Part Two – Behavioral Characteristics

By Retta Witter, Senior Consultant, J. Geiger Consulting, Inc.

Today’s piece is installment two in the blog series, Underlying Competencies, with the series culminating by hosting an evening roundtable for attendees to discuss their thoughts. If there are questions you have for the discussion or would like to participate, please email me or place them in the comments.

This week’s blog is about Behavioral Characteristics (International Institute of Business Analysis, 2015, pp. 194 – 198), which includes competencies that are very important to IT consultants like me for many reasons not the least of which is that the community where I live and work is small (as anyone from the Fox Valley, Wisconsin knows). Word travels quickly, good or bad, from one client to another. And “six degrees of Kevin Bacon” has nothing on us.

Behavioral Characteristics has five core sub-competencies:

Ethics

Recognizing when a proposed solution or requirement may present ethical difficulties to an organization or its stakeholders is an important consideration that business analysts must use to help reduce exposure to risk.

No doubt many of you either lived through the Sarbanes-Oxley act of 2002 or have learned about it. If not, here’s the the gist: Senator Sarbanes (Maryland) and Representative Oxley (Ohio) authored the act after several publicly held companies had serious fraud issues (Enron/Tyco and WorldCom). Should crafting legislation be part of the BA arsenal? Not necessarily. But transparency and professional ethics should be.

Personal Accountability

Personal accountability enables the business analyst to establish credibility by ensuring that business analysis efforts meet the needs of the business.

As an IT consultant, this competency resonates with me deeply. Here’s why: if I don’t practice personal accountability, I’m unlikely to achieve the goals— the ideal outcome— that my customer expects. Every project or initiative bears impediments to delivery. Personal accountability on the part of the BA ensures that they are met head on.

Have you ever been interrupted or directed to change the priority of the work you’ve been assigned? Understanding and communicating the status of both planned and unplanned work is an excellent method for practicing personal accountability.

Trustworthiness

When working with members of the business, trust is critical. Sure, you’re working with them to create more value, but your efforts will often directly impact their daily work. Without trust, project buy-in and managing change are nearly impossible feats.

I’m a strong proponent of building teams that work well together— above all else. When working on a project that could run from 9 months to several years if team members don’t trust one another, the project is doomed to be very emotionally draining or challenging. Not a recipe for creating the customer’s the ideal outcome.

How have you been impacted by working with someone you didn’t find trustworthy? What do you do to build trust with your teammates?

Organization and Time Management

One of the key measurables within this competency is communicating. Communicating expectations to key stakeholders by having an agenda for a meeting enables stakeholders to organize their work and practice effective time management.

This competency fits well with personal accountability. If you don’t practice good time management and organization yourself, can you expect it in other contributors? Will you inspire trust?

I’m a member of WIT Wisconsin (Women in Technology Wisconsin) and we had a speaker come in about a year ago, pre-Covid, whereupon he talked about how to organize your time and day. Here are a few tips from that engagement that I’ve implemented myself, both professionally and personally:

Brain Dumps

• At the end of day, take a minute to write down everything that comes to your mind (e.g., a to-do list). This lets your brain rest when you leave work and you can look at it again the next morning. I do another brain dump in the morning, group like items and then prioritize.

Don’t Look at Email All the Time

• I only look at and reply to email 3 times a day— beginning of the day, noonish, and at the end of the day. I have the time blocked and use a reminder pop-up. I go so far as to prevent email from being my focused pane in Outlook. This tip has had an amazing impact on my ability to manage interruptions more effectively.

What do you do to keep yourself organized and practice effective time management?

Adaptability

This one is one of my favorites. My son is on the autism spectrum and adaptability is key for his success such that I have spent a lot of time over the last 15 years understanding it. In fact, one of the main reasons for our mother-son adventure trips is to help him build confidence, stretch his comfort zone and be more adaptable. Fun and making memories are also a big parts of our adventures!

How does that relate to work? Do you ever get interrupted? Do you ever need to switch gears because of priority changes? (e.g., server/application is down so you need to stop what you are working on to get the business working again)

Agile is all about adaptability. Are you practicing Agile/Agile Scrum within your project(s)? If so, what’s your take on Agile’s impact on adaptability?

Lastly, adapting to changing environmental conditions is something we’ve all had to do over the past 8 months with the advent of Covid. Adaptability has become key to meeting organizational needs. What are some adaptations your organization has put forth to continue operating during the Covid pandemic?

As a reminder, this series culminates in an evening roundtable event for attendees to discuss their thoughts and share knowledge around Underlying Competencies. If there are questions you have for the discussion or would like to participate, please email me or place them in the comments.

Stop by next week for Part 3: Business Knowledge

Bibliography

International Institute of Business Analysis. (2015). BABOK A GUIDE TO THE BUSINESS ANALYSIS BODY OF KNOWLEDGE (Vol. V3). Toronto, Ontario, Canada.: IIBA