​​TODAY or again waiting for MONDAY?🤔

Especially for those who need motivation, IT company Andersen announces Sport Marathon🏃‍♂️

Five winners and five great gifts.

🔥 The winner will become an owner of an innovative Ninebot electric scooter.

🔥 2-5 places will get Thule brand bags.

In order to take part, all you have to do is 2 small steps:
1️⃣ Be subscribed to Andersen Instagram account⤵️
https://www.instagram.com/andersencompany

2️⃣ Post in your Instagram stories a photo or video report of how you perform the sporty tasks👌

We are actively diving now into the cardio week 🏃
Details about #AndersenSportMarathon can be found below👇

https://www.instagram.com/andersencompany

Let's go!🔥

Who do the same?🤣
#BAmeme

​​Some interesting news for this week🔅

📎Amazon's Ring has provided doorbell footage to police without owners' consent 11 times so far this year https://edition.cnn.com/2022/07/14/tech/amazon-ring-police-footage/index.html

📎Facebook users may soon be able to create multiple profiles under their accounts https://edition.cnn.com/2022/07/14/tech/meta-facebook-multiple-profiles/index.html

📎Netflix Changes Tack With Marketing Spree for $200 Million Film https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-07-15/netflix-changes-tack-with-marketing-spree-for-200-million-film?srnd=technology-vp

Have a great weekend! 💛

Nice article about the integration of AI and Big Data for digital transformation 👉
https://www.modernanalyst.com/Resources/Articles/tabid/115/ID/6088/The-Integration-Of-AI-and-Big-Data-For-Digital-Transformation.aspx

​​Andersen invites all Business Analysts to the Andersen Talks evening that will be held on the 28th of July. We will discuss new trends and chat in a relaxed atmosphere in our office. Each guest will receive a present from the company. The special guest of our evening is Ilona Kedracka – an experienced Product Manager and Blogger at poczatkujaca.pl. Also, you will enjoy speeches from our Business/System Analysts Uladzimir Fedarau and Vitali Birchanka. Business Analysis Andersen Talks is the best party that will bring together a community of professionals and like-minded people in Krakow. You will be able to exchange experiences and discuss your pains and problems, as well as brag about your successes! Do you miss face-to-face communication with colleagues? Then you definitely need to visit us. And we will take care of cold beer and the most delicious pizza in Krakow. Register to personally visit the event: https://lnkd.in/eGEhjSmg Register for online broadcast: https://lnkd.in/eWcKJChQ

​​This week we will publish a series of articles about BA’s work in the Presale phase

Involving Business Analysts in the Presale phase is becoming a common thing nowadays. It has been noted that the processing of incoming requests with BA’s engagement makes possible the revealing of the clients’ hidden expectations and make more precise estimation of the project. In this regard, it is necessary to discuss the particularities of the BA’s activity on the following issues:
📎the differences in the BA’s work on Presale in a product and outsourcing companies
📎possible artifacts of the Presale phase
📎working on Presale with various input data

What is Presale?
In general, Presale is a set of presale activities carried out by an IT service provider before signing a contract. At this stage the client and the service provider are trying to understand how they can meet mutual expectations to strike a deal on the most favorable terms for both parties.
In other words, it is important for the IT company to sell our proposal! To do this, the company takes certain steps aimed to investigating the request of the potential customer, giving the most advantageous offer for him and reducing the risks of incorrect (underestimated or overestimated) price for the work that will be needed.

Role of BA in Presale
Today, most of IT companies involve a BA to work in the Presale phase, where the analyst acts as a mediator for the customer, sales managers and the technical team. The task of the BA in this phase is to understand the customer's need, explain it to the technical team, determine the expected scope of the solution, explain it to the customer and approve the agreed scope, and help the team correctly evaluate the expected solution.

It is important to understand that the work of the BA is only part of the Presale phase, which can be described as the following algorithm:
📌The company receives the RFx (RFP, RFI, RFQ)
📌Sales managers analyze the RFx
📌BA analyzes the RFx
📌BA meets with the customer to identify needs (optional)
📌BA describes the solution (in collaboration with the team)
📌BA meets with the customer to present the solution (optional)
📌The estimates the approved solution
📌Sales managers prepare the commercial offer

Stay tuned to find out about BA’s tasks in product and outsourcing companies ⭐️

​​We are now on Facebook too!
It is possible that in a new place it is more convenient for someone to read various articles☺️
We plan to duplicate materials.
Join via link https://www.facebook.com/BAunity

​​Today we continue topic BA’s work in the Presale phase

BA’s tasks in product and outsourcing companies
The scope of work of a business analyst in the Presale depends on the type of customer. It can be a large company with well-established processes or a startup with a high level of uncertainty and flexibility. The difference of BA’s working approaches in product and outsourcing companies is also worth mentioning. Both cases has their own nuances, but in general, the list of BA tasks is the following:

Product company:
● Study the RFx
● Analyze of the compliance of the existing product with the customer's request
● Communicate with the customer in order to determine the importance of the missing functions in the product (optional)
● Define the project’s scope and describe the missing functions
● Estimate the effort of BA on the project
● Take part in the preparation of commercial proposal (optional)
● Take part in the presentation of a commercial offer to the customer (optional).
At this stage, the BA demonstrate to a potential customer the expertise and readiness to implement an existing solution in the shortest possible terms with maximum efficiency.

Outsourcing company:
● Study RFx
● Analyze the business processes and existing solutions of the customer, existing competitors, or search for similar solutions on the market
● Communicate with the customer in order to find out additional information (optional)
● Determine the scope of the project and a high-level denoscription of the solution
● Estimate the effort of BA on the project
● Take part in the preparation of commercial proposal (optional)
● Take part in the presentation of a commercial offer to the customer (optional)

Artifacts
The work of the BA in the Presale phase is aimed on creating clear artifacts for the technical team to estimate the amount of their work on the project. The most common deliverables are:
● Check-list with a denoscription of the customer's request
● Draft document on the vision and scope of the solution (Vision and Scope document)
● Feature List
● Architecture of the solution
● Prototypes of application interfaces
● Estimation of the BA’s effort in the Discovery phase (if planned)

In the nextt episode we will discuss artifacts in more detail⭐️

​​Next episode of article "BA’s work in the Presale phase"
Today we will discuss Artifacts😎

The work of the BA in the Presale phase is aimed on creating clear artifacts for the technical team to estimate the amount of their work on the project. The most common deliverables are:
● Check-list with a denoscription of the customer's request
● Draft document on the vision and scope of the solution (Vision and Scope document)
● Feature List
● Architecture of the solution
● Prototypes of application interfaces
● Estimation of the BA’s effort in the Discovery phase (if planned)

Check list
Defining the scope of the project. We are trying to find out more about the customer’s idea with the help of general questions, for example:
● What are we going to develop?
● What problem will the solution be solving?
● What are the goals and criteria for the success of the project?
● Who are our competitors and what successful analogues are known?
● Who will be using new system? What classes (roles) of users can be identified? What is their difference?
● How is the process going now? What is the main workflow?
● What are the advantages of the current process, what are the disadvantages? What needs to be improved/changed?
● What is the scope of the first version of the project? What are the main features that should be implemented?
● What technologies are planned to be used?
● What will the developed solution have to be integrated with?

Draft of the Vision and Scope document
A brief denoscription of what will and will not be done during the development. It is necessary to highlight critical functions (minimum viable product, MVP) and the functions that can be postponed to subsequent releases. We can also specify the context of the solution being developed (background for developing the solution, problems to be solved with it, goals and success criteria, business and market needs, risks), as well as project priorities.

Feature List
Definition of the list of main functions with their denoscription. An example list structure:
● Requirement ID
● Function name
● Denoscription of requirement
● Assumptions
● Questions to the customer.

Solution architecture
The fundamental organization of a system, embodied in its elements, their relationships with one another and with the environment, and the principles that guide its design and evolution. In this artefact we present an exemplary model of the architecture of the proposed solution, describing our vision of the possible solution. It is also necessary to indicate the assumed non-functional requirements (availability, fault tolerance, scalability, etc.) within the framework of the proposed model.

Application Interface Prototypes
Top-level prototypes or user interface mock-ups for each of the planned roles. That’s how we can approve a general concept for the main features, available for the users within the system.

Evaluation of BA performance in the Discovery phase
Prepared according to the company's template. We indicate the time costs of the BA, taking into account the artifacts planned for provision and communication between the BA and the customer.

Next day we will finish this fascinating topic. Stay tuned⭐️

​​Finally!
The last part of article "BA’s work in the Presale phase"

Input data
Depending on the inputs provided by the customer, we can choose the approach to the work of the BA in Presale phase. Let’s discuss the main possible cases:

A working solution with full design documentation and well-defined improvements
The best option for BA. We’ll need only to review an existing documentation and estimate new features. A list of functions with a denoscription is also being prepared. BA answers the questions from the team during estimation. In this particular case an additional communication with the customer may not be required. Output: feature list with estimation.

Working solution without documentation
The BA performs reverse engineering activities with the solution, estimates new functions, prepares a list of functions with a denoscription. We answers to the team's questions during the estimation on our own or request communication with the customer.
Output: follow-up from a meeting / call from the customer, feature list with estimation.

Mock-ups/prototypes without documentation
The BA investigates the presented prototypes, identifies the main functions, prepares their list of features with a denoscription. We answers to the team's questions during the estimation on our own or request communication with the customer.
Output: follow-up from a meeting / call from the customer (if any), feature list with estimation

Documentation
The BA examines the presented documentation, forms a list of questions, creates a draft of feature list, parses the draft of feature list with the team, collects questions. We clarify all questions during the communication with the customer, composes a final feature list.
Output: feature list with estimation, a list of questions with customer answers.

Idea
The BA asks the questions to the customer according to the checklist and processes the received information. A high-level feature list is composed and estimated with the team. If necessary, the communication with the client is requested several times.
Output: checklist with the customer's answers, high-level feature list with estimation.

That’s all we’d like to tell about the role of BA in the Presale phase.
Please, fell free to contact us if something needs an additional discussion⭐️

The winner is the topic about discovery😎
Let’s start.

So what is the Product discovery phase? In simple words, the Discovery phase is a part of the planning phase from PMBOK. It is strictly required to create a product roadmap and to make budget cost estimations.
The Discovery phase usually results in
Vision & Scope
Design Concept
Architecture Vision
Sometimes discovery phase can even result in avoiding spending millions on a product that is not worth it.
So let’s get a deeper understanding of what is a Discovery phase and what it consists of.


Product Discovery Phase Benefits

So let’s return to our skyscraper example. Just imagine you are building a skyscraper and when the 50-th floor is ready, you suddenly understand that you have forgotten about one additional entrance just because your plan has not been detailed enough?
Well, OK, in this case, you really can do nothing, and in software development, you actually can add one additional entry. But there is no such thing as a wonderland, it is going to cost the product team way more time and money than it might cost in case this entrance had been included in the preliminary plan.
The other problem is time to market, which is deadly important to any startup product.
Of course, the Agile approach to software development is the best way of managing product development, but in some cases, it can be quite dangerous. A lot of products fail because it is very easy to dive deep into details or fall into scope creep when all features seem to be so important. Agile is good, but don’t forget about clear and precise vision! Without that, time, effort and money are going to be lost.

So one of the main goals of any Discovery phase is to create such a vision and align the whole team with it.

#Discovery

Let’s continue topic Discovery😎

Product Discovery Phase Challenges

So the Discovery phase is very useful, but it is also one of the toughest periods of any product's life.
First of all, you should understand your clients and their needs. When starting a new product you should always remember the first rule of a product owner: You are not your customer!
That means that everything should be tested. It is just like in science - everything you think your client wants is not a fact, it is just a hypothesis to test.
The second problem is creating the right ideas, and not missing anything important.
Identifying customers' problems is not easy itself, but it is just the beginning of the journey as at least 80% of success lies in the details of implementation.
And the third difficulty lies in discarding a lot of ideas that you like.The good thing is that you will be able to return to some of them later when your product will already be successful in the market. But at first, the product team must concentrate on just MVP scope to provide Customers with a “just enough” solution that will help them to deal with a problem that is important to them. And the Discovery phase is precisely the right time when you should understand the scope of your future MVP.

Product Discovery Steps

📎Understand your Customers, Market, and their key problems
You should start with a deep understanding of potential product Users and their problems which can be solved by using the product.
It is a strong starting point and even at this stage sometimes the whole product vision can be changed.
The key deliverable of the stage is User personas which are developed and included in the Vision and Scope document.

📎 Testing problems
Here we return to the main idea of hypothesis testing for the first time.
Cust dev methodology is far beyond this article's scope, but the main idea behind this is that your vision of potential customers' problems and their importance for customers is just a hypothesis that should be checked.
At the Customer discovery stage (as it is called in Cust Dev) you don’t propose solutions, but just ask your potential customers if they really do have problems you think they have and are they ready to pay for solving them.
The key deliverable at this phase is a product backlog which consists of user stories that are really important to your potential customers.
But sometimes this step can change the whole concept or even cause the discarding of the product idea.
At this stage, your potential customers help you in answering the following question: “What exactly are we going to create and Why?”

In the next episode we continue discussing other discovery steps⭐️

#Discovery

Let’s finish to discuss Discovery steps

📎 Proposing a solution
When we already know what you are going to build, you can start thinking about HOW should it be implemented. Two types of modeling should be done:
1. Functional
a. Use cases
b. Process diagrams
2. Object
a. Internal objects
b. Border objects
i. User interfaces
ii. Integrations

But don’t be afraid, at this stage we are doing just high-level modeling without diving deep into details. Our goal is to create “just enough” prototypes that will help us to explain to your potential customers how the product is going to work so that we will be able to test it.

📎 Testing solution
Now it is time to return to potential customers one more time! This time - with prototypes.
Testing solution (or Customer validation as it is called in Cust Dev methodology) includes testing your first prototypes with potential users.
In the discovery phase, we usually avoid writing even a line of code. Prototypes on this stage can even look like screens drawn on napkins, but usually, it is more serious prototypes created in InVision, Adobe XD or other similar tools.
And of course, it is an iterative process.

At this stage, it is very important to stop on time. When the concept is good enough the time comes to move further. You will always be able to further improve it when the product is already on market.

📎 Vision detailing and preliminary plan creation
My congratulations! Finally, you know WHAT you are going to create and HOW it is going to work.
So now the time has come to detail your vision and create a plan.
A good plan consists of
📌Vision and scope
📌Design concept
📌Technology stack
📌Architecture vision
📌Story map
📌Roadmap
📌Time and Budget estimates
📌Risk mitigation plan

Of course it should not be a detailed plan. It is just required to align the product team, detail MVP scope, and plan time-to-market. There is a lot of work to be done at the following stages, but at least, as the result of the discovery phase, you:
📍Can be sure that the product is worth doing
📍Have a clear vision of how is it going to look like
📍Have an understanding of how much time and money the product development is going to take.

👉Conclusion
As you can see, the discovery phase is one of the most important stages of any product lifecycle. Its main purposes are mitigating risks, shortening the time to market period, and saving a lot of time, nerve cells, and money.

#Discovery

​​Scope creep and how to avoid it

Scope creep, also known as kitchen sink syndrome, is an issue of the uncontrolled changes or characteristics that had not been taken into account from the beginning of a project and are intended to be added to it.
Even if those changes are small, they can cause the project to take longer than planned and, therefore, be more expensive than originally stated.

👉Why it happens?

📎Lack of understanding: It can occur on the client or vendor’s side, when the stipulated agreements are not fully understood before the project begins.

📎No plan: By presenting your client with an outline of how the work will be carried out, you can avoid last-minute changes and save time by identifying what has been missed earlier.

📎Gold plating: This happens when the team adds features that the client did not request or that were not previously discussed.

👉How to avoid it?

📎Document everything.
There is nothing better than having everything written:
📌Documenting can protect both parties that the agreed requirements are met without missing something.
📌Provide transparent outlined plan and define project scope clear to you and the other stakeholders in the project.

📎Don't hesitate to ask.
In fact, this must be on both sides, since it is vital that you clearly know what the client's requirements are and that both agree on how it will be carried out.
Сommunication must be constant, clear and allow collaborative work. Therefore milestones will be planned wich will help to optimize the project as it progresses.

📎All changes have a price.
Make sure that the customer and the team takes this into account. Any, even a very small change, at first glance, may lead to extra costs and negatively affect project success.
To avoid constant and haphazard changes establish the change control process. Ask the requester to follow the process to suggest changes. And the most important don’t forget to review those requests with project participants to decide if it's worth changing the scope of the project

​​The SWOT analysis is a widely used tool to determine the four most determining drivers of a company, a brand, a product or service or a campaign, among others.
These 4 drivers are: strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats.

With this analysis, it will be possible to identify the internal and external aspects that have the most impact, so that there is a clear vision that allows the development of future strategies to mitigate the risks and strengthen the positive aspects.

The SWOT analysis must be implemented at the beginning of a strategic planning process to have the most relevant and important aspects that indicate an approach to strategies to be applied. In a second phase, it is important to validate whether the factors indicated have changed in order to measure the effectiveness of the actions applied.

👉What should I take into account to carry out a SWOT analysis?

📌The template to be used to indicate the content for each of the forces is contemplated by a table divided into 4 boxes as follows:
📎Strengths
📎Opportunities
📎Weaknesses
📎Threats

📌Strengths
Place the internal factors of the organization, the product, the service, the brand or any other element to be analyzed. Here we answer question “what we do well?”.

📌Weaknesses.
In this box, point out the limitations of the existing processes, it can vary from the reduction of monetary funds to capacity deficiencies.

📌Opportunities.
Part, where we must identify areas where we have not ventured, alliances that have not been made but that have enough potential to become strengths.

📌Threats
Factors that cannot be directly controlled by you or your organization and that present themselves as obstacles.

Remember that when you build your SWOT analysis, point out everything in the corresponding boxes. Avoid abstract concepts and capture the information clearly enough to allow you to subsequently develop strategies to deal with it and achieve the objectives that are set.