Management Consulting
Jan 07 2013
The Effective Remote Consultant: Some Suggestions
A recent article by Kimberly Elsbach and Daniel Cable in the MIT Sloan Management Review discusses how, all other things being equal, remote workers are at a disadvantage when compared to their in-office peers with regards to performance reviews, raises, and promotions. This difference in worker evaluation is due to the lack of passive face time (defined as merely being present at work rather than having active interactions with coworkers) for a remote worker which translates into a perception that they are less committed and dedicated.
For most consultants who work remotely, passive face time is less of an issue because their effectiveness is often predicated on the successful delivery of a project.
Dec 16 2012
Building Business Capability Conference 2012- Business Analysis Work Plan
As a business analyst at the beginning of a project there are many unknowns. The scope has been defined, but I don't know much about the stakeholders and what their requirements will be. I might have an idea about the deliverables I will be producing, but I am still weeks away from knowing the complexity of those documents. Using my experience I can create a Business Analysis Work Plan that will provide structure and consistency for the work I am doing.
Dec 15 2012
101 uses for a hotel room key card.
#1 Open hotel room door.
#28 Makeshift Ice scraper for the rental car on a frosty morning, since they forgot to put a real one in the trunk-grrr.
#43 Smooth a bead of caulk around the bathtub after you re-grouted the tile.
#87 Use as a template to sketch out a wireframe design for a mobile device.
Yup good old #87. The humble plastic room key is a rough approximation of a 4” screen on a mobile device and makes a handy tool to get that “back of the cocktail napkin” prototype of your app out of your head and into a medium that is shareable with colleagues and clients.
Nov 05 2012
Building Business Capability Conference 2012- Adding Value
I attended the Building Business Capability 2012 Conference last week. It is a collection of different tracks that allows attendees to hear from a variety of different speakers. The tracks are: Business Rules, Business Analysis, Business Process, Business Architecture and Business Strategy and Transformation. As a BSA I was interested in the Business Analysis Forum, but also took time to attend sessions in the Business Process and Business Architecture forums. The Business Analysis Forum is the official conference of the Intenational Institue of Business Analysis (IIBA) and I attended sessions with topics ranging from how to elicit non-functional requirements to how to manage the "rock star" BAs in your organization. I attended last year's conference and felt this year showed movement forward as the BA profession becomes more mature.
Nov 01 2012
Agility beyond your wildest dreams....
My reflections on keynotes at the Building Business Capability 2012 Conference:
Attending the International Institute of Business Analysis Building Business Capability 2012 conference felt a little bit like taking part in an evangelical seminar. The leaders were preaching to the choir. These sessions reminded me of some great tools and techniques at my disposal with a few enhancements that others had found to be useful. I appreciate these conferences because the amount of knowledge sharing exchanged helps promote the good habits analysts continually seek out.