Learn While Travel - how we drove on 1st European Business Analysis Day
The Russian TechCenter of Deutsche Bank has an interesting Learn While Travel program, in which an employee can visit a professional conference in his own city during his vacation in another city at the expense of the company.
I, Kristina Egorova, and my colleagues, Olya Odintsova and Polina Peresada, decided to tell you about our experience of participating in international conferences, as well as about how we decided to speak at one of them.
We decided to divide the article into two parts. In the first, we will tell you what impressed us in the reports at the 1st European Business Analysis Day 2018 conference in Frankfurt and how we decided to make a presentation for next year.
')
And in the second - about his report at the 2nd European Business Analysis Day.
So…
In February 2018, the organizers announced the 1st st European Business Analysis Day conference in Frankfurt, and we decided to take the opportunity to listen to the reports of European and American colleagues. Why? Firstly, Christoph Omig, our colleague from the Frankfurt division of Deutsche Bank, who is involved in ATM software projects, participated in the conference. Secondly, Richard Larson and Elizabeth Larson , co-authors of BABOK, PMBOK and PMI, spoke at the conference. Thirdly, several speakers combined their work in IT with research and teaching at European universities. Such reports attract us because the goal of any research is to develop new scientific knowledge, and therefore scientific reports are more interesting and deeper than ordinary reports on the difficulties of a particular project and how to overcome them.
The conference was held May 17-18, 2018 under the slogan “A Future Without Borders In A Digital World”. On the first day of the conference, a workshop on Design Thinking was held, and on the second day, reports were presented in the areas of “Agile Analysis”, “Customer Experience” and “Business Processes”. We arrived for two days: and to pass a master class, and listen to reports.
The workshop began with an introduction to Design Thinking. The host explained that Design Thinking is one of the most popular frameworks in the field of innovation management, because it offers a structured process that can be used to solve a wide variety of business tasks. For example, to develop innovative products or processes that have no analogues on the market. Another example of the application of Design Thinking is the development of new products or processes to solve complex, difficult to formulate problems, such as creating a mobile application for blind and poorly seeing people on older phone models.
Design Thinking consists of six main steps:
Each stage uses its own tools - for example, checklists for interviews or templates for creating a portrait of a typical user of a product. As it turned out, the most difficult part in Design Thinking is putting the tools into practice, so the organizers of the master class found an interesting task for training. As part of this task, we were asked to think about which processes in the hotel can be automated and which cannot, because a living person must be involved in them.
“ Tell me ,” the hotel manager asked us, “is an employee needed at the reception in the modern world, or can you just put a kiosk that will check your reservation and give out keys for the room?” What about room service? With conferences ? ”
To answer these questions, we were divided into 4 groups of 8-10 people, and each group had an experienced trainer who explained what should be done at the next stage, what tools to use and what mistakes to avoid. For example, a typical mistake of many teams at the stages of collecting information is to immediately think about solution options and their possible shortcomings, skipping the stages of synthesis, generating ideas and creating a prototype. As a rule, this happens because on ordinary IT projects we immediately begin to solve the task. As for innovative projects, this error leads to the fact that the team may miss some of the potentially interesting ideas, focusing on those solutions that already exist on the market.
At the second stage, we had the opportunity to talk with the hotel manager, with the guests, and even observe the work of various hotel departments. As a result, each group described a “persona” - a typical hotel guest, with his interests and expectations from modern hotels. It was interesting to compare our results with those of other teams and take into account the details that we did not think about. The master class ended with the fact that all teams developed a prototype application for the hotel, received feedback from the hotel manager and discussed their practical experience in design thinking.
The second day of the conference began with an introductory report by Helen Prels, head of the charitable organization “Managers Without Borders”. Helen talked about how her organization’s employees share knowledge and experience in economics and management where it is most needed. For example, in Africa there is no middle class, almost no small and medium-sized enterprises that provide jobs, and managers without borders lend a helping hand. Paradoxically, the conference on a digital world without borders began with a story not about digital technologies, but about people who try to ignore the boundaries.
After the opening report, parallel reports began in three areas: “Agile Analysis”, “Customer Experience” and “Business Processes”. Despite the division into directions, all the reports were related to the stated topic of the conference and revealed one or another aspect of it. For example, in the direction of Customer Experience, the technical prerequisites of digitalization were discussed, its impact on user experience and expectations , as well as on the IT industry and new requirements for analytic skills .
Among the reports in this direction, we most remember the report of Stefan Wagner on user experience . Stefan revealed the latest BMW model said that Germany was justifiably proud of its automotive industry. On the slide, the Google car model, which looks like a baby car, looked very funny next to BMW. But Stefan recalled that all BMW owners regularly spend 2-3 hours in traffic jams on their way home, and what they need at this time is the ability to use IT on the road for work or entertainment. And while BMW was improving the technical characteristics of cars, Google was working to improve the user experience. Thus, using a simple example, Stefan showed that in the digital world, simply providing good products and services is no longer enough - you need to analyze and create a good user experience.
In the direction of Agile Analysis, all attention was paid to analysis, the role of the analyst in Agile, adaptation of the Agile methodology and the associated difficulties. A report on how to challenge the status quo was especially helpful. The speaker emphasized that despite the development of technologies and approaches to project management, professionals are still afraid to go beyond the usual, test themselves, grow and develop. The main idea of ​​the report was formulated as follows: " From every challenge we make we have something to learn - otherwise we fail and last but not least nothing great is ever achieved by doing things the way they have always been done ."
Regarding Business Processes, speakers shared best practices, talked about innovation management and requirements management at the portfolio level of projects . The conference ended with a general report from Elizabeth Larson. Speaking, Elizabeth spoke about the “digital” business intelligence - the new role of business intelligence in the digital world. Thus, Elizabeth repeated the main idea voiced in the opening report of the conference - the main role in creating a digital world without borders is played by the people who create it.
Comparing this conference with similar events for analysts held in the CIS, in which we also take part, I want to talk about the difference between them. The European conference is smaller, entirely devoted to one topic, so the master class and reports are within the same topic. If the topic is interesting, then participation in the conference allows you to quickly dive into the topic, learn about its various aspects, discuss your issues with other participants and argue with speakers.
If the topic is uninteresting, then you can learn how European speakers present their material. Firstly, they use vivid, but understandable to all examples and analogies. In addition to the report from BMW and Google Car, one of the speakers used European mythology to describe the most terrible projects in the life of an analyst.
This technique allows you to simply talk about the complex, choose the right level of abstraction, not give out any details about the customer, project and budget, but at the same time convey your experience to the audience.
Secondly, the speakers interact a lot with the public: enter into dialogue, argue, object, agree. They are experimenting with the presentation of the material (one of the speakers was dancing!) And are ready for the unexpected. For example, talking about the fact that the client would rather choose a product with a large number of features, the speaker suggested that one of the participants choose between two laser pointers. She refused both options, and he replied: “ And you will have such clients too. But they can change their minds, do not be discouraged . "
Compared to other conferences for analysts in the CIS countries, the European conference had a significantly greater focus on the strategic vision of the profession, fewer applied topics, and among the participants there were fewer functional and system analysts who work closely with development and testing teams and accompany projects from requirements analysis to post-release support. This difference leads to the fact that the level of material supply is quite abstract. After the conference, you need to analyze and understand how to adapt and apply the acquired knowledge in daily work. Obviously, Design Thinking is very suitable for participating in hackathons, but it is not immediately clear how to apply it to design tasks, where all decisions must comply with a coherent architecture. Nevertheless, after listening to all these reports, we got the idea to talk about how our large distributed team works within the framework of Scaled Agile.
To be continued…
I, Kristina Egorova, and my colleagues, Olya Odintsova and Polina Peresada, decided to tell you about our experience of participating in international conferences, as well as about how we decided to speak at one of them.
We decided to divide the article into two parts. In the first, we will tell you what impressed us in the reports at the 1st European Business Analysis Day 2018 conference in Frankfurt and how we decided to make a presentation for next year.
')
And in the second - about his report at the 2nd European Business Analysis Day.
So…
Why we decided to attend the conference
In February 2018, the organizers announced the 1st st European Business Analysis Day conference in Frankfurt, and we decided to take the opportunity to listen to the reports of European and American colleagues. Why? Firstly, Christoph Omig, our colleague from the Frankfurt division of Deutsche Bank, who is involved in ATM software projects, participated in the conference. Secondly, Richard Larson and Elizabeth Larson , co-authors of BABOK, PMBOK and PMI, spoke at the conference. Thirdly, several speakers combined their work in IT with research and teaching at European universities. Such reports attract us because the goal of any research is to develop new scientific knowledge, and therefore scientific reports are more interesting and deeper than ordinary reports on the difficulties of a particular project and how to overcome them.
Design thinking
The conference was held May 17-18, 2018 under the slogan “A Future Without Borders In A Digital World”. On the first day of the conference, a workshop on Design Thinking was held, and on the second day, reports were presented in the areas of “Agile Analysis”, “Customer Experience” and “Business Processes”. We arrived for two days: and to pass a master class, and listen to reports.
The workshop began with an introduction to Design Thinking. The host explained that Design Thinking is one of the most popular frameworks in the field of innovation management, because it offers a structured process that can be used to solve a wide variety of business tasks. For example, to develop innovative products or processes that have no analogues on the market. Another example of the application of Design Thinking is the development of new products or processes to solve complex, difficult to formulate problems, such as creating a mobile application for blind and poorly seeing people on older phone models.
Design Thinking consists of six main steps:
- Understand - the stage of familiarization, when the team seeks to get as much knowledge about the problem as possible, discuss the latest news on the problem, share personal experience
- Observe is the stage of deeper research, when observations or interviews are conducted to understand the feelings, movements and actions of people. At this stage, a person is created - this is a generalized description of a typical future product user.
- Synthesis - the stage of processing the acquired knowledge and focusing on the problem, as a result of which a specific problem is formulated to solve
- Ideation - the stage of generation and selection of ideas for solving the problem
- Prototyping - creating a prototype based on the chosen idea
- Test - prototype testing phase, receiving feedback
Each stage uses its own tools - for example, checklists for interviews or templates for creating a portrait of a typical user of a product. As it turned out, the most difficult part in Design Thinking is putting the tools into practice, so the organizers of the master class found an interesting task for training. As part of this task, we were asked to think about which processes in the hotel can be automated and which cannot, because a living person must be involved in them.
“ Tell me ,” the hotel manager asked us, “is an employee needed at the reception in the modern world, or can you just put a kiosk that will check your reservation and give out keys for the room?” What about room service? With conferences ? ”
To answer these questions, we were divided into 4 groups of 8-10 people, and each group had an experienced trainer who explained what should be done at the next stage, what tools to use and what mistakes to avoid. For example, a typical mistake of many teams at the stages of collecting information is to immediately think about solution options and their possible shortcomings, skipping the stages of synthesis, generating ideas and creating a prototype. As a rule, this happens because on ordinary IT projects we immediately begin to solve the task. As for innovative projects, this error leads to the fact that the team may miss some of the potentially interesting ideas, focusing on those solutions that already exist on the market.
At the second stage, we had the opportunity to talk with the hotel manager, with the guests, and even observe the work of various hotel departments. As a result, each group described a “persona” - a typical hotel guest, with his interests and expectations from modern hotels. It was interesting to compare our results with those of other teams and take into account the details that we did not think about. The master class ended with the fact that all teams developed a prototype application for the hotel, received feedback from the hotel manager and discussed their practical experience in design thinking.
Customer Experience: BMW vs. Google Car
The second day of the conference began with an introductory report by Helen Prels, head of the charitable organization “Managers Without Borders”. Helen talked about how her organization’s employees share knowledge and experience in economics and management where it is most needed. For example, in Africa there is no middle class, almost no small and medium-sized enterprises that provide jobs, and managers without borders lend a helping hand. Paradoxically, the conference on a digital world without borders began with a story not about digital technologies, but about people who try to ignore the boundaries.
After the opening report, parallel reports began in three areas: “Agile Analysis”, “Customer Experience” and “Business Processes”. Despite the division into directions, all the reports were related to the stated topic of the conference and revealed one or another aspect of it. For example, in the direction of Customer Experience, the technical prerequisites of digitalization were discussed, its impact on user experience and expectations , as well as on the IT industry and new requirements for analytic skills .
Among the reports in this direction, we most remember the report of Stefan Wagner on user experience . Stefan revealed the latest BMW model said that Germany was justifiably proud of its automotive industry. On the slide, the Google car model, which looks like a baby car, looked very funny next to BMW. But Stefan recalled that all BMW owners regularly spend 2-3 hours in traffic jams on their way home, and what they need at this time is the ability to use IT on the road for work or entertainment. And while BMW was improving the technical characteristics of cars, Google was working to improve the user experience. Thus, using a simple example, Stefan showed that in the digital world, simply providing good products and services is no longer enough - you need to analyze and create a good user experience.
Agile Analysis: challenge the status quo
In the direction of Agile Analysis, all attention was paid to analysis, the role of the analyst in Agile, adaptation of the Agile methodology and the associated difficulties. A report on how to challenge the status quo was especially helpful. The speaker emphasized that despite the development of technologies and approaches to project management, professionals are still afraid to go beyond the usual, test themselves, grow and develop. The main idea of ​​the report was formulated as follows: " From every challenge we make we have something to learn - otherwise we fail and last but not least nothing great is ever achieved by doing things the way they have always been done ."
Business processes and end of the conference
Regarding Business Processes, speakers shared best practices, talked about innovation management and requirements management at the portfolio level of projects . The conference ended with a general report from Elizabeth Larson. Speaking, Elizabeth spoke about the “digital” business intelligence - the new role of business intelligence in the digital world. Thus, Elizabeth repeated the main idea voiced in the opening report of the conference - the main role in creating a digital world without borders is played by the people who create it.
Mythology for describing terrible projects and dancing during a talk
Comparing this conference with similar events for analysts held in the CIS, in which we also take part, I want to talk about the difference between them. The European conference is smaller, entirely devoted to one topic, so the master class and reports are within the same topic. If the topic is interesting, then participation in the conference allows you to quickly dive into the topic, learn about its various aspects, discuss your issues with other participants and argue with speakers.
If the topic is uninteresting, then you can learn how European speakers present their material. Firstly, they use vivid, but understandable to all examples and analogies. In addition to the report from BMW and Google Car, one of the speakers used European mythology to describe the most terrible projects in the life of an analyst.
| A project on which new requirements are constantly appearing - cut off one head, two grow. | The project, at a glance at which the blood runs cold | A project in which the product owner wants “a little bit of everything” and the system turns into a terrifying chimera with the head of a lion and the body of a goat. |
| Hydra | Gorgon Medusa | Chimera |
This technique allows you to simply talk about the complex, choose the right level of abstraction, not give out any details about the customer, project and budget, but at the same time convey your experience to the audience.
Secondly, the speakers interact a lot with the public: enter into dialogue, argue, object, agree. They are experimenting with the presentation of the material (one of the speakers was dancing!) And are ready for the unexpected. For example, talking about the fact that the client would rather choose a product with a large number of features, the speaker suggested that one of the participants choose between two laser pointers. She refused both options, and he replied: “ And you will have such clients too. But they can change their minds, do not be discouraged . "
What is the conference unique about?
Compared to other conferences for analysts in the CIS countries, the European conference had a significantly greater focus on the strategic vision of the profession, fewer applied topics, and among the participants there were fewer functional and system analysts who work closely with development and testing teams and accompany projects from requirements analysis to post-release support. This difference leads to the fact that the level of material supply is quite abstract. After the conference, you need to analyze and understand how to adapt and apply the acquired knowledge in daily work. Obviously, Design Thinking is very suitable for participating in hackathons, but it is not immediately clear how to apply it to design tasks, where all decisions must comply with a coherent architecture. Nevertheless, after listening to all these reports, we got the idea to talk about how our large distributed team works within the framework of Scaled Agile.
To be continued…
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/461895/
All Articles