Month: April 2018

In my current organization, I’ve often wondered about how new technologies are evaluated, and by whom. Admittedly, in my role as a Business Analyst, I’m a bit removed from the process. But I’ve seen many examples of products that I wonder how someone could have missed what seems to me a big red flag.

For these reasons, I appreciated the Betsy Burton’s article on justifying investments in emerging technologies. Here she speaks to it as an actual process driven by a business case. In this business case would be the SWOT analysis detailing the pros and cons and risks and rewards of pursuing evaluations of emerging technologies, as it applies to the organizational strategy. The business case would also include analysis of market forces, and impact to current processes.

While I very much agree with the article in theory, I do wonder about it in practical terms. My experience with business cases is they can take many months before they’re delivered to Executive Teams. By this time, an emerging technology could have moved on without the organization, or been supplanted by some other product. I would like to see how this approach might apply in a more agile mindset (such as I discussed in post 2).

Sources:

Burton, B. (2011) Toolkit Best Practice: Seven Factors to Evaluate When Justifying Investments in Emerging Technologies. Gartner. February.

I love this diagram from this week’s discussion on how EA can facilitate innovation. Particularly as I consider it in the context of agile processes.

(Figure 1 – Fusco, D. “Lesson 7: Evaluating Emerging Technologies, Innovations, & Trends”. )

For quite awhile now, I’ve been trying to wrap my head around how to align the EA practice with agile processes. To my way of thinking, EA practitioners can spend so much time documenting a current and a future state that the rest of the organization has passed them by. What I see in this model is an attempt to describe how EA can evaluate trends and embrace agility at the same time. This appears to be done through building proofs of concept and prototypes in rapid iterations during the evaluation process, rather than waiting until the future state is fully defined. This appears to also allow EA to be the strategy driver in the organization, thus proving the value of EA.

Sources:

For those of us who have spent our careers in the corporate world, the office workspace conjures up a mindless maze of 4′ x 4′ cubicles. Cavernous spaces with row upon row of dimly lit box, with heads hunched over, each person hoping no one notices them that day and they can work in relative isolation. But then along comes “Agile” and “Scrum” and “Lean” processes, where team togetherness is not only encouraged, but has become the norm. And the beloved maze is no longer conducive to ways of getting work done.

Now, I love my cubicle (e.g. personal) space as much as the next person. It took me a long time to get my own cube and I like to make the most of it. But the more I work on an agile team, the more I see how restrictive my cubicle has become. I’ve noticed it especially with team, which hasn’t embraced the degree of collaboration required by Scrum. It has reached a point where some of the team members refuse to meet together until all changes have been fully defined. Otherwise, they feel they’re brought into discussions too soon. This has meant that design happens in a vacuum with no input from the rest of the team, which is both lonely for myself as the Business Analyst, and completely the opposite of what is intended by AGILE.

Having been trying to deal with these opposing mindsets for awhile now, the article “Rethink Workplace for Innovation and Growth” really leaped out at me. The article describes offices with open floor plans – no cubes, no walls, and no siloes. At first glance, for an introvert like myself, this isn’t remotely appealing to me. But the more I thought about it in regards to my own situation, I see the wisdom in it. I’ve noticed over this last few years that Agile teams require mature and open communication. However, many of my colleagues are loathe to engage in creative and productive discussion. This often results in open hostility, or just the opposite, passive communication (behaving in person, but then running off and tattling to bosses). I’m beginning to think that as much as I like my personal space, the only way to succeed with Agile, and allow innovative ideas to flourish is the open office space. It would literally force the team to be together in the same space.

What about you – what do you think of open office spaces? What are the pros and the cons? Do you believe them to be more innovative and creative?

Sources:

https://bizwest.com/rethink-workplace-growth/

#agileworkspace