measuring the performance of business analysts
DESCRIPTION
Why and how measure the performance of business analystsTRANSCRIPT
MEASURING THE PERFORMANCE OF BUSINESS
ANALYSTS
Adriana BealBeal Projects - http://bealprojects.com
Adapted from the original presentation made at the WI BADD 2010, to work without narration.
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Why measure the performance of business analysts?
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Traditional view of individual performance measurement
Source: When the uncountable counts: An alternative to monitoring employee performanceby K. W. Platts, M. Sobotka Jul 15, 2010. Prod. #: BH392-PDF-ENG
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Common complaints
tunnel employee vision reduce urge to experiment cause sub-optimization lead to gaming, creative accounting, and fraud
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Alternative viewpoint
Study developed in one of the largest suppliers of electricity and natural gas in Germany:
“A formalized individual performance measurement system may not be required to
achieve high performance standards.”
(K. W. Platts, M. Sobotka - When the uncountable counts: An alternative to monitoring employee performance)
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Other means to achieve high performance
Inspiring leadership
Positive working environment
Encouragement to experiment and suggest new solutions for business problems.
(K. W. Platts, M. Sobotka - When the uncountable counts: An alternative to monitoring employee performance)
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Easier when your problems are of a of a very straightforward nature...
E.g., “reduce network outage by replacing components that started to fail with unexpected regularity.”
Intrinsic motivation, clear responsibilities, and striking agreement about what needs to change removes the need of measuring performance at the individual level.
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... much harder when looking at more complex problems
“Reasons why projects fail”
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Many potential causes...
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Why measure
To go from
“we have a problem”
to
“there is a performance problem, and out of 15 potential causes, here are the 3 that we need to attack first.”
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Alternative viewpoint(Adriana Beal, Oct 2010)
Partial agreement with Plats and Sobotka:
No need to measure individual performance to control or motivate behavior.
There are better ways to motivate people to achieve high performance.
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Alternative viewpoint(Adriana Beal, Oct 2010)
However, there is a much better reason to measure individual performance...
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Why measure?
To increase understanding of what affects business analysis processes and results,
to identify areas where action is needed, or there is opportunity to scale successes, and
to make the right decisions about where to invest time and resources.
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What NOT to measure
What can't be used for learning and improving performance
What can't be expressed in numbers and units of measure, or
require subjective criteria
What you could learn using a more economical measurement
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What NOT to measure
What can't be used for learning and improving performance
Things that you could learn using a more economical measurement
“Total number of requirements (e.g., a size metric)”
Source:“Measurably improving you requirements”modernanalyst.com: http://tiny.cc/0lyp3
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What NOT to measure
What requires subjective criteria
Things that you could learn using a more economical measurement“Requirement stability (i.e., what is
the probability of the requirement changing?)”Source:“Measurably improving you requirements”modernanalyst.com: http://tiny.cc/0lyp3
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What NOT to measure
Things that you could learn using a more economical measurement
“% of customers satisfied with our software as a service tool” - by monthly phone survey
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What NOT to measure
Things that you could learn using a more economical measurement
“% of customers satisfied with our software as a service tool” - by monthly phone survey
conversion rate after trial period
subscription renewal rate
(Already available in your billing system)
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A good indicator helps you understand where you are, which way you are going, and how far you are from where you want to be.
What to measure
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Goal
Question
Measure
What to measure
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What to measure
Goals & questions may be about...
Efficiency
Effectiveness
Impact
Best practices
Goal
Question
Measure
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Is our work being done on time and with high quality?
EfficiencyRequirements cycle length
Waste
Improvement on on-time delivery
EffectivenessDefects in requirements artifacts
Best practicesAdherence to change management standards & procedures
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Are we succeeding in delighting our internal/external customers?
Impact
Positive feedback from customers
Requests for change attributable to the BA work
Quality problems in implemented solution attributable to the BA work
Progress made in actual delivery date versus requested and promised date
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Creating meaningful performance measurement systems
Lagging and leading indicators(no more than 7-10 measures in total)
Few KPIs (3-5)
Comprehensive view: inputs, processing steps, outputs
Multiple perspectives: individual, process, department, organization
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A hierarchy of objectives and KPIs
Implement regulatory compliance reqs on time
Deliver acceptable regulatorycompliance reqs on time
IT
BA
Ensure 100% regulatorycompliance
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Measuring for the wrong reasons
“keep score” punish people micro-manage find something wrong
with the work done
M
Creativity and progressinhibitors!
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“The consequences of a failed performance should be personal development, new perspectives, improved judgment, skill enhancement, and all-around learning.”
(Samuel A. Culbert in: GET RID OF THE PERFORMANCE REVIEW!)
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Learning from measurement
Source: Daniel Powell (Requirements Evaluation Using Behavior Trees - Findings from Industry)
Adapted from Tim Olson (Measurement Driven Project Management, 2004 CMMI Conference)
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Finding the “bright spots”
Defects 17 8 2 .5 per 100 reqs
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Finding the “bright spots”
By investigating the strategies of your top performers, you could discover, for example, that the most successful BAs are spending time creating glossaries and data models for their projects, while the average BA is simply describing software behavior.
Identify and promote the winning strategies to the rest of your team.
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What really matters for high performance...
(According to 4 decades of research)
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What really matters for high performance...
Interesting and meaningful work Autonomy Personal growth Clear and reasonable expectations Consistent & fair evaluation Frequent and usable feedback
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A well-designed performance measurement system can support every element of high performance, helping: establish clear and reasonable expectations
about our performance, identify opportunities for personal
development, facilitate consistent and fair evaluation of the
work done, and make our work more interesting and meaningful
by making our contributions more visible.
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... when you see performance data serving as the basis for frequent discussions about performance levels and trends, and BAs starting to develop their own strategies to deal with
performance issues.
You know that a performance measurement system is working...z
You know that a performance measurement system is working...
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Measuring the Performance of Business Analysts
WI BADD 2010
For additional resources please visithttp://bealprojects.com
Adriana [email protected]