BUSINESS ANALYSIS

A core, foundational capability, which I have used in formal business analysis roles where I have lead business analysis deliverables and business analyst teams, as well as leveraging the capability to deliver work in other domains such as knowledge and information management. 

Business Analysis Roles

  • Senior Consultant - Lean Business Analysis 
    Assurity Consulting Limited, New Zealand | February 2015 - October 2016
  • Business Process Practice Lead
    Combined Rural Traders, New Zealand | February 2012 - May 2013
  • SharePoint Consultant and Business Analyst
    Intergen, New Zealand | November 2010 - February 2012

Examples of Projects Delivered

  • Organisation: A leading New Zealand energy provider
    Project focus: Technology implementation
    Replacement of the main telephony system, implementation of a Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2016 platform integrated with the main billing system. The project delivered an integrated way to identify customers at initial point of contact (through the telephony system or email), and to pop the relevant customer record on screen for contact centre agents to engage with the customer. The knowledge management component was integrated, with context-relevant articles displaying within the main CRM screen to guide agents in their interactions.
    Role: Lead business analyst
    Outcome: Successful implementation of the new CRM, knowledge base and telephony systems, data integration into the existing billing system and context-driven knowledge management being delivered to agents.

  • Organisation: A New Zealand district health board
    Project focus: Business improvement 
    A Lean engagement, researching opportunities for business improvement across the information technology business unit and developing a roadmap for the delivery of the improvements.
    Role: Lead business analyst
    Outcome: Successful delivery of the engagement, with 264 improvement opportunities identified spanning across employee experience, governance, risk management, strategic direction, process, leadership development, service delivery, operational standards, technology, communication and regionalisation identified and mapped to the roadmap for delivery. 

  • Organisation: Assurity Consulting Limited
    Project focus: Business analysis capability development
    Assurity Consulting Limited had an objective of offering ICAgile accredited courses as part of its service offering to support capability development. This translated into mapping the learning outcomes to techniques, researching content and developing and delivering the course material. An agile approach was assumed, with epics and stories driving the development and delivery of the content.
    Role: Lead business analyst and content developer
    Outcome: The course was designed, developed, delivered and accredited by ICAgile within a six week timespan, included 56 techniques, and was the first Assurity course to be accredited by the accreditation body.

  • Organisation: A New Zealand home builder
    Project focus: Technology implementation
    A new Microsoft CRM implementation to provide visibility of customer interactions and records with the organisation. I came on board toward the end of the engagement, and needed to develop and deliver training for all franchisees located across New Zealand. 
    Role: Business analyst and learning content developer 
    Outcome: Successful implementation of Microsoft CRM, with franchisees trained on the new process and the functional use of the CRM for recording of customer records.

  • Organisation: Combined Rural Traders (Farmlands Cooperative Society)
    Project focus: Promapp implementation
    Implementation of Promapp as CRT's process management tool for the capture and management of organisation processes, to be leveraged for knowledge management, business improvement initiatives and to guide new technology solution implementations. 
    Role: Implementation lead
    Outcome: Successful implementation of Promapp, with key CRT processes mapped and managed in a systematic way. In addition, this piece of work was instrumental in building employee capability around process, and enabling the ability for the business to update and manage their own processes.

My Favourite Tools, Techniques and Resources

One of the most powerful things that you can continue doing as a business analyst is to keep learning. Even though I work across various domains, I like to keep my business analysis toolbox current and enjoy learning about and applying new tools and techniques that can help me deliver value. You could say that I am a bit of a "technique collector" and have just over 500 techniques registered in my personal knowledge base. This means that I have an array of tools and techniques to work with and can plan engagements that are interesting and engaging for my stakeholders. In addition, I enjoy coaching business analysts who are new to the domain by helping to introduce them to tools and techniques that will enable them to deliver value.

  • Nine Boxes: which is great for uncovering problems and opportunities, and provides a way to structure questions for elicitation.
  • Kaizen 5W and 1H: which is great for structuring problem solving, as well as formulating messaging and communications.
  • Core Concept Model: which is great for thinking about a problem space, and to explore the relationships and interactions between the different concepts that are included in the model.
  • The Bockman Technique: which is great for relative estimation, as well as determining value and prioritisation. 
  • POWER Start: which is great for planning engaging meetings and workshops, enabling you to target and plan workshop outcomes.
  • Value Stream Mapping: which is great to focus on the way different stakeholder groups perceive value and models the key stages of activity needed to deliver this value.
  • Purpose Alignment Model: which is great to target decision-making and aids in helping to define what is more valuable or less value in the context of a project.