Effective ITIL project leadership: Plan-Do-Check-Act

Effective ITIL project leadership: Plan-Do-Check-Act

The first step in the Plan-Do-Check-Act process is to have an executive address ITIL stakeholders at all project kick-off meetings.

This falls under the "Plan" and "Do" activities and also shows the team that the ITIL program has leadership support.

If a CIO or senior executive doesn't attend the kick-off meeting, project support is questioned and that immediately weakens the team and the leader's ability to direct the program.

Following the kick-off meeting, leaders execute the "Do" portion of the cycle by simply following the same process as the rest of their team.

When you talk about "Plan-Do-Check-Act" in ITIL, the "Do" really means that leaders must set the example and establish a culture where the senior executives follow the process like any other employee.

One CIO I have worked with took this a step further and communicated to the entire company how he followed the process. He did this after receiving an irate call from a senior executive who claimed the service desk was not giving him the priority he deserved.

After sharing the process and his own service desk requests with the executive, the CIO pinned the list on every local notice board and in the service desk operations room to give the technicians a tool for response when they were getting pressure to increase the priority of certain tickets.

Shared via AddThis

Change and Business Analysis

What makes a good and effective Business Analyst in these days of economic storms, tightened belts and changing political tides.

While strong abilities in communication, collaboration and analysis will always be the mainstays of strong business analysts, our changing technology environment is altering the world in which business analysts commonly work and therefore, their skills have to change in line with this and meet current business requirements.

While a Business Analyst's traditional skill set is still king, those decidedly non-technical leadership, communication and business-process understanding traits, the changes in software delivery methods have altered what business analysts need to offer right now.

The Rise of Agile Methodologies and Lean Concepts
It's the end of traditional software delivery as we know it, thanks to Agile and Lean. A recent survey found that 41 percent of respondents are using Agile techniques and 10 percent are exposed to Lean concepts.

Organisations are planning and implementing new, lighter-weight software delivery processes on a large scale, and this is largely changing the world of the business analysts. The BA's need to stay up to date with recent approaches and changes in methodologies, understand the subtle changes to their roles, and modify their practices accordingly.

Agile Approaches Change the Business Analyst Role
Requirements look very different in an Agile project than they do in a traditional waterfall endeavour. With Agile, the team typically describes requirements at a high level early on in the process and only elaborates on them when it's time to implement them.

The team uses different artifacts such as user stories, and the requirements definition process is much more collaborative and iterative.

Agile Methodologies

With an increase in the adoption of Agile methodologies inside businesses today, BAs need to understand what's changed and what's different in the methodologies so that they can help guide the transformation of their role and practices.

If their CIOs and business-unit leaders aren't already adapting the business analyst role to new software delivery methods and process changes, then the BAs might need to do it themselves.

Cross-Functional Knowledge

Business analysts need to obtain cross-functional knowledge and experience by being exposed to new technologies and different business units. Cross-training in project management, software development and quality assurance would help.

As with most roles in technology, it's never safe to rely on the skills you already possess. Effective business analysts are constantly seeking to improve their core skills and staying up to date with technology changes to add the most value to their organisation.