Transcript Professional Business Analyst Skills (IS 6008)

IS Consulting Process
(IS 6005)
Masters in Business Information Systems 2006 / 2007
Programme in Professional Information System Practices
Fergal Carton
Business Information Systems
Last week
• SIB Industries Case Study distributed
• Key roles in ERP project: Accenture example
– Client, consultant and technology vendor resources
– Doubling up of client and consultant resources (experience where it counts)
• ERP project team example (PCB case study)
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Steering committee (SC) meets once a month, only want a report on progress
Project issues should be sorted out before SC meeting
SC members represent first and foremost their functional areas
Project Manager should not be on Steering Committee?
Clarity of project team presentation, keep like resources together
Time commitment to project (increases downwards through org chart)
Reporting lines not trivial: think where decision bottlenecks can occur (and
place a consultant at that point)
• Project timescale: a trade off between
– cost and tying up resources
– Scope creep because of changes to the business model
• Eg. EMC integration of DG rejected because of timeline impact but later regretted
MBS (BIS) / 6005 / IS Consulting Process
This week
• Graham Healy (Accenture) on ERP projects and SIB Industries
• Consultant skills (cont.)
– Relationship building abilities
• Power users
• Proposal writing
– Timescale estimating
– FTE calculation
– Project cost
• BPM: Future of IT (Peter Keen article)
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Project team composition: UCC
• Skills
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Mix of technical and business skills
Representatives from every functional area
Data clean-up and migration
Application knowledge
IT implications
• Team members
– Full-time availability
– Power users
– Skill transfer
MBS (BIS) / 6005 / IS Consulting Process
Key roles in ERP project
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Mix of technical and business skills
Team members seniority and competence
Include all functions in team
Catch-22: the right person is busy!
MBS (BIS) / 6005 / IS Consulting Process
Relationship Building Abilities
• Build rapport and trust with the client
– Difficult to define
– Feature of all communication (not just face-to-face)
– Not just what is said, but how things are said
• Question effectively
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Way to build rapport and control the direction of the conversation
Open questions, closed questions
Ask the right questions (preparation)
Ask them the right way (practice)
• E.g. avoid interrogating, vary styles, positive open questions, closed to
confirm, statement with a quizzical look/rising tone, etc..
MBS (BIS) / 6005 / IS Consulting Process
Relationship Building Abilities
• Communicate ideas succinctly and precisely
– Different areas use different language (e.g. finance, marketing)
– The Key is not the consultant’s knowledge of the area, but how the
consultant uses that knowledge to create value for the business
– Most impact when he/she talks the same language as the client
– May need to translate technical jargon into plain language
• Negotiate objectives and outcomes
– Client may not have a clear idea of what is wanted for the business or may
have unrealistic ideas which are not achievable within the project
– Disappointment for both the client and consultant results more from unclear
expectations than poor outcomes
MBS (BIS) / 6005 / IS Consulting Process
Relationship Building Abilities
• Convince others through verbal, written and
visual mediums
– Having good ideas is not enough
– Conviction results if ideas are communicated in a manner that is
appropriate to the audience
– Ideas must have substance - Use information to make a case for a
particular course of action
– Some information included in the initial communication and some
held back as a response to questions and/or objections
MBS (BIS) / 6005 / IS Consulting Process
Relationship Building Abilities
• Develop selling strategies
– Consultants must sell ideas, sell themselves and their organizations
– Consultancy does not respond well to a ‘hard-sell’ approach
– Focus on what you can offer the client with a view to building a
long-term, mutually beneficial relationship
• Work effectively as a member of a team
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Consultancy team and extended client team
Requires careful definition of individual roles and responsibilities
Requires interpersonal, motivation and conflict resolution skills
Align interests of the team individuals with the overall task that the
team faces – sometimes necessary to compromise individual
concerns in the interest of the group, as a whole
MBS (BIS) / 6005 / IS Consulting Process
Relationship Building Abilities
• Demonstrate Leadership
– Ability to focus and direct individuals to act in a certain
way
– Draws together many relationship skills (e.g. articulate
vision, motivation, communication) into one behavioural
strategy
– Leadership is not a fixed property, but is situational –
may shift between members of a project as the project
evolves and the situation changes
– Leadership Core Competencies
• Project Management Institute (2005) Vol. 6, Issue 1.
MBS (BIS) / 6005 / IS Consulting Process