Future state is not always where its at!
"To-be or not to-be, that is the question!!"
Well actually no, its much more serious than that.
We have to understand the AS-IS too and not just define the TO-BE.
A fundamental and key input to successful change projects is making sure that
sponsors/senior leadership, stakeholders, the project team (and especially BAs) have a solid understanding of the current AS-IS state. This includes, processes, people/teams involved, systems and environments integrations etc.
PMs if you are at the beginning of a project, make sure you are allocate enough time and resources for this activity so that it is done thoroughly. Ensure the right stakeholders are identified who can validate & verify the AS-IS findings.
One of the things to avoid in a project is scope-creep.... and scope-creep resulting from not fully understanding how the business (or part a business) operates is embarrassing because 'uh-oh we missed that part'!
Similarly with the future-state (TO-BE), this should ideally be defined fairly well from the outset with some room for tweaks and improvements. Hopefully a project will not go through a full solution redesign half way through a project.
BA's make sure you are documenting at the highest quality for both AS-IS and TO-BE.
Use Confluence, JIRA, LucidChart/Visio, etc as needed. TIP: Don't forget about traceability!!
I'll continue to cover more BA stuff in future posts.
#projectmanagement #BAlife
