5 Top Mistakes Managers Make with Performance Measurement Programs for Business Analysts

1. 5 Top Mistakes
Management Makes
With BA Performance
Measurement Programs
(and How to Avoid Them)
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Adriana Beal - http://bealprojects.com - 7/15/2011

2. Slides from the presentation given as guest
speaker for the general meeting of the
IIBA Central Texas Austin Chapter in July 15,
2011.
(Notes added for stand-alone distribution.)
Adriana Beal - http://bealprojects.com - 7/15/2011

3. 1. Failing to identify performance
improvement objectives before
selecting your measures
Adriana Beal - http://bealprojects.com - 7/15/2011

4. Define your performance
improvement objectives first
In the children's book Alice in Wonderland, Alice
had no idea where to go. When she asks the
Cheshire cat which road she should take, the
magical cat gives her the helpful reminder to pin
down your destination first.
Adriana Beal - http://bealprojects.com - 7/15/2011

5. Define your performance
improvement objectives first
Always start from the concerns you have, and
future state you want to achieve before you
starting choosing metrics for your performance
measurement system.
Adriana Beal - http://bealprojects.com - 7/15/2011

6. An effective way of identifying appropriate performance
improvement objectives is to listen to your business and
technical stakeholders. Are there complaints about the
time it is taking to complete the requirements for new
projects? Do developers end up ignoring requirements
documents and relying on conversations with
stakeholders or on test plans to better understand
software requirements? Such issues are excellent
starting points for establishing good objectives for a
performance improvement program for your business
analysts.
Adriana Beal - http://bealprojects.com - 7/15/2011

7. 2. Succumbing
to the tyranny of
conformance
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@N00/4036051156/
Adriana Beal - http://bealprojects.com - 7/15/2011

8. Too much emphasis on adherence to documentation standards will
have individuals working toward this objective at the expense of
much more important goals. As a commenter pointed out in
this article from Bridging the Gap,
“If we have one set of measurements for everyone, then we will end
up asking some teams to produce documentation just so we can
measure it, and not because the documentation is needed for the
project! I have personally experienced this (unfortunately it has been
often in recent years), where I was REQUIRED to produce
documentation that was useless for the project, but had to exist so
that measurements could be made of my team’s effectiveness.”
Adriana Beal - http://bealprojects.com - 7/15/2011

9. Source: “The business analyst: The pivotal IT role of the future”. Hewlett-Packard, 4AA1-5102ENE, October 2007
Adriana Beal - http://bealprojects.com - 7/15/2011

10. Project sizing grid
Projects come in
all sizes
and shapes...
Adriana Beal - http://bealprojects.com - 7/15/2011

11. Metrics about compliance with requirements documentation
standards are rarely needed.
Managers should be focusing instead on fostering true
understanding of the necessary processes and policies by
means of training, coaching and mentoring.
When adherence to documentation is truly relevant for
performance improvement, this objective should be
measured against specific agreements, rather than
against a generic set of standards that may not be
applicable to all projects.
Adriana Beal - http://bealprojects.com - 7/15/2011

12. 3. Measuring “long work”
instead of “hard work”
http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2011/05/hard-work-vs-long-work.html
Adriana Beal - http://bealprojects.com - 7/15/2011

13. Measuring long work (e.g., total number of requirements, number of
documents produced, or hours worked) is much easier than measuring hard
work – the work that avoids the consequences of failing to identify the
correct business problem, or producing incomplete or ambiguous
requirements—such as building a software product that is not fit for purpose.
A business analyst who identifies a simpler solution for a design that has
become unnecessarily complex, reducing costs with development and
testing and increasing end-user satisfaction, will be providing more value
than another BA that is producing twice as many documents.
Measuring hard work instead of long work helps you prove to senior
management how business analysts create value for your organization.
Adriana Beal - http://bealprojects.com - 7/15/2011

14. 4. Using
performance
measurement
for motivating
or controlling
behavior
Photo by I'm George
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Adriana Beal - http://bealprojects.com - 7/15/2011

15. We all know the consequences of using performance measures
to punish or reward behavior: it tunnels employee vision,
reduces the urge to experiment, causes sub-optimization, and
leads to gaming, creative accounting, and fraud.
There is a much better use for an individual performance
measurement system: to help business analysts and their
managers scale successes, and in the case of failed
performance, go from “we have a problem” to “there is a
performance problem, and this part is caused by an inadequate
process, this by a competence gap, and this by lack of
management support for the BA work”.
Adriana Beal - http://bealprojects.com - 7/15/2011

16. 5. Forgetting to provide frequent
feedback to individual BAs
Adriana Beal - http://bealprojects.com - 7/15/2011

17. Purpose of feedback:
- Continue positive behavior
- Change/adjust ineffective behavior patterns
Many managers save feedback for their annual performance reviews, but to be
effective, feedback about individual performance must be frequent and consistent.
BAs and their managers should be having frequent discussions about current
performance levels and trends.
In effective feedback processes, business analysts learn what they need to do
differently to achieve the expected results, managers learn what type of guidance,
support and oversight the BA needs to get there, and everybody develops a clear
understanding of what must be done to solve problems and scale successes.
Adriana Beal - http://bealprojects.com - 7/15/2011

18. Final words
Instead of forgoing the benefits of individual
performance measurement just to avoid the misuse of
performance data, managers should be working on
eliminating the causes of dysfunctional performance
measurement initiatives by definining clear
improvement objectives, identifying the metrics
that matter most for these performance objetives,
and ensuring that metrics are used for learning and
improving, rather than for controlling or motivating
behavior.
Adriana Beal - http://bealprojects.com - 7/15/2011