Underlying Competencies - A Blog Series
Part Five - Interactive Skills
By Retta Witter, Senior Consultant, J. Geiger Consulting, Inc.
This week’s blog is number five in the series, Underlying Competencies, and will focus on Interactive Skills (International Institute of Business Analysis, 2015, pp. 207 - 211). The plan is for the series to culminate in an evening roundtable for attendees to discuss their thoughts and share ideas related to Underlying Competencies. If there are questions you have for the discussion or would like to participate, please email me or place them in the comments.
The Interactive Skills competency contains five core sub-competencies:
Facilitation & Negotiation
Conflict Resolution
Leadership & Influence
Teamwork
Teaching
“For many BAs, a common approach to requirements gathering is to moderate group discussions that enable participants to effectively articulate their thoughts and ideas.”
Facilitation & Negotiation & Conflict Resolution
These are competencies that go hand-and-hand so I think it makes sense to talk about them together. For many BAs, a common approach to requirements gathering is to moderate group discussions that enable participants to effectively articulate their thoughts and ideas. A capable BA will consider the audience, and guide participants along the path to attainment of expected outcomes. Many times, this will be done through guiding negotiation and sometimes even working through conflict (not my favorite part of the job). Some people are natural negotiators; I am not. That said, I’m excited at the prospects of growing my skills in this area.
Leadership & Influence
Do you like change? Do you like going through change? One of the most important aspects of a BA’s role as it pertains to Leadership & Influence is that of helping to reduce resistance to required changes. This is how we, as BAs, help turn a plan into actionable—and adoptable— items. BAs help define and communicate requirements to key stakeholders and are typically in the best position to exercise thought leadership within the decision-making process.
With my work on the pantry I loved that change, it was just a little painful at times along the way.
Addie!
Teamwork
The process of building teams is one of my favorite parts of the BA role. I was active in team sports in high school which no doubt has a part to play in that sentiment (fun fact: I think I still hold a track and field record there…or at least last I heard). Teamwork is key to almost every type of work one will perform as a BA. Great teamwork means more effective Leading & Influencing. It also means better Facilitation & Negotiation because building teamwork means building trust. What fun things do you do to help build teamwork? I like to get to know team members as people first, and make every effort to recall important information about them— like spouses’ names, cat-people vs. dog people, etc. Note: I am totally a dog person.
Teaching
BAs often find themselves teaching in a variety of ways including actively mentoring other BAs, or perhaps over the course of working with the business to identify opportunities for improving key processes. Long term, if a BA can effectively teach concepts, ideas and issues to stakeholders, more stakeholder engagement will ensue which will, in turn, lead to better project outcomes.
Teaching is a skill and takes some introspection and cultivating to do it effectively. I find that I do best working 1:1 with stakeholders (or at least operating within smaller groups).
How about you? Do you prefer to facilitate learning in a larger or smaller groups?
As a reminder, this series culminates in an evening roundtable event for attendees to discuss their thoughts and share knowledge around Underlying Competencies. If there are questions you have for the discussion or would like to participate, please email me or place them in the comments.
Webinar registration available here!
Stop by next week for Part 6: Tools & Technology!
Bibliography
International Institute of Business Analysis. (2015). BABOK A GUIDE TO THE BUSINESS ANALYSIS BODY OF KNOWLEDGE (Vol. V3). Toronto, Ontario, Canada.: IIBA