Gap Analysis is to Identify and Analyze gaps and Recommend solutions for potential gaps identified between user requirements and purchased application (Siebel Horizontal / Vertical functionality)

How to approach Gap Analysis:

Customizations should be minimized
Customizations, if required, should not exceed 20% of the purchased application
Avoid building functionality that is available in the core application but not licensed

Key Steps in Gap Analysis:

1. Capture business process flows
2. Map to purchased functionality , prepare demonstration, Create navigation scripts
3. Demonstrate functionality
4. Complete business requirement matrix, re-craft demo addressing potential gaps.
5. Resolve usability
6. Perform gap analysis

Management is a complex task. As a manager, you are continually faced with problems that need solving and decisions that need to be made. Making decisions is not easy, but it is a major part of a manager's role.

As a new manager, you may be worried about making the wrong decision, but making no decision at all is rarely a satisfactory option. Employees expect good leadership and sound decisions from their managers. Failure to deliver these will result in frustrated and disillusioned staff members.

Put simply, decision making is about choosing between alternative possible courses of action. Routine decisions – for example, which call to make next – usually do not require a lot of thought or planning. However, more complex decisions which involve several people, and which may have far-reaching consequences, are better made when they are informed and considered.

Before you can even begin to make a decision, it is crucial that you identify exactly what the problem is. Once you have done this, you can determine what you expect your decision to achieve. This will enable you to ensure that all of the necessary factors are considered before you reach a final decision and take action.

Once you have identified your issue, you should structure your decision-making approach as follows:

Gather necessary information – Gathering information will help you to make a more informed decision. Some information may need to be analyzed. Do not use a lack of information as an excuse for procrastination.

Consider the options – Once you have all of the information, you will be in a better position to decide between possible courses of action. You may have identified specific criteria to help you to weigh the options.

Make a choice – You may choose to seek advice from others at this point. As a new manager, your own manager or mentor may be in a good position to help you. He or she will probably have dealt with similar situations in the past.

Implement the decision – Depending upon the nature of the decision, you may have to seek authorization from more senior managers before you can proceed. Remember that a decision cannot really be effective until it has been implemented.

Monitor the success of the decision – As always, it is important to monitor the action taken. If things do not seem to be going to plan, then it may become necessary to return to point three, and reconsider your options.

As a new manager, you will find it easier, and more effective, to use a structured approach when making decisions. Once you become more comfortable with your role, you may be able to adapt your approach. The steps involved are logical, but under pressure it can be reassuring to have a process to follow. Of course, sometimes it is not possible to follow such a structured path, because

• information or time is limited
• you have a decision forced upon you
• the number of available options is limited
• intuition replaces a rational approach
• implementation is impeded

As a manager, people are expecting you to solve problems. They want you to make informed decisions based on appropriate information, which is given due consideration. They are expecting you to identify the most effective course of action, and implement and monitor it carefully.

At first, decision making can be daunting.Using a structured approach will help you to consider all aspects and come to a sound conclusion. It can be tempting to think that the process is over once a decision has been made, but do not forget to check that the decision really is solving the problem and meeting the objectives identified at the outset.

Business environments these days are characterized by complexity, and acceleration of everything from communication to production methods. IT has been one of the major drivers of this complexity and acceleration.

There are nearly limitless applications of IT in the service of business. IT improves productivity through streamlining of process and enhances efficiency and effectiveness of individual workers as well as groups through connectivity that it offers. IT also makes it possible for business to grow by access to new markets and new partners.

Considering those capabilities of IT, it can be disappointing to see the limited success that has been achieved in applying it in real business environments. Researches continually show that companies have difficulty with IT projects.

a good Business Analyst can help mitiate the below risks

Incomplete requirements: Business Analyst main responsibility is making sure the requirements are clear and scope is defined.BA Reduces the problem to 0 by understanding the scope, the objectives, end to end process and manage the reqs from drafting to end of the project, not just at the beginning, but keep an eye all the way.

Lack of user involvement: Reduce this by correctly identifying the stakeholders and engaging them and asking them the right questions.

Unrealistic expectations: BA can reduce this by defined benefits, and by checking feasibility - feasibility of cost, design and technology with the relevant people

Lack of Executive support: Ensure a sponsor is engaged from the start , and sets their objectives which the BA can help to define.

Changing Requirements: Businesses change all the time so some change is good and inevitable, BUT Use the right techniques and ask the right questions of the right people and change will be kept to a minimum. Bas say, “the users have changed their minds again”, but its the BA’s job to help the users to understand their own requirements, b ut taking them through their e2e processes and by ensuring their data is understood. When they do change, control and manage the change.

Lack of Planning: Time is required to capture the reqs and for full User Acceptance Testing and for structured walkthroughs. For quality control. The BA needs to liaise with the PM over this.

In theory the idea of having traditional BSAs involved with a project should work quite well, and in practice it often does.  The best analysts are organized and great communicators, having the ability to distill the critical information from your project stakeholders out of the “information noise” that they provide – often through a wide range of modeling techniques. For many organizations the addition of BSAs clearly improved the quality of the requirements elicitation and analysis modeling.  It also opened up communication between the “tech weenies” in IT and the “business morons” that the system was being built for. 

Clearly this was a step in the right direction.  However, some very common problems have been known to occur: 

BSAs often lack the right skills.  Many organizations have difficulties hiring the right people and/or nurturing the right skills in people.  The end result is that people are often thrust into the role of BSA but do not have the skills to fulfill that role, nor do they have an opportunity to gain those skills.   

BSAs can have undue project influence.  A strong-willed BSA may inadvertently influence a project, perhaps by playing down requirements that they don’t agree with or even influencing architecture decisions by being biased towards one type of analysis technique (such as focusing just on use cases or just on data models).  This is particularly dangerous when BSAs act as stakeholder surrogates AND the developers and stakeholders have little interaction other than via the BSA.

BSAs can be out of date.  Having previous development experience is critical for a BSA because it grounds them in reality. However, it may also lead them astray.  For example someone with a data-intensive background may struggle when working with a development team that is using object technology (and vice versa) because they don’t know which issues they need to focus on.

BSAs can act as a communication barrier.  Although BSAs can act as a communication bridge between the two groups they also act as a communication barrier.  On the Agile Modeling (AM) mailing list Ron Jeffries depicted the communication approach of traditional BSAs to look like “stakeholder => BSA => developer => BSA => stakeholder”.  This looks a lot like the game of telephone tag, doesn’t it? When you play this game you quickly discover that the signal degrades between hops, decreasing the chance that the actual message gets through successfully.  Although a highly skilled BSA, one with excellent communication skills, will reduce this problem it will never go away completely.

BSAs can reduce stakeholder influence.  An interesting implication is that your project stakeholders don’t have as much influence over the software as they may think.  They’re influencing the traditional BSA, and the models and documentation that the BSA creates, but have no direct influence over what the developers are creating.  This can even be said of user interface prototyping efforts, particularly when those efforts are led by a traditional BSA.

BSAs often over analyze.   Another inherent problem with traditional BSAs is their tendency to actually do their perceived jobs.  What?  When you specialize in something you will naturally focus on that task.  The implication is that the task of business analysis will be stretched out, instead of Iterating to Another Artifact as AM suggests, such as a design model or even source code, a BSA will likely focus on expanding the artifacts that they specialize in.  Not only is your development effort likely to devolve into a more serial process, instead of an evolutionary approach, the BSAs are likely to develop more documentation than is required.  Your goal should be to create models and documents which are just barely good enough.

BSAs can reduce feedback.  When analysts are only responsible for analysis efforts, for creating models and documents that are meant to be handed off to developers, there is less opportunity for feedback.  There is the danger that they will create theoretically sound models, and make unrealistic promises based on those models to your project stakeholders, that don’t work in practice.  The feedback of people working with software is critical, feedback that you can’t get from models and documents.  The BSA quickly learns what actually works, and from the resulting changes requested by stakeholders quickly improves their analyst skills because they recognize mistakes they made.

BSAs can reduce opportunities for developers to gain communication skills.  With traditional BSAs in place developers aren’t given as many opportunities to improve their own communication skills, skills that are critical to success in today’s environment.  Nor are they given the opportunity to work closely with business experts, opportunities that would allow them to learn about the nuances of the business environment and thus increase the chance of them building a system that actually meets their users needs.  

Nor are they given the chance to discover that the “business morons” are actually pretty smart after all, with interesting knowledge worth learning.  Similarly, project stakeholders miss the opportunity to learn about how software is developed, arguably a good thing in some organizations, and to discover that the “tech weenies” are actually very interesting people.  

A Business Analyst is a person who acts as a liaison between business people who have a business problem and technology people who know how to create automated solutions.

BA Role Overview

Gather > Understand > Analyze customer business requirements and develop

• Process flows
• Data flows
• Business requirements documentation.

Conduct impact analysis and document customer business processes.

• Provide expert consultation on complex business processes, and provide creative solutions to ambiguous business problems.
• For a customer implementation, develop detailed customer requirements and gap analysis with respect to product capabilities.
• Provide guidance and assistance to the design phase of the project, in cooperation with engineering.
• Lead the test plan development process by working with the test team to develop a test strategy, test cases, scenarios, and specifications that assess whether the system satisfies all of the customer requirements.
• Drive the technical resolution of issues arising from changes to scope, requirements, design, etc.
• Work with Product Management to define and prioritize features and functions of product roadmap - ensure alignment between customer requirements and product roadmap.
• Actively participate in project review meetings. Identify potential schedule or project problems and p rovide solutions that alleviate the proble! ms.
• Participate in post project reviews with fellow team members. Provide input on performance of project resources as requested.
• Assist Sales in the preparation of RFI/RFP responses, and perform technical and functional presentations to prospective customers
• Participate in the development, review, and adherence to project and department standards for quality, proficiency, and customer satisfaction.
• Participate in the development and delivery of specific training materials required for the customer implementation

Step One: Clarify, Negotiate, and Commit to Your Role
Step Two: Understand Your Expected Results
Step Three: Know Your Piece of the Business
Step Four: Build a Great Team
Step Five: Choose Employees Wisely
Step Six: Define and Model Excellence
Step Seven: Plan the Work and Work the Plan—Flexibly
Step Eight: Obliterate Barriers
Step Nine: Proactively Manage Change and Transition
Step Ten: Leave a Legacy of Capacity to Produce

“Nothing is so fatiguing as the eternal hanging on of an uncompleted task.”
—William James

It always helps to know where your time is going. So, keep track of how you spend your time for two weeks. Sound dull? Boring, maybe? So cut it down to a couple of days. Surprise! Most of your log will show you’re investing your time in people or things not really important to you or your goals.

Focus, focus, focus on STARTING tasks rather than finishing them. The greatest challenge is taking the first step and getting started. (Ah yes – doesn’t that feel good?)

Every day something unexpected is going to happen. Count on it! So, set aside some “Oops time!” Don’t let these emergencies disrupt the rest of your day. Plan for them, act on them and then get back to work.

Think on paper. Writing things down minimizes confusion and stress. Write down your goals, to-do lists, and even the problems that you’re working on. You’ll find putting things on paper usually clarifies the situation. Committing things to memory can be a waste of brain power, not to mention a poor storage device as well.

Categorize your To Do list into A, B, and C priorities. “A” priorities are the activities that are critical for your success. “B” priorities are important but not critical. “C” priorities would be nice to do if you get the time. Begin with your “A” priorities and work your way to the “nice to do” items.

Here’s a suggestion that will help everyone: create a “talk” file for your boss, subordinates, peers and even your customers. Unless it is a real emergency, wait until you have at least two items in the file before calling that person with your questions.

Get a spiral-bound notebook, date it, and keep all your notes in the book for future reference. Quit writing on loose papers or sticky notes that tend to get lost.

Try something new. Read (really) the instruction manual that came with your electronic organizer. Even better, try the manufacturer’s web site to find new software updates and releases that may further your productivity. Bet you will find several time management tools you haven’t used. Let the organizer do the work so you can spend less time organizing yourself.

Use only one time management system. Whether you choose an electronic or paper system, one consistent system will eliminate much wasted time spent searching for information.

Abracadabra! Take a speed-reading course. You could already be a lot further along in this book!

How about all those passwords? Tough to remember? Simplify your passwords and have a logical, easy to remember reason for selecting each. Trying to remember a password is frustrating and a total waste of time. You may want to select passwords that can be typed on the keyboard with one hand so your other hand is free.

Take a Saturday and devote two hours to reorganizing yourself. Take a fresh look at how you are organized and look for opportunities to improve. You will probably discover several areas where you can eliminate some personal time wasters simply by becoming a little better organized.

Create a “quiet time” for planning. Let everyone know your closed door means “do not disturb” unless there is an emergency…or someone in your family calls.

Throw things away! Yes, even those ticket stubs from the last football game. Ask yourself, “What is the worst thing that could happen if I throw this away?” Most of the time, you can live with your answer, so start filling that wastebasket!

Date stamp (ker-chunk) every item that hits your desk. This will help you decide when to file or throw away the paper.

If you get heartburn from throwing paper away, create a drawer or file to store your stuff for 90 days. If you have not used it within 90 days, you can safely throw those “keepers” away.

Still not comfortable — even after the 90 days? Then find the “office pack rat” and become their new best friend. Someone around the office has a copy of every memo and report from the past 10 years. Love that person — but throw your trash away.

Trust me on this, too! Most of all filed materials over a year old are never needed again. Archive the files and get them out of your way. If possible handle the paper only once and avoid the “I’ll just put it here for now” habit.

The key to paper management — KEEP IT MOVING! (Now, how simple can we get?) Move the paper to your out basket, your file, your “to read” folder or to your trash. Don’t let paper just sit

Wait! Do these three things before you leave the office: (1) clear your desk, (2) plan tomorrow’s activities and (3) enter your next day’s to-do list in your organizer. Then go home. Planning the next day before you leave reduces stress and allows you to enjoy your time away from the office

What’s man’s best friend (besides the dog)?

The wastebasket! – Business Week

Okay, listen up! Clear your desk…NOW! Despite what some people believe, a cluttered desk does not indicate genius. Au contraire! It signals confusion and creates stress. Even mini-clutter will grow and eventually fill every inch. Keep your desk clear of everything except your project du jour and your family picture.

Get rid of that paper! Shuffling and reshuffling paper from pile to pile or file to file wastes time and keeps you from focusing on what needs to get done. Find a gigantic wastebasket and fill it up. The larger the wastebasket, the more you will use it. Throwing things away then becomes an art. Enjoy!

Files should not be an obstacle course. Put your most often reviewed files at the front of the cabinet. Here is a test to see if your current filing system works. Within two minutes, can you retrieve any paper you need? Go. If you failed the test you are wasting time searching through your files.

Never clear off your desk by randomly throwing things in a drawer. Gotcha! You will eventually have to go through that drawer. Instead, create a logical system for storing these items in your desk

A picture or two on your desk is probably not distracting, but limit pictures to a special few. The more pictures on your desk, the more distractions and interruptions you invite.

Organize your desktop! If you are right-handed, make sure the phone is located on the left side of your desk. You want to keep the right side of the desk (and your right hand) free to take notes. Just the opposite for lefties.

Right-handed people should place the calculator on the right side of their desk. Ditto the above for southpaws, the proud but under-represented!

Avoid glass desktops. They glare and are hard to keep clean. You don’t need to spend valuable time wiping off fingerprints

If a report comes across your desk that you can’t use, notify the sender and ask to be deleted from distribution. The key question to ask is, “Would I pay for this report if I had to?” If not, get rid of it.

If you only use a few lines of a report, ask for a reformat, if possible. Four pages when you need four lines just doesn’t make sense — does it?

“If you want to make an easy job seem mighty hard, just keep putting off doing it.”

Olin Miller