Project Management in Real Life

We live in a world with technology to give businesses the ability to run an efficient operation. Well that's not going to happen if the wrong components and processes are in place or it's time for a technology refresh.  

The Business Analyst is the person that needs to understand how the business operates to meet their objectives now and into the future. A good Business Analyst needs to roll up their sleeves and get dirty digging for information. A Business Analyst needs to work with the business units by documenting the process flow by observation and asking a lot of questions. Spend a week with the business unit that is targeted for improvement to get a good feel on how they operate.

Something to remember when you work on improving a process. I was told by an instructor in a class I attended on process improvement, "If you can measure it, you can manage it."

(Note - this article was originally written by Drake Settsu and published on DrakeSettsu.BlogSpot.com in January 2016)

Present your solutions with the three options approach. When you are on a budget and faced with a problem that needs to be addressed you need to look at various options to address the problem. 

1) Look at the short term cheap fix solution if it will meet your needs until a long term solution is implemented in the future. 

2) When you are uncertain when a long term fix will be implemented you need to look for a solution that has the capability of going the distance without all those bells and whistles. 

3) The long term solution with all the bells and whistles that will address all your needs into the future. 

It's all in how you present the options to management. You need to upfront commit to your first pick and hard sell it. Management will have a chance to see the three options and decide to just fork out the money to address a permanent fix or select one of the two cheaper solutions to buy time to get that permanent solution in the budget.

(Note - this article was originally written by Drake Settsu and published on DrakeSettsu.BlogSpot.com in April 2014)