I have the pleasure of offering a workshop titled “How to Survive and Thrive in a Digital Transformation” at the Building Business Capability conference in April.

The premise of the presentation is many tech enabled enterprises are going through transformations and individual contributors, especially business analysts, often get the short end of the stick.

My intent is to show that people have some control over how transformations impact them, but they have to be their own advocate and not hang tenaciously onto a specific role.

The session is by necessity focused on business analysts because Building Business Capability is a business analysis focused conference.

That said, the techniques I describe in the session apply to anyone who is working on internal products.

Out of a desire for efficiency (and because I’m strapped for time) I decided to build the session “in public”. So over the next few weeks, issues of InsideProduct will feature key ideas from the presentation.

One reason to build in public is to get actionable feedback, so that’s where you fit in. If you see ideas that resonate, or wonder what on earth I’m talking about, hit reply and let me know.

This week, I’m sharing information on a couple of techniques that help you make informed decisions: problem statements and decision filters.

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Problem Statement

The problem statement is a structured set of statements that describe the purpose of an effort in terms of what problem it’s trying to solve.

In this technique brief, I share an exercise you can use to collaboratively create a problem statement and build a shared understanding of the problem you’re trying to solve.

Decision Filters

​Decision filters are simple questions used to guide decision making. They provide a quick way to communicate goals and objectives to everyone involved in realizing those goals and objectives. To put it in the words of Niel Nickolaisen, who created the concept: “Decision filters help teams do the smart stuff better and stop doing stupid stuff.” In effect, they tell you when to say no to a project that does not truly align with strategy.

How to decide what to do using outcomes

Whether your organization follows a project or product model, a key type of decision your leaders need to make is what investments to make. The investment is in terms of money, people’s time, and other resources.

You want to frame the decision around whether you should make an investment in order to satisfy a particular need. The trick is getting all the people involved with that decision to build a shared understanding about what that need is and decide that it should be solved within certain constraints (for how much and by when) rather than making an explicit decision about how that need is satisfied. That’s how you decide what to do using outcomes.

How to use outcomes to decide how to deliver a solution

Just because you’re handed a solution doesn’t mean that you still can’t figure out what outcome people are expecting and deliver that outcome in the most effective way possible. It may just be different than the folks who approved the investment originally thought.

That’s what it means to use outcomes to decide how to deliver a solution.

Decisions in three horizons

I had the opportunity to take part in creating version 2 of the Agile Extension to the Business Analysis Body of Knowledge. This was a great opportunity to shape the broader conversation on the intersection of agile and business analysis.

One thing that I’m particularly pleased about the Agile Extension is that we were able to explain how business analysis is involved in making a variety of decisions at three different horizons. It’s important to understand these decisions because business analysis is often required to compile the information necessary to make these various decisions.

Thanks for reading

Thanks again for reading InsideProduct.

If you have any comments or questions about the newsletter, or there’s anything you’d like me to cover, let me know.

Talk to you next time,

Kent J. McDonald
Founder | KBP.Media