Strategy horizon

1. BA role on strategy horizon

According to the Agile Extension to the Be Book Guide, the purpose of analysis at the strategy horizon is to inform decisions regarding the organization's business goals. Okay, so what does that mean? Value is created at the strategy horizon through understanding and achieving business goals. Business goals change. Consumer tastes change. Competitors create new disruptive technologies. Regulations may change. The context may change. So, at the strategy horizon, the priority of business goals is constantly redefined and emerging opportunities are constantly reassessed and evaluated. HLBs enable organisations to rapidly and effectively adapt their business goals to changing contexts and quickly redeploy their resources. The main strategic challenge is to make decisions based on UpToDate data. On the strategic horizon, the information that informs these decisions is frequently overwhelming, obscure, uncertain, and even contradictory. In rapidly changing contexts, there is always a risk that strategic decisions may be made based on the wrong information. Furthermore, the lack of effective communication within the stakeholder groups makes this risk even bigger. When the required information data exists somewhere in the business, it may be difficult to locate. It's just no one knows where to look for it. An Agel business analyst responds to these changes. They do it by identifying business goals, assessing the priority of business goals, and evaluating emergent opportunities effectively. They enable quick and effective decisionmaking processes in a complex and rapidly changing context.

2. Business goals

Talking about Strategic Horizon, I need to do a light touch on some key definitions here. So, first of all, it is a business need. A business need is a problem or opportunity of strategic or tactical importance to be addressed. Okay, from the definition of business need, we can go one level down to the definition of business goal. A business goal, according to the Biba Guide,is a state or condition that an organisation is seeking to establish and maintain,usually expressed qualitatively rather than quantitatively. So what does that mean? It means that a business might have a need. A need can be expressed as a problem that the business needs to solve or an opportunity that the business wants to chase. From that statement of need, we can go into the statement of goal, which is an inspiration for where the business wants to get certain activities done. A goal is a visualisation of the state of the world after the opportunity is addressed or the problem is solved. Typically, those girls are more aspirational and they are less defined in terms of direct figures or KPIs. And this brings us to the third definition, which is ultimately the same important.It is the definition of a business objective. An objective is a measurable result that indicates a business goal has been achieved. So if you think about it, holistically, business as a whole may have needs. Those needs are the definitions of problems to be solved or opportunities to be chased. These problems and opportunities are defined in terms of goals that the business wants to achieve. Achieving the goals will mean addressing the issues and opportunities, and objectives will provide a measurement framework that will tell the business that the goals are achieved. So the majority of time spent by business analysts on Strategic Horizon will be around understanding the business goals and making sure that the goals that are defined by the business are still addressing the underlying business needs and not some imaginary needs that someone may have come up with. And they are measured with good related objectives. It is a part of your job to monitor a whole set of internal and external factors that may affect these goals. So let's review these factors. The first and foremost factors affecting businessgoals are the changes to customer expectations. Obviously, when individual teams are working on their projects, they notice changes in customer behaviour and they adjust to these changes. They, however, do not always see the full picture. Furthermore, findings from one project may not be visible to teams working on other business initiatives. That is why it is the goal of business analysis at Strategic Horizon to make sure customer trends, customer behavior, and customer sentiment are analysed as a whole, consistently and holistically. And all the findings and insights are shared across teams to make sure all the initiatives and the scope of the business understand what is going on in the customers' world and get notified if the expectations change. Changes in the business's external environment are another source of concern for business goals. The thing is, organisations do not exist on their own. They exist within an organisational context. The environment that they work in, the market,the industry, the competition, and all of these things constantly change and evolve. Economic and social conditions are changing. New technologies are emerging at a rapid rate, and they affect all aspects of our lives, including business. So it is a job of a business analyst to constantly monitor those changes in the world and formulate new hypotheses based on those changes and challenge the old assumptions based on the new knowledge that you gain through this process. However, it is not only the external world that changes. Organizations keep naturally evolving over time, and as a result of this, they need to reallocate resources and potentially set new goals that will be more aligned with the new structure of the business. Agile business analysts would provide timely and useful information and insights about internal and external changes to decision makers in an ever-changing organisational context and environment. The next one is learning from the frontline. The teams who operate on initiative and delivery horizons are constantly making decisions and discoveries. Some of this information may impact the goals and objectives of the business. It may also impact the way business wants to allocate resources. And the reason for that is that an agile approach has a major economic driver behind it. It is the ability of the organisation to quickly understand which initiatives they need to stop because the initiative has either delivered all the value it was expected to deliver or failed to deliver the value expected. It is also the ability of the organisation to fund more and more because of the potential new opportunities uncovered by the initiative. So a business analyst in this environment synthesises information from all of these initiatives and helps the business make the decisions around which initiatives need more attention and for what reason. We have finally got to the last but not least, a factor that affects business goals. With constant change occurring within and beyond the organization, new threats and opportunities constantly appear and fade. They need to be analysed by the business analysts to uncover when there is a need for a new initiative, when the resources, scope, or success criteria for an existing project need to be reassessed and changed, or when there is a need to cancel an existing project.

Techniques on strategy horizon

1. Problem scenario

I understand that, so far, you've been listening to a lot of dry theory. It is about time to get your hands dirty and start applying that theory to some real-life scenarios and use some tools and techniques that you can find helpful in your day-to-day situations at work. So the next couple of videos will be very practice-oriented and we'll keep doing some practical examples throughout the whole course, applying the knowledge that we've learned on different horizons of agile analysis, starting with the strategic horizon. Of course, all of these practical lessons will be exploring a situation which is imaginary, but it's very close to real life. And the whole idea of all of these practical lessons will be to try and apply the knowledge and skills that we gain in this course to this situation and try to solve a real life problem using Agile business analysis techniques. But before we can start, let's explore what the situation is and what the problem is that we're trying to solve. So all the practical lessons in this course will be based on the following scenario. Imagine a farm that is located in a remote area in a mountain country. This farm requires a consistent power supply to function properly. The farmers need to pay their electricity bills on time to maintain this connection. The bills are received by wirepost and the only way to pay for these bills is to physically go to the nearest office of the electricity company and pay these bills in cash. So now the problem that they have is that, being remote,they have to spend long hours travelling to just get to the office, pay for the bill and then travel back. This is the problem that we will be solving throughout this course as we learn new and improved Agile analysis techniques.

2. Miro boards

Before we start solving the problem, let me introduce you to a new tool. The tool that I'm going to use throughout the whole course to showcase all the techniques that we are talking about In a nutshell, it's an online version of the physical board that you would use during meetings to write things down or stick your posts on. Let's have a look. So let me show you this tool. The tool is called "Mirror." If you go to Mirror.com, you will see it. In order to start using this tool, you obviously need to register with your email address. You can see that I already have an account to register with. An account is free of charge. You don't have to pay for anything. However, the free version of the product has some limitations. For all these things that we are going to do in this course, the free version is more than enough. But if you really like the tool and you want to use some advanced features, you are more than welcome to purchase an advanced plan and enjoy the event benefit. So when we log into it, we will see all of our boards. But at the moment, I don't have any. So I'll just create a blank board. From here I click on this button and it'll start loading the board. When it loads, the first thing you see is a suggestion to choose from a template. It is a very powerful tool. We'll come back to it in a second. But for now, let me just click on this X. Sign here to start with a blank canvas. So when you open your first board, all you see is this infinite canvas that you can scroll. You can place objects onto this canvas. On the left hand side, there are all the controls to add objects to the board. I'll start with the simplest one with the sticky notes. So I can just place a note and write something. Note one, note two, and so on and so forth. I can move notes around. I can resize them if I want to. I can change some properties. For example, the font size or alignment doesn't really change much because I have a lot of text here, more stuff.I'll see the difference. I can change the color, I can edit the text, and I can do some other things. So basically, it's a very simple tool to add notes to the board and do some stuff to that.Move them around, group them,rename them, write things down. If I want to do something more advanced, I will start using other objects, not chatting out. For example, let's assume I have a to-do list and I want to keep track of all my tasks in one place. I'll create a figure like this. I'll add a title to my to-do list. Move it like this and then I will start adding my tasks to it. Task two and task three. So this is my to-do list. Then when I start picking these tasks and addressing them,I want to keep track of them and see which ones I haven't started working on yet, which ones are in progress, and which ones are already done. So I will select this programme column and I will duplicate it by clicking and hitting CTRL D on my keyboard. Now I will rename the column. And now I've got a very simple Canvan board where I can keep track of the progress through my To Do list. For example, my task 1 may be already done,my task 2 may be in progress, and my task three is still waiting to be done. Let's imagine I've got a new task, task four. And I know that this fourth task is somehow dependent on task two. So I want to visually show it. The way to do it is to link objects here on the Mirab board. You can link any objects with each other, which is very handy when you want to show some dependencies like this, or when you are drawing somediagrams, flowcharts, process maps, things like that. In this case, I may want to make a thread just to show that it's important and maybe dot it with it mold.So this is my dependency. Let's assume I have started working on task three and I've realised that I cannot actually finish it because it is blocked by some external factor. So I want to show it on my canvas that the task cannot be actioned. The way to do it is to place a little icon that will indicate visually that the task cannot be addressed. I go here, click on these three dots, which will open an interface to start working with apps and addons. There are quite a few of them available to install on your mirror. I encourage you to explore them in your time. But for now, I'll use this one. I can find her. And here I will search for the block icon. Let's say I've got this one. So just drag it on the canvas and give it some time to load and I will resize it. Now it will perfectly show me that this task cannot be actioned because it is blocked. So, as I cannot work on this task, I really want to move it back into the to-do column. But when I do it, you see what happens? Only the task moves, not the icon. That's not good. Let me undo this. So, I really want this icon to be attached to this task. So when I move the task, the icon gets moved as well. To do that, I select both of them and I group them. Now, as the two items are grouped, when I interact with one of them, the other one will follow. This is what happens, and that's exactly what I want to happen. Another little inconvenience that I may have here is that when I want to move an item, say this task, I may accidentally click on this title and move it instead. That's not what I want to do. So I want to find a way to make some of the elements non-actionable and non-editable. There is a way to do so. When I select an item, say I'll select this title and this column, I can lock them on the canvas. Simple lock. When an item is locked, it means I can no longer interact with it. When I try to do it, it behaves as if there is no item where I click. So if I want to edit it again, I need to click on it and I need to unlock it back. Unless I do it, I can no longer interact with them, which is exactly what I want for my background. So they can rest that I'm working with them. I will do the same for the two remaining columns. Now, I've got a very simple canonboard that I can interact with. You can add many other items to the board. For example, let's assume I'm not the only person working on this board. And I know that some of the team members don't know what Kenbin is or how to work with Canban. So I want to add a simple reference guide for them. And because I'm a lazy person, I don't want to write this guide myself, I just want to link to it. So let me just google for Canvan and see if there is anything valuable. Okay, this article from Wikipedia should be good enough. So I'll just copy the URL and I'll go back to my board. Now I paste it by clicking or hitting CTRL B, and it'll paste not just the URL, but a little preview of the page. When they log in, any person can see it, and when they click on it, they can actually go to the external link and read an article. So this is how you can reference other resources from the board. You can not only add URLs, you can also upload PDF files, images, and some other documents and they will be embedded on your board, which is very handy to keep all these things together. Now let me go back to my board and try something a little bit more advanced. You remember how when we first opened the board, it prompted us to select from a template? Let's go back to that interface again. When I click on Templates, I'll see the same window where I can select from existing templates. One of them is called Candy Framework. Let's explore what it is. I'm just adding it to the page and you see I've got the same canvas with backlog in progress and done columns. Well, this one was called to do inmycanvas, but it doesn't really matter. So it's very similar to the one that I created. But it is already created for you. You can use cards; type something in them. No, that didn't work. You can move them between citizens. You can also have different swim lanes here for different teams or different types of work. If you like, you can do some other things. For example, you can easily create columns or create new swim lanes for whatever you're doing. For each card, you can change the color. You can add tags like this. You can do pretty much the same thing. The only difference is that this one is already created for you. You don't need to set up the canvas yourself. It is already here; you just use it. Another really powerful capability of Mira is to link to existing task tracking tools such as Jira. So, for example, if you establish a connection with yourJira, you can use these bend boards as a visualisation of your backlogs, which is very nice because this view allows you to play around with them, group them together, present them to stakeholders, and then use your Giraworkloads to actually execute the tasks. That's a very popular way of doing it. At least the teams that I work with quite enjoy this feature, and they just like how easily they can convert the tasks from this view into actionable items in their Jira backlogs. Another power of this tool comes from its ability to enable collaboration. You can share your boards with others. They can log in at the same time as you. And you can work on these same boards together,seeing each other's characters, chatting in a little chat window, adding comments, moving things around altogether, as if you are working together in one room, although over the internet from different locations. So, to share a board, you just go to the Share button here to save it. First view the title. And then you can invite people via a link or by email. You can decide what you want people to do. You can add collaborators, you can edit, you can add people who can comment or check the people who can only view the board but not interact with the board.And then you copy this link and you can send it to people and that is done. When you are collaborating with others, you can use a whole bunch of other tools designed specifically for this collaboration. For example, you can add comments. They will appear like this. So when the comment is not active,it will appear just as a little icon. When I click on it, you see the full comment. You may change its color, and you may reply to the comments. So you can just chat under every comment until it is resolved. You can pin it to the board, which means it will not collapse when you're not interacting with it. You can do other things. Then there is a view to see all the comments on the board in one view. So you don't need to actually go through the whole board looking for these little icons. You can have another view to see all the comments. You can also live chat with people who are interacting with the board at the same time as you are, which can be handy when you're working with someone else at the same time and you're trying to achieve something together. You can also use Nero as a way to present your work. So, for example, if you want to present your candidate to other stakeholders, or if you want to present your evolution of a candidate from this first option to the second, more advanced option, you can do it from the board itself. You don't need to create a separate slide deck. And this is how you do it. There's a tool called Frame here. So when you frame something, you group all you do. Let me select the frame again and make sure I put in all the items that I want to get in that frame. So my first frame will show the first Canvan that I had. Then I'll add another frame that will show this link that we used. And then I will add another frame. This frame will group the newboards that I've got here. So now why do I use frames? Frames help group objects together semantically. And now I can use theseframes to click through the objects. So if I go here and I click on presentation mode, what it will do is allow me to click through my frames. So when I'm in a room with stakeholders, or when I'm sharing my screen and presenting this, I can stop explaining that this is how we started the process. This is the can bend that we had. Then we read a few articles, we added them here, and we learned about a new way of using can be done in the mirror. And then we'll go to this frame and we'll look at the actual new Canvan that we have created on this board. So when you are working with the board and you're placing some useful materials here, you can easily convert them into a presentation using these frames. So that's it that I wanted to show you as an introduction to mirror boards. Obviously, there's much more to explore if you really feel like it. But this overview should be enough for you to get familiar with the interface and understand what I am doing and what I am showing you in the Examples in the Future videos. Obviously, all the things that we are doing in this tool, you can do in any other software tool that lets you visualise objects, or you can do it easily on an actual physical board if you prefer to.

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