5 Important Artificial Intelligence Predictions (For 2019) Everyone Should Read

Original post created by

Bernard Marr

Artificial Intelligence – specifically machine learning and deep learning – was everywhere in 2018 and don’t expect the hype to die down over the next 12 months.

The hype will die eventually of course, and AI will become another consistent thread in the tapestry of our lives, just like the internet, electricity, and combustion did in days of yore. 

But for at least the next year, and probably longer, expect astonishing breakthroughs as well as continued excitement and hyperbole from commentators. 

This is because expectations of the changes to business and society which AI promises (or in some cases threatens) to bring about go beyond anything dreamed up during previous technological revolutions. AI points towards a future where machines not only do all of the physical work, as they have done since the industrial revolution, but also the “thinking” work – planning, strategizing and making decisions.

The jury’s still out on whether this will lead to a glorious utopia, with humans free to spend their lives following more meaningful pursuits, rather than on those which economic necessity dictates they dedicate their time, or to widespread unemployment and social unrest. 

We probably won’t arrive at either of those outcomes in 2019, but it’s a topic which will continue to be hotly debated. In the meantime, here are five things that we can expect to happen:

1. AI increasingly becomes a matter of international politics

2018 has seen major world powers increasingly putting up fences to protect their national interests when it comes to trade and defense. Nowhere has this been more apparent than in the relationship between the world's two AI superpowers, the US and China.

In the face of tariffs and export restrictions on goods and services used to create AI imposed by the US Government, China has stepped up its efforts to become self-reliant when it comes to research and development.

Chinese tech manufacturer Huawei announced plans to develop its own AI processing chips, reducing the need for the country’s booming AI industry to rely on US manufacturers like Intel and Nvidia.

At the same time, Google has faced public criticism for its apparent willingness to do business with Chinese tech companies (many with links to the Chinese government) while withdrawing (after pressure from its employees) from arrangements to work with US government agencies due to concerns its tech may be militarised.

With nationalist politics enjoying a resurgence, there are two apparent dangers here. Firstly, that artificial intelligence technology could be increasingly adopted by authoritarian regimes to restrict freedoms, such as the rights to privacy or free speech. Secondly, that these tensions could compromise the spirit of cooperation between academic and industrial organizations across the world. 

This framework of open collaboration has been instrumental to the rapid development and deployment of AI technology we see taking place today and putting up borders around a nation’s AI development is likely to slow that progress. In particular, it is expected to slow the development of common standards around AI and data, which could greatly increase the usefulness of AI.

2. A Move Towards “Transparent AI”

The adoption of AI across wider society – particularly when it involves dealing with human data – is hindered by the "black box problem." Mostly, its workings seem arcane and unfathomable without a thorough understanding of what it's actually doing.

To achieve its full potential AI needs to be trusted – we need to know what it is doing with our data, why, and how it makes its decisions when it comes to issues that affect our lives. This is often difficult to convey – particularly as what makes AI particularly useful is its ability to draw connections and make inferences which may not be obvious or may even seem counter-intuitive to us.

But building trust in AI systems isn’t just about reassuring the public. Research and business will also benefit from openness which exposes bias in data or algorithms. Reports have even found that companies are sometimes holding back from deploying AI due to fears they may face liabilities in the future if current technology is later judged to be unfair or unethical.

In 2019 we're likely to see an increased emphasis on measures designed to increase the transparency of AI. This year IBM unveiled technology developed to improve the traceability of decisions into its AI OpenScale technology. This concept gives real-time insights into not only what decisions are being made, but how they are being made, drawing connections between data that is used, decision weighting and potential for bias in information.

The General Data Protection Regulation, put into action across Europe this year, gives citizens some protection against decisions which have “legal or other significant” impact on their lives made solely by machines. While it isn’t yet a blisteringly hot political potato, its prominence in public discourse is likely to grow during 2019, further encouraging businesses to work towards transparency.

3. AI and automation drilling deeper into every business

In 2018, companies began to get a firmer grip on the realities of what AI can and can’t do. After spending the previous few years getting their data in order and identifying areas where AI could bring quick rewards, or fail fast, big business is as a whole ready to move ahead with proven initiatives, moving from piloting and soft-launching to global deployment.

In financial services, vast real-time logs of thousands of transactions per second are routinely parsed by machine learning algorithms. Retailers are proficient at grabbing data through till receipts and loyalty programmes and feeding it into AI engines to work out how to get better at selling us things. Manufacturers use predictive technology to know precisely what stresses machinery can be put under and when it is likely to break down or fail.

In 2019 we’ll see growing confidence that this smart, predictive technology, bolstered by learnings it has picked up in its initial deployments, can be rolled out wholesale across all of a business’s operations.

AI will branch out into support functions such as HR or optimizing supply chains, where decisions around logistics, as well as hiring and firing, will become increasingly informed by automation. AI solutions for managing compliance and legal issues are also likely to be increasingly adopted. As these tools will often be fit-for-purpose across a number of organizations, they will increasingly be offered as-a-service, offering smaller businesses a bite of the AI cherry, too.

We’re also likely to see an increase in businesses using their data to generate new revenue streams. Building up big databases of transactions and customer activity within its industry essentially lets any sufficiently data-savvy business begin to “Googlify” itself. Becoming a source of data-as-a-service has been transformational for businesses such as John Deere, which offers analytics based on agricultural data to help farmers grow crops more efficiently. In 2019 more companies will adopt this strategy as they come to understand the value of the information they own.

4. More jobs will be created by AI than will be lost to it.

As I mentioned in my introduction to this post, in the long-term its uncertain if the rise of the machines will lead to human unemployment and social strife, a utopian workless future, or (probably more realistically) something in between.

For the next year, at least, though, it seems it isn’t going to be immediately problematic in this regard. Gartner predicts that by the end of 2019, AI will be creating more jobs than it is taking. While 1.8 million jobs will be lost to automation – with manufacturing in particular singled out as likely to take a hit – 2.3 million will be created. In particular, Gartner's report finds, these could be focused on education, healthcare, and the public sector.

A likely driver for this disparity is the emphasis placed on rolling out AI in an "augmenting" capacity when it comes to deploying it in non-manual jobs. Warehouse workers and retail cashiers have often been replaced wholesale by automated technology. But when it comes to doctors and lawyers, AI service providers have made concerted effort to present their technology as something which can work alongside human professionals, assisting them with repetitive tasks while leaving the "final say" to them.

This means those industries benefit from the growth in human jobs on the technical side – those needed to deploy the technology and train the workforce on using it – while retaining the professionals who carry out the actual work.

For the financial services, the outlook is perhaps slightly grimmer. Some estimates, such as those made by former Citigroup CEO Vikram Pandit in 2017, predict that the sector's human workforce could be 30% smaller within five years. With back-office functions increasingly being managed by machines, we could be well on our way to seeing that come true by the end of next year.

5. AI assistants will become truly useful

AI is genuinely interwoven into our lives now, to the point that most people don't give a second thought to the fact that when they search Google, shop at Amazon or watch Netflix, highly precise, AI-driven predictions are at work to make the experience flow.

A slightly more apparent sense of engagement with robotic intelligence comes about when we interact with AI assistants – Siri, Alexa, or Google Assistant, for example – to help us make sense of the myriad of data sources available to us in the modern world.

In 2019, more of us than ever will use an AI assistant to arrange our calendars, plan our journeys and order a pizza. These services will become increasingly useful as they learn to anticipate our behaviors better and understand our habits.

Data gathered from users allows application designers to understand exactly which features are providing value, and which are underused, perhaps consuming valuable resources (through bandwidth or reporting) which could be better used elsewhere.

As a result, functions which we do want to use AI for – such as ordering taxis and food deliveries, and choosing restaurants to visit – are becoming increasingly streamlined and accessible.

On top of this, AI assistants are designed to become increasingly efficient at understanding their human users, as the natural language algorithms used to encode speech into computer-readable data, and vice versa, is exposed to more and more information about how we communicate.

It's evident that conversations between Alexa or Google Assistant and us can seem very stilted today. However, the rapid acceleration of understanding in this field means that, by the end of 2019, we will be getting used to far more natural and flowing discourse with the machines we share our lives with.

The Business Analyst Mindset

Whenever you're trying to do something in an organization the desire to know "why" is at the core of the mindset of a good Business Analyst.

Innocent like a child

Business Analysts needs the innocence of a child. A bit like a five years old kid  constantly asking: "But why?" Consider the "Why" as an assistant in understanding the level of desire, commitment, and need for the change and how this change impacts both processes and other areas in the organization.

Understanding the context may also assist with how the need for the change can be justified. You'll need to reflect on the "Why" to be successful. Along with some other mindsets which include a constant believe that inefficiencies exist. 

The pace of change in today's business world is significant. Management might change, clients might change, priorities might shift and the marketplace itself transforms regularly. Well crafting processes and approaches to getting things done decay quickly, they simply become obsolete. Add to the fact of people who create processes initially really have a perfect crystal ball, or resolving issuing isolation without understanding the flown effects of the minor changes being made.

This is why inefficiencies are present in virtually every business processes. As an effective Business Analyst, you'll believe this fully and have a burning desire to find and fix these inefficiencies.

The best place to start is with what's happening today

The second mindset characteristic is "The best place to start is with what's happening today". It is easy to dismiss understanding what processes that exist today giving in the excitement and haste to get the new and improved "to be" state. However is very difficult to get a destination without knowing where you are today. Whether using a map or GPS the turns you'll have to make are determined not only where you want to get to, but where you are now.

As an effective Business Analyst, you'll want to expend significant time understanding the existing "as is" processes in order to facilitate effective changes in your organization.

Seek and enjoy

The next important mindset of a good Business Analyst is to seek and enjoy the details as well as the big picture. Exploring and documenting business processes can be very detailed work. It takes patience and the abilities to ask questions about exceptions and other nuances in about processes.

Although the devils in the details is a very accurate statement truly effective Business Analyst seeks to understand and optimize how processes interact with each other. Supporting the overarching goals and objectives of the organization is also critical to success in business analysis. A big picture view of what is happening and could happen in the business is just as important as capturing and tracking the procedural details.

Serve as the bridge

Lastly, the Business Analyst view is to serve as the bridge between business and technical personnel. It's rare to find an organization that doesn't have a language problem.

Technical teams talk about data flows, sequence errors, engineering specs and etc. Business personnel talks about turnaround times, customer preferences and capability management. The vocabulary between these two groups can be so different that discussions can be nearly useless as everyone scrambles to understand each other.

This is where the Business Analyst comes in. With an interesting knowledge of what the organization is trying to accomplish, and a view of what technical team needs in order to satisfy their needs. The Business Analyst serves as a facilitator and translator from those stakeholders requesting the change to those who will deliver the change.

They calm nerves and become diplomatic between people who often drastically have different perspectives about a problem.

Finally

When you as a Business Analyst embrace these varying mindsets business and technical people both feel heard, and more confident their needs are understood and can be met. Your organization can then move forward in a controlled and full manner and your projects and underlying processes will more likely deliver to the required change.

Understanding the skills business analysts use

 

Some characteristics and skills can help you to be positioned as a great Business Analyst.

 

CURIOSITY

First and foremost is Curiosity. Understanding the business areas in which you work and how they fit together is vital. Understanding at a detailed level and how it fits within the context of an organization is where you can apply your sense of wonder to the unknown. An almost endless level of curiosity as to what is really happening and what could potentially happen in the future is where the Business Analyst value is created.

QUESTIONING AND LISTENING

Observation of work being performed is a very effective way to obtain information about the details of how the organization works. However, you won't understand everything by just observing.

Having a keen sense for asking questions, listening to what is said and not said is pivotal to understand what's really going on in an organization.

In addition to this, interviewing is a fundamental approach to obtaining information from the organization and members of your project team. Crafting effective questions and being able to listen to the answers on multiple levels is fundamental to success as a Business Analyst.

PATIENCE

Considering that observation, questioning and answering approach to obtaining information can take time another fundamental skill for the Business Analyst is patience. Is easy to find a piece of information and jump to a conclusion as a result. As the same documented process may be executed different ways to different people or in different areas on the organization jumping to conclusions is dangerous.

Taking the appropriate amount of time to collect, analyze and verify your information and conclusions requires patience. That patience is a fundamental characteristic to sustain growth as a Business Analyst.

COMMUNICATION SKILLS AND DIPLOMACY

These two walk together. Every facet of Business Analysis involves some form of communication. You're typically either absorbing information through communication approaches or capturing and sharing that information with your own communication tools.

Take the diplomacy skills that you'll frequently use as you're often being placed in a position where you're judging approaches and suggesting improvements.

SUSTAINED ENTHUSIASM

Projects can take anything from a few weeks to years. Understanding the improvement goal, being dedicated to its achievement and having a contagious sense of enthusiasm is important. This helps your business colleagues and the project team to stay focused on moving forward.

Enthusiasm is an important aspect to get chances accomplished, especially when you take a while to bring them to reality.

BEING LOGICAL

Being logical in your thinking is at the hot of surfacing and improvement possibilities. You need to apply logic and understanding of what is occurring in your organization today and be able to picture better ways of getting things accomplished.

That is the best of a sustained value you can provide as a Business Analyst. Logic is the key to providing the value quickly and effectively.

As you can see being a Business Analyst is a multifaceted row. It takes a lot of different skills and characteristics but its all fun and exciting as you are in the hot of change in your organization.

What's a Business Analyst?

When maintaining or improving a home, having a trusted handyman around that can come and fix or improve things whenever you need is invaluable.

In the world of IT projects the Business Analyst is like the handyman. From the start of the project to the end the Business Analyst plays a critical role in the successful project and delivering outcomes.

Here are the areas where a Business Analyst can make a difference in a project:

VALIDADE ORGANIZATION OBJECTIVES

Projects are used to create changes. That change can significantly improve the abilities and efficiencies of an organization. Without any proper analysis, any attempt of improving the organization can go very badly, resulting in confusing and difficulties to achieve organization objectives.

As a Business Analyst you'll seek to understand the strength and weaknesses your organization uses and then validate any improvements to be implemented by a project.

MANAGE REQUIREMENTS PROCESS

To do this you'll work with your organization team and get into the deep understanding of what your organization is doing today and what will make the organization more efficient. You then capture that information using several of the following tools:

• Flowcharts: Provides step by step "as is" and "to be" processes. This captures what the current state the organization is and what new desired state and outcomes will be.
  
• User stories: Provides a picture of what people in the organization will achieve.
  
• Context diagrams: Describes relations between business areas and clients and how they all fit together.
  

MANAGE RELEVANT CHANGE

This includes validating any changes proposed during the course of the project and promoting changes needed to the organization that is important to fulfill their mission. And ensure that any changes that occur within the organization are appropriately reflected in the project's products.

Lastly, help managing changes to project's deliverables that need to be made as a result of the project change.

When changes are introduced to a project you'll need to adjust the project's schedule and potentially plan costs as well as other items.

With the breadth of knowledge across the project, the Business Analyst is well placed to help with this changes.

MANAGE TESTING

As a Business Analyst, you're typically best placed to ensure that the process and technology products created by the project do what is intended to move the organization forward. As this can require significant knowledge of the people and processes involved in the organization having you as a Business Analyst managing the testing process is efficient and effective.

ENSURE COMPLETION CRITERIA ARE ACCOMPLISHED

All project should be started with the end in mind. The project should then include detailed completion criteria which details what things needs to be accomplished prior to the project to be considered finished.

THE BUSINESS ANALYST

Is usually the person who can look at the overall accomplishments made by the project and the capabilities of the processes and tools produced and determine if those objectives were accomplished as intended.

8 PRODUCTIVITY TIPS

People fail to be productive daily, partly because they feel overwhelmed and partly because of the grandest enemy all professionals share – procrastination.

1. Use Lists and More Lists

A to-do list, a memory list, a tasks list, a breaks list, and even a workout schedule list. To be as productive as you can, free up the memory by writing down things. Lists are the best way to externalize the memory.
One of the biggest enemies of business analysts is the memory. Having a job that demands to remember dozens of things on daily basis is exhausting, and you can only manage to do it all for a limited time. Writing things down and organizing them in clear-to-follow lists will aid you in focusing on what needs to be done when it needs to be done.
This won’t take away the tasks you have, but it will certainly help you remember them all, prioritize them, and take a detached and critical look at the problems at hand.

2. Give Nature a Shot

A study by the University of Michigan shows that you can actually improve the productivity by no less than 20% if you just take a walk in the park. Why? Because a few minutes off that busy work schedule can do wonders for improving your memory and help you remain focused on what’s important.
Now the other question arises: why nature? Why not take a break at the coffee shop around the corner or have a walk in a busy, urban environment?
What we can all agree with is, nature has a great, calming effect on our minds. A peaceful break surrounded by nature and nothing that relates to your work and obligations is exactly what your mind needs to remain productive.

3. Daydream

Don’t go daydreaming about the next vacation or your bed at home. When we say daydreaming, we mean let your mind wander. And by this, we mean let your mind do whatever it wants to do.
Your schedules and lists come very handily here. Leave out short periods during the busy day to daydream. Get into a calming stage when you reach that default mode. This should help you solve problems and think of connections you probably wouldn’t consider otherwise.

4. Focus on the Big Things

Every business analyst must deal with small and big problems. However, being as great as you are, your job shouldn’t focus around the small problems. Learn to delegate these and focus on the big ones instead. The problems that can most impact the organization are your first and only priority, so give your maximum to solving those before you go solving anything else.
The idea of getting the small things done first to get fired up for the big ones or reduce the list of tasks is very wrong. It makes no sense to finish small things when the bigger ones are left unsolved.

5. Make Use of Presentations

Presentations are very useful for business analysts. As soon as you start a project, begin with a layout of the analysis presentation.
It might seem counter-intuitive at the beginning, but it is a very productive habit. Such a habit will cut down the turnaround time of the project in half.
How do you do this?
You do this by creating a presentation, a document, or a simple writing on a white piece of paper. The form doesn’t really matter. The thing that matters is to note down and layout the outcomes that may occur from the very beginning, both the good and the bad.
Once you are done doing this, you can start looking at each of the factors to see what you can and should change. Use reasoning and mathematical equations and simply, create a sure starting point before you take the action.

6. Define the Data Requirements

This step comes naturally after the previous one. Once you have the analysis laid out in a comprehensive manner, you will have the data requirements right there in front of you. When you do, you need to:

• Structure the data requirements
  Design the analysis tables instead of making a list of variables. Make a past campaigns table, a customer demographic table, a table for transactions made in the last year, policy changes for bank credits table, etc.
• Collect as much data as you can
  Even if you are unsure about the variables you need, collect them upfront just to be on the safe site. Including some additional variables now is much better and easier than doing so later in your analysis.

7. Make a Reproducible Analysis

No, this is not as simple as it might sound. Any of the work you do might turn out to be less than reproducible, which can turn out to be a big problem afterward. If you are a beginner, perform your copy-paste steps in Excel. If you are advanced in your business, use a command line interface, but with care.
Similarly, a business analyst must be very careful when he works with notebooks. Don’t go changing previous steps if it uses some of the data set that hasn’t been computed yet. Notebooks are an excellent resource, but only if you maintain their flow.

8. Split Your Work and Take Regular Breaks

Everyone works better when rested. We mentioned taking a nature walk, but naturally, you won’t be able to do this all the time. To keep your productivity levels high, you need to do what every other person in the world needs to do – work in chunks and schedule breaks along the way.
Whenever you feel like you are overwhelmed with your work, take a short break. Get a coffee, take a walk, eat some chocolate – whatever makes you relaxed. Then you can back to that big project you are working on and stop when it is time to take another break.

Conclusion

These eight productivity hacks for business analysts are very effective when it comes to boosting the productivity. But, in the end, it all comes down to what works for you. Test them out to see and use the ones you find best for you to keep your analyst juices flowing.

The Blockchain brought a revolution to the financial system

Many banks have already seen the "magic" of the blockchain in their labs of search and development.

A few years ago in college, I remembered the accounting discipline where I had to register accounting entries in the ledger book to keep track of all transactions. If a mistake was made the wrong balance would be transferred to the next pages of the ledger book and to correct it the only way was to go back to the first page and rewrite everything until the current page.

The bitcoins already have been shown in the news as agents of changes in the global financial system. But despite this, it took a little longer until we discover what's behind the bitcoins and how it represents a much greater revolution not only to the financial system but to anything that needs a decentralized management with information security. We're talking about the Blockchain, that has the potential to start a new revolution in the information age.

If we go back to the college, there is a little detail that I haven't mentioned but not less important. As all students had to register the same accounting entries, the teacher knew exactly the balance that everyone had to have in the ledger book. We all had to have the same balance and the same transactions at the end.

Now imagine if, by magic, all the ledger books of all students had a behavior like they were one. What if we had distributed the accounting entries to the students so each one could register only the given accounting entry? Imagine if every time a student registered an accounting entry that same entry would be replicated to all the other students' ledger books by that same magic? What if those same magic books had the ability to avoid anyone from changing the entries already registered? Imagine if the fact of a single book gets destroyed for some reason was irrelevant because all the other books have all the information that was in the book destroyed.

Obviously, to do that class work in a collaborative way registering accounting entries in the ledger books individually (as they were a single book) would be much faster and easier.

The Blockchain is precisely the technology that turns this magic into reality. Essentially, a Blockchain is a distributed and decentralized group of nodes or databases that replicates information between themselves working as a single source. One of its main features is that the information entered can't be changed. Therefore, we can trust the information from any node.

But how this "magic" happens? Thanks to many encryption models that guarantee the information inviolability. The nodes are in a chain, encrypted in such a way that if someone tries to corrupt any data, all the chain gets invalidated and replaced by the previous version of the same chain. This happens because the Blockchain has a set of rules that demands a consensus between nodes to validate information. However, maybe the most relevant aspect of this revolution is that there won't be a need for a centralized and not distributed database who's manager is an institution, company or organ.

This is just a short introduction to this matter. There is much more to talk about the Blockchain.

High-performance teams

High-performance teams

Every company wants a high-performance team. According to some literature an HP team can produce 4x, 5x and even 10x more. These are teams that can boost the speed of your business/company.

High-performance teams are always multidisciplinary. Instead of having a team of specialists, when you have an interdisciplinary team, they're engaged in the project from end to end. Instead of having a team of taskers that receives and delivery a task without knowing what's going on from end to end, you get the understanding of the "why's" and also the engagement. In other words, instead of having a team that deliveries tasks you'll get a team that deliveries value.

In a team of specialists, you'll have a high level of dependency. Everyone needs to be allocated to something, and a specific group will start their work only when the previous group finishes their task. As time goes by they become more and more specialists in what they do and never get to know about other teams work.

In a multidisciplinary team, you'll have a collective intelligence. This team is autonomous and demands less coordination. The cooperation replaces the dependency, and everyone helps each other when there is a bottleneck upon delivery. Every time someone helps another person he will learn about this person's work.

One thing to be careful with is the allocation of an HP team. You can't just break the team when allocating certain persons in different projects. That's not the idea. This team is static, they need to be together, and this will make them better each day. The improvement of an HP team over time isn't linear. It can be doubled or even quadratic.

Having this in mind you'll have to stop thinking about who's best for a specific project and start thinking of what project fits best on the team's profile.

But, how to maintain work pattern and individual growth? From time to time you'll have to promote meetings for individuals from different HP teams with the same role so they can talk about how things are done. These meetings will be called "Practice Community" and will ensure de organization and pattern of work.

Create and maintain HP teams in the right way, and you'll start collecting good fruits as fast value delivery, individual professional growth, specialists, etc.

Are you weird?

A lot of our unique weirdness is exactly what were shamed the most for when we were children.

Definitely, in my childhood, I looked at how I was weird. I was like, "Wow this is a terrible curse." I actually experienced pain for my uniqueness. It's human nature.

Like, "Ow that hurt, I expressed my weirdness, I got rejected, I will not do that again." So we posture ourselves away from rejection towards what? Approval.
So what do you have to do to get someone's approval? Please them. What you have to do to please a person? Typically act like them.

The most pervasive disease that inflicts humanity is the disease of being normal. I don't think that anybody's ever achieved an extraordinary life in terms of quality and success by excelling at normalcy. 

Think of someone that you really admire. It might be a celebrity. It might be someone in your personal life. It doesn't matter. Just think of someone you really admire. I almost can guarantee there is something weird about this person, or else you wouldn't have ever noticed them, and therefore you wouldn't be admiring them.

What I used to call a curse, I'm like, "Wow! This is actually a beautiful gift." Is a shift f perspective. In order to express your inner genius that is your weirdness, I do believe you have to be willing to risk uncertainty and vulnerability. It has to be a challenge to be expressed. It has to be a challenge to find it, or else it won't have meaning.

I dream of a world where we can express yourself, experience yourself, and embody the unique creativity of your own being. It might just seem that expressing weirdness on your life could be the worst thing you could ever do, and it might be, but what if its one of the things you could ever do to yourself?

Think out of the box. Don't be afraid to be weird, to be different from others. There is nothing wrong in moving toward your dreams in your own way, in your own time.

What if the great minds of our history had deprived themselves of being weird? Imagine how could have happened.

We're all weird in certain ways. Some are ashamed of it, some are not. As much as some people don't like to take risks, there are people that deprive themselves of expressing their ideas because they're afraid of being weird.


Those who take risks have either chance of loose or win. Those who express themselves have the chance of being rejected or being brilliant. It is your call!

The 10 Commandments for the Business Analyst

Business analysts use to have more contact with companies employees and sectors (the company they work for and clients company as well) than any other role. This happens because they're part of both IT and business teams.

The manner the business analyst interact with each of these people or sectors is a critical fact if he wants to establish solid relationships with them.

  1 - Be gentle

It is good to know things, but no matter how many books you have read or even wrote if people realize that it's hard to deal with you they'll start to avoid you. If you're in a contract, in the best scenario this will result, on not renewing of it. If you're an employee you can find yourself doing project secondary tasks that don't demand contact with people. Either way independently of your position the result is not good. So make an effort and be gentle with people.  

 2 - Listen

If you're a good analyst you have a lot of ideas and many stories to tell. The challenge is to limit the sharing of your professional experience and expand more time listening to what people say. It is hard to swallow this pill, but you may not be as interesting as you think you are and not everyone will be willing to listen to your stories of war. You won't learn anything if you're talking all the time, so put your ego aside and start listening. 

 3 - Remember their names

Have you ever been introduced to someone and forgot his name immediately? You're not alone! As a business analyst, you have contact with so many people, with so many names to be remembered that at some time you'll start not to save this information. However, there are some techniques that you can use to remember the names such as repeating the person name as you are introduced, for example, "Hello Mark" or "Hi Vanessa". 

 4 - Do a research about the client's company

To get equipped with some knowledge about the company you're starting a contact will demonstrate to your client that you are interested and also will allow you to use an approach that fits the client's company's culture. Here are some important facts to be considered in the research:


4.1 - Company's size and a total of employees.
4.2 - Culture, structure, and mission of the company.
4.3 - Company's history.
4.4 - Company's competitors.
4.5 - Conditions of work.
4.6 - Main product, services or programs.
4.7 - Location of parent company and subsidiaries.
4.8 - Roles descriptions.
4.9 - Dress code. 

5 - Make the client ideas your ideas

As a business analyst, you're hired to use the experience that you've gained along the past years to propose creative and innovative solutions. Your goal is to contribute to the project's success, this is your essence. We all know that you're not pleading a promotion, but your client might be. If the project is successful there is a great chance of your client get a promotion or at least a recognition, and that's because your delivery was good, because you delivered value.

Despite this, try to be humble and let the people who hired you to get all the credit for your good job. This will be noticed, your client will like and you will be rewarded with respect. 

6 - Deliver more than what's expected

Your client let his expectations very clear to you and obviously you'll prioritize them on your MVP, but this doesn't mean that you should deliver only what's expected by the client. To transcend the clients expectative will always promote that "wow!". Think out of the box avoiding the status quo, ask yourself if there is a better way to execute tasks and have in mind what's best for the client's interests and surely you'll transcend his expectations.

7 - Make new friends at the client's office

Despite the administrative employers don't get the biggest salaries on the company, they have a key role in the project's success. Naturally, their the first person on the client's company to answer your phone call. They're responsible to schedule meetings, document signatures and etc.

They're the communication link with the company's executives and they may harm you if they want to. If you treat them with respect they'll be more engaged in making things happen for you. If you treat them bad you might experience some difficulties delivering tasks that pass through them.

8 - Be a friend of a not like-minded client

Certainly, in a project, you'll find a person that is very hard to deal with. This is the kind of person that irritates you when not cooperative when disagreeing of everything that you do, when is not friendly and etc. If this hasn't happened to you yet stay calm, it's just a matter of time. And if this already happened, it will happen again, so it's a good idea to get prepared.

The first step is to understand the line that when crossed makes the difficult person a difficult person. That person might be feeling insecure in your position, he or she might be thinking that his or her co-workers don't treat him or her well or this person might even have some personal issues. You don't wanna be one more threat on this person's life. Try not to put this person on meetings or chats where she or he will feel threatened and choose wisely the topics to discuss with him or her. Your goal is to make this person feel valued.

9 - Check all documentation before send it

We're all writers that need to understand and that needs to be understood. Any documentation you produce will become a direct representation of the quality of your work.

With the orthographic corrector, there is no apology for orthographic mistakes and a poor grammar might get the reader confused and generate ambiguity.

 10 - Sometimes the good enough is perfect!

Until now all we've talked is how to be the best in what we do when acting as a business analyst. We've talked about less talking and more listening, remember people's names, about being humble, about dealing with difficult people, about rite documents e so on.

But, sometimes there is nothing wrong with taking a rest of all this perfection and be satisfied with what you are. I'm not talking about being negligent, but to achieve a balance between what's wanted and what's possible.

A perfect documentation that never finishes, for example, will never be more efficient than an 80% quality documentation already delivered which the remaining 20% might not be worth the effort to finish.

Wanna migrate from analyst to project manager?

 

How to successfully make the transition from analyst to project manager?

 

 

Not all project managers want to be in this position forever. Sometimes some of them may want to have a better and more technical interaction with the teams, as the analyst does.

The same way, there are some analysts that don't want to be an analyst forever. They might want to achieve a new level of responsibility in project managing dealing more with clients and less with the team, considering that the analysts are the pivot to a good relationship between project participants.

If you are considering moving from analyst to project manager, here are 5 points that I believe you gonna have to dedicate more energy in order to successfully achieve your goal. 

Training and certification

If an analyst is decided to make the full transition to project management a good start would be proper training and certification. Acquire a PMP (Project Management Professional) certification is the best way.

The candidate must have a certain experience to make the test, but there are places where you can study and get this certification in five days. 

Learning the system

Yes, there will be software involved. We are in 2018 and you don't want to manage a project with more than 100 hours without using more than a simple sheet. Independently of your favorite tool, the ones that your friends are going to recommend or the ones that your client will tell you to use, just use it. Generally, they are very similar to each other and you might be able to input tasks with due dates, the dependency between tasks and resources associated with tasks and costs. Once you're doing that you're almost ready. 

Learn to see the big picture

As an analyst, you probably are used to seeing tasks, requirements, business processes and diagrams in a more detailed level. As a project manager, you have to consider this details, but you are going to have to get used to seeing things from above, to get the big picture.

This means to analyze in a higher level the tasks impacts, the tasks progress, resources, and dependency. You'll need to know how this affects the project right now, a week from now, a month from now, how it affects the team, how it affects the client and how it affects other projects. 

Make decisions

The analysts are always making decisions - probably as much as the project manager or even more. The decisions generally are different, with the analyst focusing on technical issues, next steps for the development and specification, backlog definition and problem-solving. The project manager usually is focused on taking high-level decisions such as distribute tasks, change resources, dates and etc.

Having this in mind the analyst that is making this transition must feel comfortable with some situations where he's gonna have to make decisions faster and with less information, without the presence of the team, the client or any other stakeholder that can provide crucial data. 

Communicate and facilitate

The analyst making this transition to project manager must be a great communicator in his current position. Disseminate information is not enough. You gonna have to be a great listener. You'll need to understand what's being communicated, what's behind it and what's beyond. The product expected from a meeting must be previously communicated to the ones invited so they can get prepared. 

Summing up

Project managers and analysts, they're both leaders. Both have to be excellent communicators, facilitators team leaders, decision-makers and also must know how to deal with a client in different manners. Each role gets you well prepared to migrate to the other. Maybe the migration from analyst to project manager will be easier because of the analyst's technical background, which is not mandatory to a project manager but it might be handy in some situations.