I am now into my third project taking on Business Analyst responsibilities. I came to a wonderful realization the other morning: I’m really happy!
The role of BA is relatively new to my company as we transition from being a small- to medium-sized company. We actually had a technology domain meeting last week wherein they acknowledged that the roles of Business Analyst, Development Manager and Quality Assurance Manager were all introduced in 2007. With the recent introduction of the role, some of the processes and responsonsibilities have yet to be worked out. One grey area is the relationship between an IA and a BA. I know I’ve stated before that I felt IA was where I wanted to end up. However, I’m very happy in the BA role at the moment. Part of my concern stemmed from the fact that I know I am strongly user-centered rather than business-centered. However, I do like being positioned in the “implementation” stage; I like seeing the concept come to life.

I’ve said it before: at LexisNexis in the UX department, we had the ability to set the look and feel and interaction design for all products. From a development standpoint, consistency helps in quality assurance, speed of delivery and cost effectiveness (I’ve heard that reusing a component three times will pay off the costs incurred in developing it in a reusable, modifiable fashion.. I have no idea where I heard that…), From a usability perspective, consistency makes a product easier and arguably more enjoyable to use. While variations can create a novel, engaging experience, if you make something too difficult for a user to use or learn, they will shy away.

I wanted to move into a position where I could help influence some of these decisions. Back to my old fascination with patterns: there are common tasks and goals users have, and patterns help to define how those goals may be met (on a conceptual level; patterns don’t speak to specific implementation details). In some places, that role is of a system architect - they would look across projects and identify general patterns. However, the application architect position at Resource is more about depth into a specific technology; I was looking for something that was more about breadth of projects. The development manager role seemed somewhat closer to what I wanted to get to in terms of overseeing multiple projects, but it was more about managing process or players. I’m not quite ready to pull my hand out of the project deliverables yet..

And then the BA role came up, and I feel this may be it. I’m into my third project and each one helps me to refine my view on how best to improve my own process and help guide requirements gathering and documentation to facilitate development. I’ve already seen some specific components (pagination) crop up again and again, and I feel that I can serve both our clients and our developers in being able to properly specify how these items should behave. Right now the IA is creating those specifications, but I feel that that’s an area where a best practice can be rolled into our specifications without too much added deliberation with every project.

So in short (ha!), I’m diggin my new role.

Lately at work I’ve been helping out with some light Scotts work. The Scotts Miracle-Gro Company is a huge client, with several different microsites and campaigns. The recent redesign of scotts.com (disclaimer: I only performed perfunctory copy changes for the redesign) reminded me of much of the work I did at LexisNexis: scotts.com was the equivalent of a flagship product like lexis.com or nexis.com. The challenge from a branding perspective is how to maintain a consistent look and feel for subsidiaries, while still allowing them to maintain their own identity. I’ve donned both a developer’s and a business analyst’s hat in looking at these projects, and it’s a good exercise to identify the opportunities for consistency as well as for variation. This was truly where we were going with our common UX initiatives at LexisNexis before I left. How do we enhance the usability of all the sites by introducing consistent functionality, while ensuring each site meets its specific target audience’s needs?

Before I left LexisNexis, I was the UX representative on the architectural advisory board and I sat on the brand spirit (branding and identity) committee. There, we had three flagships and literally hundreds of projects a year that had some level of association with at least one of the three. It was absolutely imperative that design or development decisions were not made in isolation. The User Experience department I was a part of held design reviews every week to push for consistent user interaction and design across our products.

Coming to Resource late last June, I was thrown into agency life. It’s quite different dealing with different clients, who are paying for the development of their own unique brand and user experience. While there are always benefits in developing code libraries of common components that can be reused, the nature of the challenges we dealt with in a huge beast of an application like lexis or nexis simply don’t compare.

It’s actually fun for me to look at Scotts and see those patterns and consistent elements. In developing one microsite, I’m stretching my “build for the future” muscles again in anticipating potential future additions. It’s interesting how I can build this into my work both as a developer (coding in anticipation of reuse), and as a business analyst (explicitly identifying requirements that have shown up elsewhere or may be of significance moving forward). At LexisNexis, some of these considerations (as well as others) would be made by the system architect or a portfolio manager, but those are roles we don’t particularly have at Resource, due to the nature of most of our client engagements.

It’s interesting that considerations into the creation of a robust, usable, expandable site occur throughout the design and development process. I guess I consider it the difference between creating a web site, or developing the architecture for a web application. You can make a web site to achieve a specific purpose, or you can create a framework that supports as-yet-unknown functionality.

This is why I once felt I wanted to get into architecture: rather than putting square pegs in square holes, I want to consider the fact that I may not know what pegs I’ll be given down the road. I hope that in the movement to BA or IA, I will also be able to anticipate these unknowns and ensure we continue to deliver engaging user experiences that are also robust, usable and extensible.

After long last, I finished listening to “microtrends”. It’s the sort of book I’ve always enjoyed; chock-full of interesting but seemingly useless facts. Did you know Bill Clinton, George Bush and Ross Perot were all left-handed? Or that Barack Obama and Halle Berry were both raised by their single white mothers?

How author Mark Penn seems able to justify the book’s length (the audiobook was 12 hours) is by pointing out the implications of these “microtrends”.

At my workplace (an interactive marketing agency), we talk of personalization and fostering online communities on a daily basis. Penn is right on track with this line of thinking, explicitly calling out the type of support that these various groups could benefit from in the online space.

Appealing to these various groups was addressed not only in the context of business getting to know their clients (Penn points out that young girls are greater consumers of electronics than young boys, yet stores like Best Buy and Radio Shack don’t appear to be appealing to that demographic), but also in politics. There is plenty of discussion given to the ever-important swing voters, in the U.S. as well as abroad.

I’ll admit that by trend 65 or so, I was anxious to finish the recording and move on (up next: punk marketing!), but the conclusion did wonderfully to tie things together. Just as the discovery of atoms allows us to explain the changes in solid matter, the recognition of these tiny microtrends can help explain changes and developments we see in society. Even the slightest variations may prove to have dramatic effects.

Just got a macbook pro and am experimenting with the WordPressDash dashboard widget-

Further thoughts on this book describing the evolution of 19 individuals from individual contributor to manager:

Chapter 2, “Reconciling Expectations”, speaks to the shift in priorities as the individuals got to understand their role and relationships with others.

“By the end of the third month, most managers were beginning to realize that being a manager was as much a position of dependence as of authority”.

I think that being willing to relinquish complete control over projects I’m involved in would be good for me regardless of whether or not I ever move into a supervisory position. I’ve spent the majority of my time as the only front-end developer on a team, so I was solely responsible for certain deliverables. Cultivating trust and faith in a team (of peers or of subordinates) would be a great skill to hone.

Chapters 3 and 4 were very, well, “management” focussed, which is not necessarily immediately relevant. Chapter 3 was entitled “Moving Toward a Managerial Identity”, which I don’t actually intend to do.. There was, however, some mention of balancing short and long term goals that was interesting from an organizational standpoint: realizing that there may not be one best path to action. My current supervisor has noted that I have a tendency to ask a question and expect a definitive answer. Things may not always be so straight-forward and black-and-white. Exercising authority is not about “knowing the right answer”.

“Recognizing that the managerial role required balancing fundamental tensions was one of the most difficult and important insights the managers made. They had come to understand that overload, ambiguity and conflict were inherent in the management role.They had to learn to live with imperfect solutions and with the knowledge that they could not be experts about everything.” - p.80

Part II: Developing Interpersonal Judgment

Chapter 4 on “Exercising Authority” was interesting from the standpoint that it spoke on how to cultivate respect and trust not through the title of “manager”, but through behavior. Simple people-management activities like taking the time to get to know someone as an individual or support them are what help establish positive, respectful relationships. This is obviously good information for someone looking to get into an advisory role without that title commanding respect. One theme I’ve noticed again and again through this book is really the focus on “people-skills”. This is not a book about project management, ensuring tasks get completed on time. It is about people management, ensuring people work together to support each other, AND ensure tasks get completed on time
That being said, it is noted that there is a difference between being respected, and being liked. The manager has to do what’s right, even if it means not being ‘a friend’.

Another area that I recognized that I have to work on personally is not taking criticisms or critiques personally (or as a threat to authority). That comes with confidence, or as stated in the book, “only by giving up the myth of the boss as expert and feeling more self-assured could they tolerate negative feedback”.

As I detailed in my last post, I am wanting to move out of my developer role. Even only a few weeks into taking on some Business Analyst duties, I’ve found the biggest challenge to be really taking off that developer hat that I swear I want to shed. I mentioned this to my manager, and he lent me “Becoming a Manager“, which he said would help me in this.

I’ve only made my way through the preface and the first chapter, but already the book has offered me plenty to think about. It’s helped me in looking at managers I know, both who’ve supervised me as well as others, and see where they’re coming from. Indeed, I can definitely see that the manager who lent me the book has read it!

The book (this is the 2nd edition) is based on interviews conducted with and around 19 new managers. It offered up the challenges they faced (those they recognized as well as those they did not). I was actually struck to read that the managers spoken with had served as individual contributors for around 8 years, as that’s the point I am at in my career. However, it is not to a supervisory role I am looking to move.

For that was one thing that was really called out in the first chapter, “Setting the Stage”. The new managers were asked to describe their primary duties as manager, as were their superiors, their subordinates and their peers. Despite the fact that the new managers had recently been individual contributors, their opinions as to their responsibilities were slightly different than those of their superiors. The book has an interesting table wherein the different duties of a manager as seen by these different groups is displayed. The managers saw themselves as ‘the boss’, ‘business leaders’, ’supervisors’, whereas subordinates considered them ‘team leaders’, ‘organizers’ and superiors considered them ‘team leaders’ and ‘administrators’. There was some overlap, but ultimately the roles were seen from the standpoint that would best suit the group perceiving them.

An interesting observation is that often new managers are promoted for their great work as individual contributors: it is often seen as a reward to advance. However, how a person self-identifies is fundamentally different as he enters the role of manager. I would argue that the qualities that make someone an outstanding programmer don’t necessarily lead them to being a good manager. The book also calls out that a high-performing individual contributor may have actually “depended less than the average [person] on their … manager for support and guidance” [26]. They may therefore be unaware of the aspect of the management role that is involved in encouraging and supporting subordinates.

As I mentioned, I’m not planning to move into a role that involves this supervisory aspect to it, but some of the other duties associated with the management role are very helpful to think about. There is some mention of the manager as “network builder” as opposed to “doer”. I think this suits me well, in terms of where I want to be. I am always eager to grow and learn, and I have definitely seen the merits in leveraging the insights and expertise of others. I’m proud of the network of incredibly talented and intelligent people I know, and while I do take pride in my personal accomplishments, I would just as soon work with others to further their achievements. In some of the BA work I’ve been doing, I’ve been glad to be able to communicate information between parties, rather than necessarily trying to jump right in and ‘fix it all’.

As I said, the book has offered me some guidance for myself professionally, and even one chapter in, I can say that I think this should be on the “must-have” list for new managers

More to come as I progress through the book…..

After 8 years of various “web-” jobs (from Web Director (Jagged) to Web Designer (Maxim) to Web Master (Youthone) back to Web Designer (Common Sense Solutions) to Web Technician (Franklin University) to Web Developer (LexisNexis) to Senior Web Developer (LexisNexis) and now Senior Developer (Resource Interactive), I’m starting to think about a shift in my daily duties.

My earliest work on the web were all centered around fostering community and facilitating communication. I was a geocities community leader. I volunteered for the Open Directory Project (back when everyone thought human-powered search results were the way to go). I was on livejournal before they required invite codes. I worked for a not-for-profit that provided youth with online support and volunteer opportunities.

I waded through a bachelor of science in digital communication, a computer science certificate, a java 2 certification exam, and am nearly finished with my master of science in computer science degree. I definitely have a technical background. But in the end, I’m a liberal arts girl at heart and I just want to give users a kickass online experience, ensuring they can meet their needs in a way that best suits them.

At LexisNexis, I was in the User Experience team, so we primarily built prototypes and went out to usability testing and kept abreast on trends and best practices for providing an optimal user experience. Even as a developer, I attended weekly design reviews and had the opportunity to contribute to crafting the solution to usability challenges. My last year at LexisNexis, I was sitting on several boards and committees (Architecture Advisory Board, Branding and Identity Committee), and was the key Accessibility Contact. Everything was firmly with the users’ best interest in mind.

I can code. Some would say I do it well However, my interests really lay in how information is presented to the user. I’m fascinated by how people use technology to meet certain needs, and how we can best support them in their goals. I am working on that “Rich Internet Accessibility” paper, and the internet has been a great way for me to read up on other opinions, and connect with industry leaders. It’s also helped me to understand the challenges some people face. One article I found on the accessibility of social networks really struck me: one user stated that it was difficult for him to seek out a speaker at a conference to ask further questions, so he preferred to look them up online after the fact. It helped drive home the fact that the internet can really help people with disabilities, if we take the time to consider their needs. (Another great example is the short film “everything I can’t do in the real world, I can do with my Mac“).

In so much as I can contribute to delivering content in an accessible, usable fashion, I will do so. However, I feel as though I want to “move up” in the process, and suggest solutions or approaches, rather than coming in at the Implementation stage. It took me several months to really recognize that I have changed where I fit in the development cycle here at Resource. In the UX group at Lexis, yes, I was coding, but they were prototypes, early in the design phases. Now I work on the final production code, after certain major decisions have already been made.

One of the key reasons Resource is a leading interactive agency is our thought leadership. We do great work, particularly in our Insights phase. Certainly, our implementations are outstanding, but I am really yearning to return back to an ‘ideas’ role, rather than a ’solutions’ one. I have been the only female developer in the company since I was hired, and I can’t help but wonder if that’s somewhat natural: women as nurturers, giving birth to children and ideas and fostering the commuity, and men as providers and problem solvers, delivering on requests and meeting specific needs.

…Hmm.. perhaps that’s not the best thing to post in my technical blog, but I’ll leave it there all the same…

I am going to start doing some light Business Analyst work, with a longerish-term goal of getting into the field of Information Architecture. I think this will be the route I need to step away from specific implementations and focus on common problems (aha, I sense a return to my previous interest in patterns). Ultimately I believe it is the goal of what a site can help a user achieve, and how he feels doing it, that interest me, moreso than the specific details of how.

When I arrived home from the Columbus 2012 Bicentennial Citizen Summit last Tuesday, I felt empowered and excited and eager to post about the experience and all the thoughts it evoked. I was cheerily writing away when I hit the laptop touchpad, and I thought the post was lost forever. I just logged back in today to post about something different, and was happy to find the following. I apologize if it’s “rough”, but I’m posting it without rereading or even seeing if it has an actual “ending”…

Tonight I attended the Columbus 2012 Bicentennial Citizen Summit. I will admit that it first peaked my interest when it was announced that James Surowiecki (Wisdom of Crowds) would be speaking. It turns out Resource was actually one of three sponsors who brought him here, and our Founder/CEO is actually one of the Commission members. As a result, there were quite a few of us who wandered down to the Convention Center this evening.

I will admit, going into the meeting I wasn’t particularly interested in finding out what I personally could do to contribute to a stronger Columbus. I just moved into an area of town that has a decent amount of community activity, and expressed an interest in volunteering at that level. But sitting in a room of close to two thousand, sharing our thoughts, perceptions and hopes for the future, I will admit I felt more of a sense of community than I could have ever expected.

The entire evening’s activities were brilliantly executed. Participants were invited to share their personal suggestions on the state of the city. We then listened to an insightful presentation on ‘the wisdom of crowds’, about how we as a group have a collective intelligence and capacity that exceeds that of any single individual. What a way to get buy-in from a group that is there because they care about their community.

As an aside, I was a bit disappointed by James’ speech. Having read (actually, listened to) his book already, I knew each of his stories and anecdotes as he told them. I do hope, however, that those that were hearing them for the first time were dutifully impressed and empowered.

The next part of the program was very well orchestrated. We’d been told the commission wanted to hear our thoughts and opinions. We felt empowered through James’ words that as a group, we had much to offer. And so as we were presented with a series of multiple choice questions, we had a small wireless voting tool, and we were presented with the group results after each vote.

Why was this so ingenious? For several reasons:

1. Instant gratification. It was fun to see our results plastered up there on the screen.
2. Fostering a community. We saw how we stacked up in relation to others
3. Seeing other viewpoints. In some cases, answers I hadn’t even considered were popular. I felt compelled to try to see the other side.
4. Feeling valued. Often I think people wonder if their feedback is really ever noted. We saw data being tabulated right away.

In addition, the moderator did a reasonably good job in tying the questions together. Occasionally “possible solutions” would show up in several different focus groups, and he helped establish these relationships and call out trends as they arose.

After the fact, I was talking to a friend who hadn’t been able to attend, and she asked if I felt the group was representative of the greater Columbus community as a whole. I admitted that no, I think that is a common shortcoming in something like this. Those of us who came down to the convention center on a Tuesday after work were self-selecting. However, the overview of the program shared with us much of the other data gathering that had been done (that actually formed the basis for the focus groups that had been formed). Interviews had taken place at different events and areas across the city.