Stick to the plan or re-plan on the fly?

First of all, sorry for the lack of updates, but this thing called work seems to have been occupying a fair bit of my time recently, but now I'm back.

For this post, the inspiration actually came from the department to which I am currently allocated, which have been working with improving meeting efficiency. One point is the preparation of a meeting/workshop, which among other things requires the preparation of an agenda, topics to be discussed etc. Usually it is good meeting etiquette to stick to the agenda, make sure that there is time for all parts of the agenda and so forth. These are all sound priciples, but...

I think everyone knows the dilemma, stick to the plan or go of in another direction? It occurs daily to all of us, whether we were just on our way to the grocery store and "accidentally" stepped into our favorite clothing store, or we were on our way home, and decided to take another route to avoid traffic even though it might be a longer drive. (I know, I know. I promised, no more traffic metaphors!)

In the world of business analysis, it is not uncommon that a meeting gets "high-jacked" by someone with a different agenda, and the question is then how do we handle this? The answer is of course a clear cut: Well, it depends...

To keep it simple, I see three basic outcomes of our decision:

1: We fend of the high-jacking attempt and return the originally proposed agenda, but not being pirates, we also make a decision on how to handle the issues brought up as the alternative agenda.

2: We declare a ceasefire, ending the current meeting/workshop and convene at a later point in time to discuss the new situation.

3: We declare us beaten by the high-jacking and change our agenda to accommodate the new information.

No strategy is better than the other, per see, as they are highly situation dependent.

So how do we as the meeting leader/facilitator decide which strategy to use? I see four important parts which have to be taken into consideration.

A: Are the meeting participants the right ones to discuss and make decision on the new agenda?

B: Is the necessary information present, both with the meeting participants and are documents etc. to be discussed available ?

C: Am I as the meeting leader/facilitator prepared to/capable of changing the agenda?

D: Does the information in the "high-jacking" render the current agenda useless?

Based on this we can make a decision:

In order to change the current agenda, we need to be able to answer yes to A, B and C. Otherwise we cant continue the meeting with a new agenda. If we answer yes to D we only have option 2 left.

If we answer no to A, B or C, we can choose between options 1 and 2. Here question D becomes the tie-breaker. If we answer yes to D, we should end the current meeting and convene at a later point in time when we have the necessary information or attendants.

I have tried to illustrate it in the figure below:

While question A, B and D are quantifiable, question C is tricky and a point where the meeting leader has to be honest with him-/herself and the other participants.

As the meeting leader it is hard to announce that you are not capable of continuing the meeting, even though the necessary people and information is present. I do however think it is better to make the decision to postpone the meeting rather than continuing with a meeting where we are unsure of the outcome because we don't now whereto or how to steer our ship.

Continuing without a captain can cause worse results than dropping the anchor and make sure we have the right position and direction.

From BA/BD to Bsomething

My apologies for the lack of new posts, this thing they call work, seems to take of a lot of my spare time these days :-]

Usually our finest mission as a Business Analyst / Business Developer is to facilitate a solution that creates value for our business or our customers, hopefully both.

Therefor I find it frustrating to have a task where the deadline is determined by outside factors, usually legislation and what we have develop only gives very little or no value at all anyone. Or rather not what we have to develop, but what the deadline allows us to develop. The Business Areas usually have plenty of good ideas on how e.g. new legislation can be used to give value either to the customers or to the company internally, but these cannot be put into practice within the time allowed.

Where do I as a business analyst find my motivation here? On one hand I have a business which of course has to be compliant with new legislation, but which also has some decent ideas on how to get some value out of something we have to do anyway. On the other hand I have a project with a fixed deadline and a limited amount of resources.

The clash of these two worlds results in me spending most of my time finding minimal solutions and telling the business that we cannot deliver what they would like, at least not within the allowed time frame.
The only point of value I can find in this, is that hopefully the company will be compliant with the legislation, thus avoiding penalties and generally bad publicity.

This is somehow just not enough, as a business analyst or business developer I see myself working with the business to find new potential and new ways of creating value to both the business and the customers. How do I find the motivation to keep doing as good a job on the compliance task as on any other development task?

For once I don't have the answer, but I'll take any suggestions.

The post was originally intended to end here...

But as usual something shows up when you least expect it, a small glimpse of hope in a day that didn't look to good from the beginning of it, so maybe I have at least a part of the answer anyway.

I think one trick is to remember to celebrate the small successes. If you cannot yet see the value of the whole project or task, at least remeber to celebrate your personal successes. This will reinforce you in that you are indeed doing a good job, even if you can fit your results into the greater scheme of things yet.