EA 872 Week 5 Getting on the same page

Hello again and welcome to my weekly blog. If you are returning, thanks for coming back! If this is your first time, thanks for checking it out!

This week's readings have been about understanding the business context. This topic got me thinking about many of my past experiences and how often this lack of understanding has torpedoed a project or initiative.  As I stated in my week three post, I have often witnessed the need to build a strong team and adopt a shared environment of people, processes, and tools for project success within most of my customers.  This building and adoption process has to start with a common understanding.

I was reading the Gartner document (G00142111) "Building a 'Fast-Path' Common Requirements Vision" and in reading it, I again went back to past experiences. While I do not disagree with the content of the document, I wonder if there is not a pre-process to this CRV effort that can accelerate this type of deliverable and allow the team to get to a common understanding quickly in any conversation?

I have found that two, maybe dated, techniques when combined and tweaked a little can provide an overall understanding that can drive the CRV. These two techniques are a SWOT analysis followed by a Goal, Question, Metric (GQM) exercise. I know SWOT is not pretty, but I have adapted this into an approach that works well. I used colored sticky cards to solicit anonymous responses to each SWOT lane.

• Strengths      = GREEN
• Weakness     = YELLOW
• Opportunity   = BLUE
• Threats         = RED

From there I arrange the cards on the wall during group discussion for their consideration and feedback. With these flows, I establish a series of Critical Success Factors (CSFs) that evolve into a storyboard. Here is an example:

The next day these CFS storyboards would be laid out on the wall of the meeting room. This visual provides an easy to read view of these CSF and the stimulus for each. A digital version is created to store and distribute. This artifact is then easily recalled when one needs to come back to it.

Now that we have this level of consensus, we would begin GQM sessions.

Per, Basili, V. , et. al. The Goal Question Metric Approach, GQM is
“A technique that is based on the assumption that for an organization to measure in a purposeful way it must first specify the goals for itself and its projects, then it must trace those goals to the data that are intended to define those goals operationally, and finally provide a framework for interpreting the data with respect to the stated goals.”  

The GQM process allows one to link conceptual goals back to the SWOT and then operational level questions to quantitative data or metrics. This is then used to measure success and failure.

I could probably write a blog on just this technique and the success we have had using it, but I want to circle back to my original point. Doing an exercise like this sets a series of high-level strategic goals and objectives that a management or executive team can buy in on. This further helps EA with their future vision planning and migration efforts because it also provides a set of metrics, that are agreed upon, to track goal achievement. I would propose that that one would benefit from having these defined objectives and metrics to work with while building out the CRV.

Let me know what you think or if I am off base here. This is just an approach I have used with successes, and I would like to hear how others have built a consensus in their efforts.