The Better Business Analysis Institute presence. The Better Business Analysis Podcast with Benjamin Walsh. Hi everybody, and welcome back to the Better Business Analysis Podcast with Benjamin Walsh. And we continue on with our Business Analysis Unleashed series. Last time we covered our strategic objectives which was off the back of strategic analysis work. We've got our strategic objectives defined by our
executive, by our program team. You know depending on your organization they are defined, they are there. So now business cases can be written, we can start to ask for money to do some stuff. And we talked about the fact that that stuff we can do needs to map up to our strategic objectives. And best way of doing that is to kind of have a highest level story, an epic, we call it epics. The stories just like user stories and pre, you know the agile revolution we called them
business requirements. Now the confusing factor with using the term business requirements, and why I've kind of moved away from that myself, is that people kind of, you know, thought their business requirements might just be requirements functional requirements from the business as opposed to technical requirements. So I like the idea of Epic because it suggests size.
The other thing that's really important to talk about when we talk about Epics is that a lot of people think it's a grouping of user stories, and I guess technically it is. However they come first, these are the big chunky kind of, if you like, process level one or two task things we need to get done. They're the what they are, the things we need to get on with. And then of course they can be
broken. They can be evolved, but mainly they get broken down into user stories, which of course can get it broken down again into other user stories or evolve into how we do things once we work with the development team. So we're now in the phase of what we call high level analysis. So we are between the strategic analysis, enterprise analysis phase. We will touch on that a little bit more just in terms of how these two phases connect and we're really moving on to high
level analysis here. So this is the highest level business requirements if you like epics, these are the we're defining these and then they can be broken down and by our project team, OK. So sometimes enterprise business analyst or a senior business analyst would do this phase and then the detailed requirements once the project's more defined and the scopes defined, then maybe you'll just get ABA or a specialist BA working within the project team. So we're in this this kind of window.
There are some other enterprise analysis techniques that we can use. But right now I just want to talk about the strategic objectives down to Epics and and what are Epics really? So I've already I've already just stated that Epics aren't the we we start with Epics and then we break down the user stories. OK and and what how do you define an epic? Well firstly you write an epic just as you would write a story. It is a story. It's just a big chunky story.
It's the the big what that we need to achieve and there might be a number of these. Usually there's probably somewhere between 5:00 and 10:00 of these that relate to maybe helping us achieve the strategic objectives that we've defined a specific one generally. So if we wanted to increase our acquisition of new customers by 20% by the end of 2023 for our mechanics store, one of the epics we talked about last week was engaging with a marketing firm.
But I'm going to move to more and and Epic now another epic which joined along that journey which might be more relevant to you if you've come from an IT background. So one of the epics we could define is launching a new interactive website that allows us to capture dynamic content and for our customers to contact us easily and book services directly from the website. OK, so that's a big long kind of comic book description of what the Epic is.
And of course we might write that in now in Epic format as a mechanic store. I would like my customers, new existing and potential customers to learn and book services online so that they can quick and easily book a time, schedule it without any human interaction, saving US money and being convenient for them. So that could be the Epic format for our mechanical store. Now though, we're going to move on to our specific case study, which is around the UN.
So what we're going to focus on with our strategic objectives moving to epochs and starting user stories is we're going to focus on the UN, the United Nations. And so we're going to talk about a smart objective that has been defined, which is around, I guess the theme, like I said, the paraphrased focused area will be about promoting sustainable development. So that might be the topic of the meetings that the UN has with our bodies.
But specifically we're going to define that in smart format, which is around increasing the public awareness of sustainable development by 10% within the next year, OK. And so that that would be our strategic objective. You can measure, we could measure things like public awareness by conducting a survey across different countries.
We think it's achievable. There are a number of resources we can invest in it. We can, you know, we know how to get there through channels like public education campaigns and social outreach and partnerships. We think it's relevant because sustainable development is good for the rest of the world. It's, you know, essential for addressing the global challenges that we face such as climate change and poverty and inequality. And it's time bound because we've said within the next year.
So this might be a goal just for the, you know a year focus. So it's around increasing public awareness of sustainable development by 10% within the next year and that would be something you in the new the UN could come up with, OK. So that's our strategic objective. So what does that mean now in terms of breaking that down in terms of it's epic. So I guess epic one we could, I'll give you 2 examples. One could be enhance, it could be in terms of public awareness and promoting sustainable
development. We could enhance knowledge around the lack of access to clean water and sustainability. So it could be as a UUN body we would like to promote and enhance access to clean water and sanitation by the end of 2024 so that the world is more educated and there is some initial benefits for those who don't have access to clean water and sanitation. So that's epic.
That's a very long statement. Of course we could paraphrase that in terms of enhanced access to clean water and sanitation and you know and educate the world on on this topic. So that would be the epic. Another example could be around improving education opportunities. OK. So that could be you know, epic format as aun body, I would like to improve education opportunities to the to the world so that they understand the challenges that the world is facing in terms of equality and
poverty and climate change. So the two epics that are around our strategic objective, which is around promoting sustainable development, does that make sense? So that they're actually tangible actions, big chunky ones by the way. You know, enhancing access to clean water and sanitation and even promoting that and educating people around it is hard. And then including educational opportunities online that could be a website, it could be a social marketing campaign.
So both of these two epics are programs of work, OK? So they're really, really, really important initiatives and they could be programs. And then we then drop that down. In terms of possible user stories, let's focus on our epic one, which is enhancing access to clean water and sanitation, for example. The user story there could be as a community member in a country which doesn't, you know that
that is a developing country. I want to have access to clean drinking water so that I can lead a healthy life. OK. So that's a really good example. And so that's from the perspective of the person, the persona and which needs needs to be supported, which is the customer in in this case. So it's a really, that's a really good example of user story. Again, you'd say, well, that's not going to help the development team, that's way chunky.
But the whole point of user stories is for you to break that down when you get into detailed analysis. But at the highest level, the user story is as a community member, I want to have access to clean drinking water so that I can lead a healthy life. And that in itself could be a whole project, right. And you could break that down, work out how to do that. And then you know that's your
backlog starter. So just a note on this, a side note, you you're kind of working in Excel at this point, really something like that. Or you know Google Sheets, yeah, or or Mural Board. You've just got your strategic objectives, your epics and then your study user stories on a map. So that's it.
And then once they're defined, then you kind of move on from your requirements traceability matrix or you're mirror board to a product like Jira or Azure DevOps or whatever you're managing for the development process. And I hope that makes sense because people get confused about when you should start using those tools.
The audience at the moment is your greater level stakeholders and the people that own the strategic objectives to make sure that they think that your plan on how you've broken this program down, you know matches will help achieve the goal.
And then there are things that go off in terms of the enterprise analysis phase, which we're not going to cover today, which is things like getting money and funding, which is like business casing and justification and all the rest of it. So that's all happening in parallel. But the BA focus here at this high level requirements phase is to have these starter user
stories. So another user story under our enhanced access to clean water and sanitation for the UN it could be as a a sanitary worker I want a system to effectively manage waste disposal so we can manage a clean environment. So that could be around the people that are not just the people that are serving the community member. And so they equally might be from a developing country or a place where there isn't clean access and sanitation.
And so that could be a great example in terms of how do you manage waste disposal. Again, hugely chunky item could be sold many a ways and that's one that's important to have at this at this high level and not talk about solutions because of course you know the an Elon Mask or another kind of solution provider out there who's you know like who's quite a public figure could say, you know we've got this great, great way of
solving this. These are the kind of chunky items that the Bill Gates of the world, you know, go after or you know finding a cure for AIDS. These are chunky items. And so this is this, is this just the level where you can then start taking these users with solution providers. But again you're ABA, you, you're not specifying a solution
here. And and again a side note, once you get into project phase, the delivery, the project delivery phase, you know there is types of BAS who you know technical BAS and what who are now maybe talking about the functions within the solution. And so there is a room for that in the BA world. But what I'm talking about right now is defining the project and this is really where the value is locked in. This is where you you're really looking at the items that are going to meet your goals.
And this is the best place for ABA to play. Another example for an epic that's meeting our strategic objective, smart strategic objective around promoting sustainable development would be improving education opportunities we talked about before. And two example user stories could be as a student or as a a world learner, I want access to quality education materials online so I can continue learning and finding out more around sustainable development for my community and for the
rest of the world. You, another user story could be as a teacher, as a teacher who promotes sustainable development, I want a platform to easily train my students, see their progress in their learning and so I can provide guidance and continued opportunities when it comes to promoting sustainable development. So these are just a few examples of, you know, the actual strategic and epoch and user
stories for UN initiatives. So you know these this is, this is this is how we should be defining things down. And again of course all of these will have processes associated. So we talked about the fact that the business case, the justification for doing these pieces of work will have money behind them and that usually leads to a decision of you know how much you're going to invest or how you're going to tackle this from a solution point of view.
So that's happening in parallel, but as ABA what your job could be in this phase, not only defining these is literally drawing in a very very high level non solution focus level, the process that that that currently exists and any opportunities or pain points in that process where we could improve these proves these goals.
So for example with the access to clean water, it might be really useful to see what is the journey today for a community member in one of these developing nations to access water because some of those steps might remain. It might just simply be the fact that they need to have, you know, collecting water from a well. For example, a clean well might actually happen today.
It just might be the fact that the access side is the fact that it's miles away and they have to walk there with, you know, pans and buckets, whereas it could, the solution could simply be the pain point around the fact that the well is, you know, needs to be closer to the village, you're right, or there needs to be more wells across more villages in this area. So that's how processes come into place here too.
And just a reminder that when we come to user stories and Epics, we write them as a type of user persona. I want you know to perform a function, achieve a goal. So that and then the reason behind it, right. So we've covered off strategic objectives for the UN, how they break down to epochs and then start a user stories.
And next time in our series we're going to get into the transition to detailed the T delta analysis phase and then how do we actually do some of the typical kind of BA activities at this point.