In this chapter, you will discover the real problem in
your company when you remove all available technology and devices. With this action,
you can understand the essence of the task that you are working with.
Formality Guide.
If you are not building something that meets the company’s
needs, you are just wasting money and time for nothing. It doesn’t matter if the
project is a rabbit, horse or elephant, in this chapter we need to understand
the essence of the problem to create the best solution.
The Brown Cow Model: Thinking Above the Line
The Essence
Now it is time to move above the horizontal line that
separates the “how” from the “what.” Here’s where you see the real
business—that which we refer to as the essence of the business. Up here the air
is rarified, and you do not need to deal with the mundane, real-world issues of
people and technology; instead, you take an abstract view and discover what the
business is really doing. Once you see that, you move to what you would like to
be doing in the future. In the Brown Cow Model, these views are shown by the
What-Now and the Future-What quadrants.
Swim Lanes Begone
A typical process mode showing swim lanes; the horizontal
lines on the diagram divide the work by current departmental responsibility. The
model of the business after removing the swim lanes. Note how the customer can abort
the transaction if the inventory is not available. The Confirm Order process can now advise the customer of the delivery date.
Solving the Right Problem: We need to look for real problem to solve. Usually, projects set out the wrong problems at the start of the project because they just consider the technology they will be using in the project. They do not consider the work to be improved further. So, we need to dig it deep to find the real problem.
ReplyDeleteMoving into the Future: Once you understand the current essence, it is time to move on to what
you want the business to be; this is shown in the Future-What quadrant of the Brown Cow Model. The future business will not be the same as the previous business—your project is meant to improve the work, and here is where you do it. Moving to the Future-What involves questioning and enhancing the current business essence to make the business more effective, efficient, and innovative.
Let's get more into another part of this chapter - systemic thinking.
DeleteMoving into the future means thinking systemically
about the work, the whole problem, the end-to-end system. Sometimes,
when you consider the entirety in preference to the parts, you are better able
to see how you can rearrange those parts to form a more beneficial system
for the future.
It now falls to you in your role as a business analyst to lead the quest for
the future work. Often, remarkably often, the future work is apparent as
soon as you start applying systemic thinking to the current work. Simply by
seeing the bigger picture of the current work, it becomes readily apparent
what the future work should be.
Looking too narrowly, by looking only at the proposed product, inhibits
systemic thinking. The product’s fundamental functionality and the ways
in which it seeks to interact with the user are certainly important, but what
the product is doing within the larger scope of the organization is more
important. Step back and see how your product affects the rest of the work.
FUTURE OF THE BUSINESS
ReplyDeleteOnce you understand the current essence, it is time to move on to what
you want the business to be; this is shown in the Future-What quadrant of
the Brown Cow Model. The future business will not be the same as the previous
business—your project is meant to improve the work, and here is where
you do it. Moving to the Future-What involves questioning and enhancing the current business essence to make the business more effective, efficient,
and innovative.
Before we get too far into the future, it’s worth emphasizing that you must
understand the current essence that exists within your work scope—usually
defined by a work context diagram,Scoping
the Business Problem.