​​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.

Nice article about Product Backlog Refinement
https://www.scrum.org/resources/blog/product-backlog-refinement-how-succeed-scrum-team

Today we will start fascinating topic "Top 5 Product Discovery Principles"🤓

So Discovery phase is inevitable in every project in case it really aims for success.
It is the very starting point of a product, and almost all roads are opened, but be careful: results of the discovery phase are going to have a dramatic effect during the whole product life-cycle and may determine its success or complete failure.
So it is very important to conduct the discovery phase properly.
The biggest possible mistake is trying to sit and write down the full product denoscription all by yourself without attracting appropriate specialists and conversing with potential customers and users.
No matter how genius you are, no one can do it alone.

Product Discovery Principles to Follow

⭐️Use standardized approach
Discovery is a phase with maximum uncertainty and it is a perfect place and time for creativity. That is why it is very important to not forget about something critically important. So we strongly recommend having a plan and using document templates, which will help you to ensure that you have not forgotten about something important.

⭐️Don’t dive too deep into details
The Discovery phase should not last long.
It should not be longer than 6 weeks even for huge projects. Diving into details is like swimming in a swimming pool with crocodiles - they are going to drag you into the depths and you will surely miss a lot of important things!
So during the Discovery phase, the product team should concentrate only on vision and scope. It is true both for business and technology issues. Diving too deep into details is counterproductive as it takes too much time and decisions made are still going to be reconsidered a lot of times in later stages of the product life cycle.

⭐️No is way more important than Yes
Starting a new Product is so inspiring! Such a huge bunch of ideas! There is always a big temptation to build a perfect product that should cure all diseases and make users' lives easier than ever. It is easy to lose your concentration and answer Yes to every idea that comes to your mind. At the end of the day, saying Yes is so much easier than saying No.
It is easy to lose connection with cruel market reality or design a Frankenstein which will be too complicated to use. So it is very important to be able to say No to even your favorite ideas! The truth is that only 1 of every 10 ideas is going to work.

The good thing is that you will be able to return to them later when the product is already in production and brings you profit.

Tomorrow we will continue this topic💛

#Discovery

Today we will continue fascinating topic "Top 5 Product Discovery Principles"🤓

The next Product Discovery Principles to Follow

⭐️Prototype everything
Users don’t know everything. iPhone could never happen case Apple would only ask potential customers about what they wanted. If everyone could imagine your idea, it won’t be unique and potentially successful! Remember that users can only say yes or no to products that they can see and feel.
So every Idea should be prototyped and tested on real users - this is the only way to find out if it is going to work.
But don’t waste too much time on these prototypes! A napkin sketch is going to be just enough for the beginning - most of them are going to be reworked in any case. And after a napkin sketch is tested and approved, it is a good idea to ask a designer to prepare a clickable high-quality prototype without even writing a line of code.
And don’t forget testing!

⭐️ Concentrate on MVP
It is impossible to create a perfect product in just one go. So during the discovery phase, a project team should concentrate on one or two most critical users' problems and think about which way it can be solved in the easiest and fastest way to create an MVP and shorten the product’s way to market.
There is no need to cover everything, and by the way, it is almost impossible to do it appropriately.

Do you want to add some other principles❓

#Discovery

Our topic for today is "Product Discovery Tools"🛠
The modern world provides us with a lot of different tools to make the creative process more productive. Let me list just a few apps that we are using during the discovery phases:
📎Confluence for documentation.
📎Figma for interfaces design
📎Miro for ideating and product design
📎diagrams.net for schemas (aka draw.io)
📎InVision for creating live prototypes
But actually, it does not matter what tools you are going to use. Far more important is what artifacts you are going to create.

♦️Here are just the TOP 3 most important artifacts for almost any product discovery.

User personas
“User personas” is an instrument whose importance is really hard to overestimate.
It helps you to better understand your users, their needs, pains, experience with similar or competing products, and buying behavior.
This instrument also helps to understand who is going to become your main Users and prioritize the whole software development.

Customer journey map
Customer journey map shows Customer journey and their touching points with the product or service to achieve their goals.
It not only helps to better understand your customer and optimize their user experience, but also helps to understand who is going to be responsible for customer service at different stages of this journey, and in which way you can measure your success rates.

Fishbone diagrams and User story maps
Fishbone diagrams, Mind maps, and User story maps strongly help to elicit, visually organize and prioritize all features and underlying user requirements, to connect them with key Customer pains and form MVP scope.

#Discovery

Tips & Tricks to facilitate Sprint Planning 😎
https://www.scrum.org/resources/blog/tips-tricks-facilitate-sprint-planning

​​Let's talk about so important topic as GDPR🤓

👉The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is the toughest privacy and security law in the world.
The purpose of GDPR is to provide clarity and consistency for the protection of personal information.

What you need to know about GDPR
📎 GDPR may be an EU mandate, but it also impacts every country
📎 GDPR requirements are applied to all kinds of personal data
📎 GDPR compliance requires to respects basic rights regarding personal data and data privacy
📎 You have to designate a representative in the EU
📎 There are hefty penalties for non-compliance with GDPR
📎 GDPR requires you to switch from an "opt-out" approach of data collection and data processing to an "opt-in" approach.
📎 GDPR compliance requires companies to clearly define their data privacy policies and make them easily accessible
📎 GDPR requirements set time limits for breach notifications
📎 GDPR requirements give data subjects the right to ask for their personal information
📎 According to GDPR requirements it may be necessary to hire a data protection officer
📎 Cloud-based storage is not free from following GDPR
📎 Human right are paramount, even at the expense of the user experience

What types of privacy data does the GDPR protect?
🔺Basic identity information such as name, address and ID numbers
🔺Web data such as location, IP address, cookie data and RFID tags
🔺Health and genetic data
🔺Biometric data
🔺Racial or ethnic data
🔺Political opinions
🔺Sexual orientation

In the next episode we will continue this topic.
Stay tuned⭐️

​​Let's continue talks about as GDPR🤓

Which companies does the GDPR affect?
Any company that stores or processes personal information about EU citizens within and outside the EU. Specific criteria for companies required to comply are:
➖A presence in an EU country.
➖No presence in the EU, but it processes personal data of European residents.
➖More than 250 employees.
➖Fewer than 250 employees but its data-processing impacts the rights and freedoms of data subjects, is not occasional, or includes certain types of sensitive personal data.

Checklist

📌Be aware of the data you are collecting
📌Appoint a DPO (Data Protection Officer) to oversee the data protection strategy
📌Create a GDPR diary (Date Register) to record how an organization is practicing GDPR
📌Assess data collection requirements
📌Immediately report data breaches
📌Be clear about data collection motives
📌Verify the age of all users consenting to data processing
📌Include a double opt-in for all new email list sign-ups
📌Keep your Privacy Policy updated
📌Regularly assess all third-party risks

​​Are you a Business Analyst? Let’s talk about EBM, strategic planning, and glasses of beer as a measure of project success!
We’d like to invite you to Andersen's meetup in Krakow, where Senior Business Analysts and industry segment managers, who collected the best practices from their work in three comprehensive reports, will share their experiences with you. Along with valuable information, we guarantee subtle networking, pizza, and just a company of good people.
Are you in Krakow? Offline registration: https://lnkd.in/dRcfX_qz
Online registration: https://lnkd.in/dirDhbHp
And below is some more information about our speakers and their presentations!
1. Dzmitry Rusak (Business Analyst and Product Owner at Andersen)
Topic: Improve Product Value with EBM.
What is EBM (Evidence-Based Management)? EBM value within a project. EBM metrics. Feature prioritization based on EBM.
2. Paweł Sidorowicz (Team Lead and Business Analyst at Craftware)
Topic: "Do You Want to Grab Some Beer after Work?" as an Ultimate Measure of Success in Any Project.
You can use any framework, notation, or library, but if you don't build and sustain strong business relationships with stakeholders, you will never achieve success.
3. Filip Kopij (Business Analyst and Product Owner at Cytiva)
Topic: How to Harness Your Backlog Using Strategic Planning
How to prioritize a growing backlog? How to apply strategic planning to agile work? How to make sure you and your team follow the organization's strategic goals? I'll answer these and other questions during the session.
Seems useful, right? And it really is! Register using the link above and set a reminder in your calendar! See you!

​​Let’s imagine that you have come up with an excellent business idea for a brand new product. You realize that the idea is more like your own hypothesis than a proven fact. That’s why you start asking yourself crucial questions shaping the future of a successful product: “Is there a real market need for the product?” “Who is the target audience?” “What are the key functionalities?” In addition, you want to have the ability to improve the product iteration by iteration. Here comes the concept of a minimum viable product, or MVP, which is of great help to business owners.
What the benefits of MVP development are?
MVP is a version of a product that has just enough features so that it can be tested by the first customers who provide feedback for future changes. What exact benefits does MVP offer a business?
📎Finding a market fit
MVP gives a company an opportunity to check in real life if there is any good demand for their future product. There is no sense in putting tons of effort into creating something that presents no interest at all.
📎Defining essential functionality
Every product sovles some problem that users have. Hence, your project goals and the needs of its target audience define what key features it must include to bring the most value to your business.
📎Raising investment
MVP software development doesn’t take long, however, the product perfectly reflects your project goals, contains main product features, and can be used to collect user feedback. Thus, startup leaders use them to present their ideas to investors and get the funding for their projects.
📎Optimizing resources
When you build an MVP, you focus all efforts on the features that users really need, and can calculate in detail their cost and time to develop. Therefore, it’s stongly recommended to go for an MVP to minimize product expenses and time to market.

In the next episode we will continue this topic.
Stay tuned⭐️

​​Kindly remind about some fascinating event⭐️

Are you a Business Analyst? Let’s talk about EBM, strategic planning, and glasses of beer as a measure of project success!
We’d like to invite you to Andersen's meetup in Krakow, where Senior Business Analysts and industry segment managers, who collected the best practices from their work in three comprehensive reports, will share their experiences with you. Along with valuable information, we guarantee subtle networking, pizza, and just a company of good people.
Are you in Krakow? Offline registration: https://lnkd.in/dRcfX_qz
Online registration: https://lnkd.in/dirDhbHp
And below is some more information about our speakers and their presentations!
1. Dzmitry Rusak (Business Analyst and Product Owner at Andersen)
Topic: Improve Product Value with EBM.
What is EBM (Evidence-Based Management)? EBM value within a project. EBM metrics. Feature prioritization based on EBM.
2. Paweł Sidorowicz (Team Lead and Business Analyst at Craftware)
Topic: "Do You Want to Grab Some Beer after Work?" as an Ultimate Measure of Success in Any Project.
You can use any framework, notation, or library, but if you don't build and sustain strong business relationships with stakeholders, you will never achieve success.
3. Filip Kopij (Business Analyst and Product Owner at Cytiva)
Topic: How to Harness Your Backlog Using Strategic Planning
How to prioritize a growing backlog? How to apply strategic planning to agile work? How to make sure you and your team follow the organization's strategic goals? I'll answer these and other questions during the session.
Seems useful, right? And it really is! Register using the link above and set a reminder in your calendar! See you!

​​Let's continue topic MVP⭐️

What the challenges of MVP development are
Having taken into account the benefits that MVP offers companies, let's take a look at the challenges that they face while developing it.

Poor market research
How can you be sure that the target audience will find your product useful? In-depth market research conducted by professional Business Analysts prior to the MVP development process and also after it’s completed and you receive user feedback will help. Insufficient research, in turn, will result in vague functionality, inabitily to define what software has already been introduced to the market by your competitors, who your target audience is, what functionality is needed to meet their needs, and how to adjust your solution so that it would be a success. Thus, inadequate market research will ultimately result in the product failure.

Inexperienced development team
Sometimes companies opt for hiring low-skilled teams to build an MVP which might seem like a cost-effective options. Subsequently, they start looking for a top-notch team to finalize the development and release the final version of software. This leads to a situation when the product quality is tremendously affected entailing negative user feedback. Lack of experience, proper planning, and control over the development process creates chaos on a project. Thus, when you hire any team member, verify that they have a proven experience in MVP software development.

Superfluity of features
It is strongly recommended to avoid adding extra features, that don’t cover basic user needs, to an MVP. When you’re trying to add as many nice-to-have features to your product as possible, the development will cost you more and take substantially more time. Any additional features that aren’t critical for software proper functioning and solving the main problem of users can be implemented later when upgrading your soltuon.

Strive for perfection
When it comes to MVP development, startups spend more time than needed to create a perfect solution continuosly improving its features. However, users don’t need this perfection if the feature doesn’t have any value for them. MVP isn’t meant to be perfect, its aim is to provide a business with insights to develop the final product.

Inappropriate time for the launch
It is of paramount importance to launch an MVP at the right moment since first impressions last. If the launch is too early, when the core features aren’t ready yet, users will be disappointed and will cease turning to your app. If the launch is too late, when the competitors’ products are already on the market, attracting user attention to your software will be challenging. The solution to this problem is to start establishing contacts with your potential users prior to the product launch to keep them updated.

Documenting Software Requirements: How to Do It Right?
Global digitalization is leading to a drastic increase in the number of software companies offering their services. However, statistically, 17% of IT projects fail, which leads to irreparable consequences for businesses, 7% of projects exceed their deadlines, and nearly half of them overrun their budget.
Analyzing business requirements increases the chances of finishing the project on time by 75% and allows business owners to save up to half of the project’s budget.

Three reasons why you should document the requirements
Below are the most important reasons why analyzing business requirements and carefully documenting them during Project Discovery is crucial for a project.

Better project traceability
Thanks to the documents created by a Business Analyst, the team and stakeholders are on the same page regarding the developmental and testing processes. Everybody who is involved in the project knows exactly what needs to be done and what the project goals, scope, challenges, functional and non-functional requirements, and budget are.
The information both on specific tasks and on the general direction of work is always available. This allows the customer to stay up to date with the development process and even direct it. More importantly, structuring the requirements and storing them in one place make the project’s details clear to stakeholders, and therefore, the resulting product will meet their expectations to the fullest extent.

Efficient troubleshooting
Scope creep refers to the expansion of a project’s functionality that is beyond control. As a result, the development can substantially exceed the planned budget and timelines. This issue arises when the customers come up with many different ideas that haven’t been analyzed and prioritized by a dedicated specialist. This issue is found in about half of all projects, which means that only half of them are implemented on budget and within the timelines.
Meanwhile, carefully prepared business analysis documentation guarantees that, if your large-scale project expands, that can be easily controlled, and the developmental process won’t turn into a disaster due to multiple changes and gold plating.

Consistency of requirements
Keeping all the Business Analyst’s documents in one place ensures that the requirements can be restored even in case of data loss or data leakage. Such issues can occur when a team member leaves the project, the requirements become outdated, or if different sources contain contradictory information.
When the requirements are carefully documented, you as the customer can be sure that every idea, insight, and suggestion that was made is taken into account, analyzed, structured, documented, and updated by the team of experts.

In the next episode we will know what artifacts in software engineering are and how they help you reduce project costs⭐️

#Discovery

What artifacts in software engineering are and how they help you reduce project costs
Artifacts are items created in the course of project development that don’t pertain to the product itself but help the team work on it. Business Analysts are responsible for the preparation of the following software engineering artifacts.

Meeting agenda
Denoscription. Agenda is an artifact prepared before every meeting of the shareholders with the team and the meetings of the team members with each other. The goal of this artifact is to outline the key features of the forthcoming meeting. These meetings are conducted in order to elicit and specify the requirements, discuss important issues, and agree on a single vision for the product.
The meeting agenda includes the following information:
📎general information about the meeting, i.e. its topic, time, location, and duration
📎the number of participants and their positions
📎issues to be discussed
📎expected results
📎additional materials, e.g. preparatory documents
Value. The agenda is extremely helpful in terms of making the meetings more productive as everybody knows the discussion plan and prepares for the event in advance. This artifact in software engineering saves the shareholders’ time allowing them to concentrate on the most important issues, meaning that more time will be spent on delivering value to the project.
Average preparation time: from thirty minutes to an hour.

A follow-up email
Denoscription. This document summarizes the results of a meeting. It’s usually prepared in the format of an email which is compiled and sent to all the meeting participants after the meeting. Its purpose is to record the negotiation results and establish contact between everybody who was in the meeting.
Value. The follow-up email provides a clear vision of the development, including a recap of agreed items, proposed solutions, and received feedback. For the customer, it is a proven way to ensure that their position was rightly understood and the designed features will meet their expectations.
Average preparation time: from thirty minutes to an hour.

In the next episode we will continue looking through the artifacts in software. Stay tuned ⭐️

#Discovery

​​Let's continue to discuss BA/SA artifacts in software engineering 🤓

🔶Vision & Scope document
Denoscription. Different types of documents from a Business Analyst are required depending on the project’s specific needs. Each of the following documents covers a particular area of the project/product and has a different scope.
The Vision & Scope document consists of the following two parts:
🔸The vision part is a high-level denoscription of a solution that needs to be delivered. This concept identifies current issues and the ways to solve them, business opportunities, and concomitant risks, and includes the metrics that will help you successfully reach your goals.
🔸The scope part specifies the amount of work to be done in order to achieve the goals. It lists project deliverables in the form of features developed in each release, basic assumptions, dependencies, the industry rules, and other limitations imposed on software.

Value. The Vision & Scope document helps all the stakeholders have the same vision of the project goals and a clear understanding of what needs to be done to achieve the needed outcomes. It allows the project participants to avoid misunderstandings early in the software development life cycle that could otherwise result in a costly and time-consuming rework.

Average preparation time: from two to four weeks.

🔶Software Requirements Specification
Denoscription. This extensive Business Analyst’s artifact contains detailed product information, including the methodologies that will be applied, the technology stack, functional and non-functional requirements, etc.

Value. SRS serves as a detailed plan for custom software development containing all the necessary information about the product’s functionality, features, and limitations. It helps both the customer and the IT vendor be on the same page regarding these important issues. The document contains precise requirements assessment and precedes the architecture and design stage. Such thorough planning allows the customer to avoid a costly rework and obtain accurate information as to the development cost, timelines, and risks.

Average preparation time: from four to eight weeks.

🔶User stories, user story maps, and use cases
Denoscription. A user story describes a software feature from a user's perspective and serves as a basis for collecting and documenting user requirements. It describes user types, needs, and expectations so that the developers can deliver a user-oriented product that brings value to end-users.
User stories are normally visualized in the form of user story maps. The latter allows the team to prioritize user stories and match them with the corresponding functionality.
A use case is a written denoscription of a sequence of simple steps which the users take to perform the necessary actions. It outlines the system's behavior from a user’s point of view.

Value. All of the aforementioned software engineering artifacts allow Business Analysts to implement a user-driven approach to software design and ensure that the developed product satisfies the needs of end-users, thus, increasing the product’s popularity in the market.

Average preparation time: a user story/a use case — less than a day, a user story map — up to five days.

​​☝️It has been said that a picture is worth a thousand words. For people, it is much easier to comprehend abstract information by looking at it, visualizing it in their mind, and thus, seeing the whole picture.
According to Statista, the value of the global data visualization market is projected to reach $7.76 billion in 2023, growing by about 9% yearly. This fact alone proves data visualization tools are an effective means for providing better perception and cognition of information.

Three reasons why you should visualize the requirements
A rule of thumb states that the more complicated software architecture is, the more detailed and structured the visualization of every part of the system should be. Functional requirements in business analysis that are presented graphically communicate some types of information more efficiently than text. For example, it’s easier to describe a system’s data flow with diagrams and the interface details with wireframes and prototypes, rather than writing dozens of text documents for this purpose.
Below are several benefits that proper visualization of requirements brings to a project:

🔶A holistic view of the system’s functionality
Indivisible software requirements contained in a Business Analyst’s documents that describe the system’s design, the testing process, and work management are called atomic requirements. Along with the undeniable benefits that well-documented requirements bring to a project they have a serious drawback. Namely, they prevent shareholders from embracing the system as a whole and understanding the designed business logic and software functionality clearly. All that customers see is a broad to-do list with no idea how everything is going to be implemented.
The requirements visualized by a Business Analyst allow customers to see the scale and complexity of a product and its functionality. This is extremely important for accurate estimation of budget and timelines. Additionally, the product’s graphic representation marks the first step in transforming rough requirements into a well-designed solution with a detailed plan for its implementation.

🔶Requirements verification
By visualizing requirements, Business Analysts are able to identify errors, missing requirements, and lacking coverage of the designed functionality with use cases.
There always exists a strong temptation to start the development process right after the requirements are elicited and documented. However, in the early stages of a project lifecycle, the concept that is being designed is full of flaws and inaccuracies due to the lack of user and customer feedback. In addition, the development team might not understand the product goals clearly.
The aim of visualizing the Business Analyst’s functional requirements is to construct a completed piece of business/user flow with all possible scenarios involved. This helps a Business Analyst identify unaccounted aspects of the functionality, ensure logical consistency of the designed model and the exhaustive nature of the documentation where all the requirements and use cases are described.

🔶Quick feedback from stakeholders
According to the Agile approach toward custom software development, the customer and the development team need to interact closely so that efficient cooperation can be ensured and a valuable product can thus be delivered. Agile projects necessitate constant communication between the project members, frequent demo meetings, elicitation of valuable insights, and gathering user feedback.
Visualized documents created by a Business Analyst are easily reviewed by the customer who can give feedback quickly. Thus, the product is updated according to new guidelines. As a result, projects develop in a flexible manner, new solutions and approaches are implemented, and shareholders can even be involved in the designing process which adds to the collaboration.

⭐️In the next episode we will find out what artifacts in software development do Business Analysts create by means of visualization