend the following course of action:
- Admit being exposed to this problem. As long as one enjoys their own procrastination, nothing can help.
- Concentrate on vital things, not urgent ones. Otherwise every minor task may become the most urgent in your eyes, just to make you avoid doing something really important.
- Don't try to keep up with all the news. The information overload of modern life can easily eat up the time that should be better devoted to work.
- Switch off distractors. When you need to concentrate on a task, try to preliminary put away everything that can distract you.
- Try to use time management techniques (e.g. pomodoro, task-lists for every day or even more advanced such as POSEC)
One should remember that procrastination is something that tends to swamp the patient and always leads to the bad. This relates not only to the work, but to life in general.
However, there are some organizational measures that may help:
- Motivation. Motivation is the key. It is sometimes difficult to find out what can really motivate a procrastinator, but if you succeed, your team will be free of it. Usually, it is something not-material, e.g. the feeling of being valued, self-esteem etc.
- Goal setting. A nice measurable goal may become a good helping factor by itself, which configures the behavior of an employee in such a way that there is no space for procrastination. Goals and deadlines should not be too tough to seem unrealistic, but at the same time they need to keep people in tonus. Just remember that having accomplished a goal, an employee needs to have some mental rest to, first, restore the vigor, and second, to feel their own value.
- Elements of micromanagement. Micromanagement in general does not appeal to me. Still, some elements of it may really help. E.g. you may schedule all major meetings for your employee or collect regular status updates if needed.
Just remember, although procrastinalysis is a cruel and hard enemy to defeat, it is possible to secure oneself and own team against it.
Author: Igor Arkhipov, CBAP.
Igor holds Master of Business Informatics degree specializing in Business Processes Modeling and Optimization. Igor gained broad experience as Business Analyst in the e-commerce field while working in different spheres, such as internet advertising, internet auctions, deal-of-the-day service. Currently he works as a Methodology group manager at Kaspersky Lab. https://www.linkedin.com/in/igarkhipov
References:
- Seven Steps to Mastering Business Analysis, Barbara A. Carkenord, ISBN 978-1-60427-007-5