Leading with Benefits
Benefits First
An organization anticipates a custom software solution will streamline its business and make it more competitive. The executive sponsoring the development project asks the business analyst, “Why do we need business analysis?” The business analyst answers with one of the following factual statements:
Creating requirements, process maps, and solution models.
Determining your organization’s needs and ensuring the solution meets or exceeds them.
Analyzing your organization’s needs within the solution project’s scope.
Which answer means the most to the executive? Answer 1 outlines business analysis deliverables but says nothing about the business. The third answer refers to the organization as an analysis target and not much more. Answer 2 conveys the benefit of business analysis to the executive and the company - capturing needs into requirements and ensuring the solution meets them.
Introducing: Business Analysis
When an organization undertakes custom software development for the first time, management may not be familiar with business analysis. They want to know what it is and, more importantly, why they need it.
Some business analysts could combine answers 1 and 3 above, saying they analyze business needs and document requirements - the features of business analysis. However, the answer falls short of answering “why business analysis?”
Benefits-oriented analysts answer both the “what” and “why” questions: “Business analysis determines business needs and ensures the solution will meet or exceed them.” That’s sufficient for some managers, while others could drill down into the business analysis “features.” Leading with benefits makes the features more meaningful.
“No Time” for Benefits
Sometimes stakeholders look for ways to reduce development time and decide to skip business analysis. For example, management claims they already know what they need and propose “cutting out the middleman” by having users and domain experts work directly with the developers. The business analyst acknowledges it would save time if everyone involved spoke the same language. Business analysts learn the business and it domains to become fluent in their language.
Business analysts not only translate between business stakeholders and the development team, but they also probe for essential information. For example, a user assumes the team will create capabilities commonly used in their domain. Developers unfamiliar with the domain do not build them, leaving a gap rendering the solution unusable. Or a developer assumes a domain expert wants the solution to work one way, and the domain expert expects it to work another way. Business analysts ask questions to prevent gaps and misunderstandings like these.
Domain experts, users, and developers tend to focus on a solution’s features rather than the value it provides to users, management, and the organization. They run the risk of hacking together software with functional and quality gaps, as in the example above. Business analysis focuses on the solution’s benefits, ensuring it covers business needs as thoroughly as possible.
In another case, the stakeholders have already documented the organization’s needs and don’t want to spend more time on them. So business analysts put their curiosity into overdrive, analyzing the documents, creating requirements, and giving the development team a complete picture of the organization’s requirements. They only need business stakeholders to fill the gaps.
Business Analysis Gone Awry
An organization could have suffered from a solution that didn’t meet its needs. Management traced the problem to faulty analysis. As a result, they have a skeptical attitude toward business analysis.
In this case, business analysts should ask what went wrong when business analysis failed and how the organization recovered. Once they understand what happened, they reply with:
An acknowledgment of the issues
Business analysis benefits
An explanation of how they work to avoid failures
Placing business analysis benefits before how it works builds a stronger case for management acceptance and getting the solution right the first time.
Stick with the Benefits
Organizations expect value from a solution, and business analysis intends to deliver that value. Analysts who lead with its benefits motivate stakeholders to focus on the business and better articulate its needs. They communicate the solution's business impact to the development team, maintaining the relationship between each requirement and its value. Everyone wins when the team delivers a solution fulfilling the organization’s needs.
In some cases, management may not appreciate the value of business analysis and question whether a project needs it. In response, some business analysts may feel tempted to challenge managers with the downsides of insufficient or no business analysis. Perhaps they have a horror story where stakeholders skipped business analysis and did not get what they wanted.
It’s better to stay with the benefits of business analysis, focusing on the solution fulfilling the organization's needs from beginning to end.
Leading with benefits orients stakeholders and management to the purpose of business analysis - ensuring a solution will meet their needs.