Now that you have a better understanding of business analysis and how it can help your organization achieve greater profitability, it is time to start making changes within your projects and your organization.
Maturing your business analysis processes takes time, money, and patience, but will be worth it in the long run. Ideally, this would be approached as an organizational change project. Combining the project and business analysis practices used throughout this book to manage the change within your organization will help facilitate a quicker and easier transition to the new world. Ken Miller, founder of the Change and Innovation Agency, has developed a guide that complements the ideas presented here with specific strategies for an organizational change project such as this with The Change Agent’s Guide to Radical Improvement.25
Even if the organization is not ready to take on a wholesale change project, you can begin to take steps for a grassroots change. Here are a few quick steps to get you started.
1. Make this book required reading for those who sponsor projects, manage projects, or do business analysis within your organization.
2. Build your team of professional business analysts by encouraging your current talent to study and get certified, and by making certification a requirement for future hires.
3. Require business analysts to create a comprehensive plan of their business analysis activities needed to get to great requirements for each project.
4. Honor the time and resources needed by your business analyst as indicated in the business analysis plan.
5. Include the business analyst in the project leadership team.
6. Monitor the results you get from these changes by tracking project metrics: scope, schedule, budget.
7. Track project success by evaluating whether the expected outcomes have been realized.
8. Keep track of your investments by continually evaluating the return-on-investment for each project.
25Miller, K., and Lawton, R. (2002). The Change Agent’s Guide to Radical Improvement. Milwaukee, WI: ASQ Quality Press.