Today we meet James Dean from Ireland, a recent participant in The Business Analyst Blueprint® who is thriving as a business analyst in the energy industry.
James shares his journey into business analysis and moving between industries, but also his more recent expansion into leadership roles and training others throughout his company in the business analysis skill set.
One thing I found incredibly inspiring was that James was working on 4 projects when he participated in the program, and he was able to apply what he was learning on-the-job across ALL of those projects straight away.
In one example, he even uncovered a big gap that no one else had noticed, which to me is one of the hallmarks of great business analysis – and one of the many ways his employer received an immediate ROI on their investment in his professional development.
This is the kind of result a lot of our participants experience because of the practical nature of the program, and the opportunity to apply what they are learning on-the-job with ready-at-hand instructor support.
Check out James’ inspiring success story below:
ANDREA WILSON: Well, hello, and welcome to the fabulous James Dean. Glad to have you here with us. James is one of our newest ACBA participants. Welcome to the club of the ACBA certified business analysts.
JAMES DEAN: Thank you, Andrea. It’s good to be here. Thanks for inviting me along.
ANDREA WILSON: James, tell me where you’re from, what you do, and what industry you’re in.
JAMES DEAN: I’m based in Ireland in Dublin, and I’m currently a business analyst with an actual title of business analyst. I know a lot of business analysts that you talk to, they might not have that official title. Within the business analysis domain, it doesn’t depend on your title, it depends on what you’re doing and the skills and techniques you’re using.
But I do have a business analyst title, and I’m currently working in the energy domain for a company called GridBeyond. They help different large corporations reduce their energy costs but increase their revenue. There’s a technical aspect to that as well, which was quite new to me.
As a business analyst, I’ve been constantly on a journey learning different things, different domains, different terminology. One of the key points from this course or key takeaways has been being able to use that terminology or being able to use it in a certain way to help stakeholders understand what energy is and how it can be used in different projects, how we can break it down and different things that. I’ll probably cut there because I can’t remember what the rest of that question was.
ANDREA WILSON: No, that’s okay. You hit location. I want to hear about your title and your industry. I mean, it’s exciting with energy because there are many minor nuances. But you’ve worked as business analyst across different domains. What is that? This is very involved and there are many very technical things. You mentioned that you had not done energy before. Has it been totally different from you moving from domain to domain?
JAMES DEAN: Oh, 100%. Even before I went into my first professional job as a business analyst, I graduated with a Bachelor of Science Honors degree in IT Management. I actually wanted to be a dancer before I went to do anything with IT or anything computer or software related. It was actually my mom who was , “Oh, you computers. Why don’t you just do the computer course?” And I’m , “Okay.” I didn’t know about software development. I didn’t know anything to do with IT. I knew the basics of a computer, but a lot of people that I talked to, if you could get a YouTube video or you can access your emails, or if you could do something that they could never do they were , “Oh, you’re good at computers.” That’s the route I started to go down.
I actually went into computing first year because it’s a four year degree. In your first year you choose which one you want to do, whether it’s software development or whether it’s going to be IT management. Software development just didn’t click with me. It was a lot of technical aspects that I can understand the terminology. I can read code and I can understand what the issue is, but then to write code to fix the problem. That’s where I was, no. It’s not for me.
I went down the other route of IT management, which was more database IT management. You had ITIL in there. You had a different business management. All these different modules. It was only until I started in my first company, which was ERS, Enterprise Registry Solutions, which was in the corporate and business registry domain, completely different to what I’m doing now. I only found out that I actually was doing some sort of business analysis within college. I just didn’t realize. We were doing object oriented analysis and design. We were using state flow diagrams or sequence flow diagrams and at the time, I had no idea. I didn’t even know what business analysis was. I didn’t know what it entailed. I didn’t know much about the role. That’s when I got an interest in it. I am working with people, talking to people, communicating, helping them solve problems. That was what I wanted to do. I had to focus on that. I started to look into it more. I found out about the IIBA, the International Institute of Business Analysis, and I got my Entry-level Certificate in Business Analysis (ECBA).
Then from there, it was more the recognition. When people saw what I was doing within my work, they were , “Oh, this guy can actually do the job.” More work came along. I started to go into product ownership then, a bit of business analysis and product ownership. Still, my main focus was to leverage the skills that I had used. I never had any formal training up until then. The only guidance that I had was senior BAs that I had worked with in the company, but it was to a certain extent, because they were all being pulled left, right and center for different projects.
It was a lot of learning on the job, which was good because I was thrown deep in to the deep end and it was you sink or swim. It actually turned out well because in my first company after a year, I became the lead business analyst on my team. I was actually leading the team of different BAs and I was actually delegating tasks and doing different things. I was constantly learning.
Then I got to a stage where I wanted something new. I went to a different industry. That was the life sciences industry. That was with Eurofins. And from there, completely different; completely different to corporate business industries. But what value I had was I took the experience from ERS and I was applying my communication skills, my different techniques that I was using, which wasn’t a lot. I was using functional specifications. I just talking to people to get to the root cause of a problem. No official techniques until I came across this course.
At the back of my mind, while this was all going on, I’ve always come across Bridging the Gap and I’ve always seen Laura post on LinkedIn and I’ve always been interested with her posts and articles and even the book, her first book, or I think it was one of her first books. I think it’s called “How to Be a BA” or “How to Be a Business Analyst.” Sorry if I got them wrong. But that was a real opening for me where it was, hey, there are actually other people that are actually doing this job. I actually thought it was just a one title, business analyst, and everyone is a business analyst. But the more that I got into my career and the more I got down my journey, I learned that people inside product manager roles are actually doing business analysis, or in project management, or they could be a product owner. There are many different titles. I think that’s the beauty that I found overall in working with business analysts, that it’s not just you’re limited to one role and doing one thing. It opens you up to many different avenues, which then led me on to joining the energy domain.
That was a challenge for me because they wanted someone to come in who would be their first business analyst, official business analyst. They wanted clearer requirements. That was the main ask. And I was like, okay. Well I always want more. I always want to push more and I want to see how does their team work? How does their different processes work? How does the systems work? As a BA I think you have to be curious. You have to be curious of how different systems, processes, how even people work within the company.
What are the different departments? Who do I need to talk to when I go on to different projects? It’s just been a roller coaster of a journey, but a constant learning curve and discovery of how you can apply different techniques, especially from this course now that I have a tool set of techniques that I can go in and I know that I’m confident I’m using them even to train other employees with best practices and say, okay, when we’re creating a process flow diagram. We don’t want to just say, oh, we’re creating a process flow diagram. We want to understand why we’re creating it. And then what do we do with it? We’re using it to analyze a business process. What does it actually involve? It’s not just, “Oh, we just map out all the steps ,”and yeah, that’s it. Away we go. It’s been useful for me because it’s enabled me to show not how long business analysis takes, but to the value that it can bring if you do break it down into smaller chunks and look at it iteratively.
ANDREA WILSON: There’s much to unpack there because you said many amazing things that I think are the experience of business analysts everywhere. You started out with, “I started in IT and I just didn’t take to software development. That just seemed too hard.” Now look at you where you are because a part of what you’re doing as a BA is assisting with that building software. It’s not that you are writing the code, but you have the ability to do what you said, which is communicate.
You have these skills and communication was one of them. And curiosity. That’s where BA starts. You start to be curious and you start to ask questions and you dig and you dig. Exciting there. You mentioned a lot of things too. You were lucky enough to have the title of business analyst and you’ve done it for a very long time. That was time before you came to us, or even before you got to “How to be successful as a business analyst,” with Laura.
JAMES DEAN: Right.
ANDREA WILSON: You came across her material. You were connected on LinkedIn and following. Take me from there to what motivated you to seek your ACBA.
JAMES DEAN: It was more a cost related challenge for me because at the time, when I was in my first company, I did want to do that course. I don’t think it was called, or it had the title of ACBA at the time. I think it was just The Business Analyst Blueprint program. And I did want to look into that, but unfortunately, because my company was funding my training for the ECBA, the certificate for IIBA, the whole process, it just wasn’t enough funding. I always had in the back of my mind, I want to do that one day, I just don’t know when.
When it came to me defining my professional goals within my new company, I just said, “I’m interested in this course. It can allow me to train employees with business analysis,” because they didn’t want to hire another business analyst. They didn’t have the budget, unfortunately. I think that is the case with me companies. But if I could learn the best practices of these key modules, then we can work out a system where I can train different employees to help them do business analysis and that might then bring me value.
It just was mentioned, and then my manager was, “Oh, okay.” It came up again, and then I had to submit a proposal where you have to say what value it would be to the company. How is it going to benefit the company? How’s it going to benefit you?
One of the benefits was, I have this 5 year goal to become Certified Business Analysis Professional (CBAP). It was a stepping stone to help me with that. Not only because it gives me professional development credits, but also it will help me validate that I am actually using these techniques and I am actually doing a good job as a business analyst.
A lot of the time we have imposter syndrome and you think you’re doing a good job and people say, “Oh, yeah, you’re doing great.” Well, you might feel you’re doing great yourself; it’s giving you that extra confidence to then go on and say, “Okay, yeah, I am actually using these practices or these techniques in the best way possible.” I have gotten validation from instructors within the course. Because I had it down as a goal, it was just a matter of getting confirmed that HR or the company was actually happy to proceed with funding of the payment of the course.
It was a bit of back and forth. And then it was literally just a call with the HR manager and she said, “Yeah, that’s fine. We’re happy to go.” I had to give a justification to say it wasn’t going to impact work schedule. I said I’ll do it in the evening and on my weekend. I’m taking it outside of work, even though it is going to be used within work, a real work project. That’s how it came all about.
ANDREA WILSON: You were able to submit justification to your company that they would fund this for you. And then you also agreed, hey, this is not going to impact my work. I can do this outside of my regular work schedule.
You did a fantastic job and you achieved your ACBA. Do you think it was incredibly difficult to do it outside of work? Or was it structured in such a way that you were able to accomplish it and still maintain everything you needed to maintain?
JAMES DEAN: I think at the start, I thought I would only have to commit many hours. But then going through each of the exercises within the workbook, I need to commit more time to this. And I think I was taking it from the perspective of: this is a project. Although I’m doing a project in work, I’m looking at it as, okay, it’s going to be iterative. It’s not just going to be a one and done. I’m going to fill out this this section here and that’s it. Close the workbook, James, and go away. It’s going to be, okay, I’m going to fill out here. And when I get to say section three or four, I might have to go back and reword that or make sure I’m using the correct terminology and make sure that there’s consistency there. I was thinking everything I was writing within each of the sections within the workbook is a requirement.
Making sure that it made sense, making sure that it was complete, concise, and that it could be measured and things that. Just because of my business mindset, that’s the way I was approaching it. At the start, I was able to give a lot more time, but then before I finished the whole entire course, and I achieved my ACBA, different stakeholders within the company were already seeing the value that was being benefited. I was already being assigned to new projects or being asked to look into this. That took up a lot more of time.
When I got to Module 3, which was the data modeling, that was a little bit challenging for me because I had to juggle more time with allowing more time to commit to the actual workbook as well as not having an impact on my work schedule.
But overall, I did have a high level plan that I mapped out and it was I’m not going to watch Netflix. I’m not going to watch TikTok or anything like that because one video turns into 20. Because I just had such a motivation from even reading the schedule and what was involved, I just had such a curiosity of how it was going to work, I just kept saying to myself “I’m not just doing it because my company is paying for it. I’m doing it to benefit me, to make me feel more confident as a business analyst, to bring more value to my company that it can benefit them that they can then benefit other employees that I can train other employees.”
All of these different things came out my mind. I just kept reiterating that in my mind not to give up, basically, for anyone that’s doing the ACBA course you can get to a stage where you might hit a roadblock, or you might come across a certain module that you’re, “Oh my God, this is just, I’m not getting it.” That can happen, and that’s okay. We have amazing instructors, Andrea, that’s there to support and guide and you’re going to get through.
I would say it’s a matter of commitments. When you commit to something, make sure you commit to it.
If you come across a roadblock or a problem or a challenge, reach out for support.
ANDREA WILSON: You said something exciting there. You hit that challenge of wait a minute, I thought I was going to need to put in this amount of time, I needed to put in that amount of time. But you started out with a plan. You said, I’m going to treat this as a project. Work projects that work.
Or I have a commitment here, you follow that. Maybe a little less Netflix and a little less TikTok. It’ll get you down a rabbit hole. But you wanted to finish it in spite of challenges that arose with maybe a little bit of difficulties. You reached out to the instructor team and you got what you needed, it looks like.
But not only did you finish, you said you started to show value early on at work, and they started to see it. Take me there. Tell me what occurred there.
JAMES DEAN: I was using 1 main project throughout the course, but what you guys don’t know on the side, I was applying the different practices or techniques within a module to different projects that I was on because I wasn’t just assigned to 1 project. I was on 4.
There was 1 project in particular where we were trying to optimize and trade for different customer batteries within the company. Basically to make the company more money, but make the customer more money as well. We had this whole trade application or product that we wanted to build.
This project had started a year prior before I joined the company. They wanted me on the project just to, again, get clear requirements. That can be quite ambiguous. I mean, clear requirements. What does that mean? Do you mean planning? Do you mean actually scoping it out? Do you mean managing the requirements? many questions.
When I was assigned, that’s the first thing I was, okay, what’s the scope? What’s in scope? What’s out scope? What are we trying to achieve? What are the goals? What are the objectives? Who are my stakeholders? All of these different kinds of questions came up.
But mainly, at the time, I was doing the business process analysis module, which was fantastic because I had always used business processes or process flow diagram, but not to an extent of, delivering value, I suppose, getting into the ins and outs, the inputs, the outputs, what’s involved, the steps. I was mainly focusing from what do they actually do just to understand the process, but I didn’t take a step further to actually analyze. I don’t think I understood that at the time. I’ve been using that l in my first company, but more to say, okay, yeah, this is what they do. This is what we need to do now in the system, but that was to the extent it wasn’t the ins and outs.
With this particular project, I remember we were on many calls and many different stakeholders were going around in circles. We couldn’t understand or I couldn’t understand what the angle of that particular project was. What I decided to do was just map out a process flow diagram and literally put in all of the high level steps that are involved with this one process. What are we trying to achieve for this particular project? It wasn’t a business process, but it was more about all the different things that we need to do in order to achieve the goal of this project. What we found by doing that, or what I found when I actually modeled it to the different stakeholders, we found a gap straight away. We found a gap where we didn’t have a solution for one step within that actual process. That involved taking it away. We had to actually do some identification of solution options to then evaluate which one would be the most cost effective.
The bad part was that it had a knock on effect with the timeline and the delivery date that was set, which was strange because I’m not sure how anyone didn’t come across this. But people did thank me for pointing out that, oh, we did find this gap, but it just had a knock on effect with everything. It pushed out deadlines, it increased our scope, and it involved a lot more discussions.
But if we didn’t find that gap, and we tried to go live, we would have been in a worse position. That was one example where not the project that I was using throughout the course, but the techniques and the way that the technique was taught for business process analysis, I was able to use that on a different project to then identify the gaps that we might have missed if we didn’t actually model the whole flow and actually do me analysis.
ANDREA WILSON: You said a lot there. With your BA work, as business process, as oftentimes we find that, okay, just tell me the process and you document the process. You’ve got your flow chart and you know what the process is, but you took this a bit deeper now with the skills that you grabbed through the business process analysis module. That’s looking at the entire thing in the end, not just the process, but what’s going in, what’s coming out. And more importantly, what is the goal we’re trying to achieve?
You had this huge win. You found this gap and finding that gap allowed you to identify a timeline too. We’ve got to step back and look at this for real. And while it might not have been what your stakeholders wanted to hear at the time, it ended up being just what they needed to hear. Kudos on that early on.
I love that we talked about this because now I have this awesome question for you, and that’s, you came into this ACBA program already having served as president in an IIBA chapter. And you had already done an exam for your ECBA?
JAMES DEAN: Yes.
ANDREA WILSON: Tell me what’s different between the two. The burning question I think folks might ask if you were already certified there, why do this? I think it’s important for people to understand not just the difference, but why this growth needed to occur.
JAMES DEAN: Yeah, 100%. It was one thing that I was thinking of before I started the ACBA that was like, oh, I actually have this business experience. Is the ACBA going to be like ECBA or CCBA or other certification programs that are out there? I think it’s a great question and it’s a valuable question. It’s a valid question to ask.
I think with ECBA, that’s mainly the structure of the BABOK guides. It’s the Business Analyst Body of Knowledge. I do get a few messages about this on different connections on LinkedIn. The way that I explain it is that the ECBA sets you up to understand the different terminology and definitions within the BABOK guides. The BABOK guide is just a guide to how to do business analysis. It’s not a step to how to do business analysis. It’s a guide of what you should be doing or what you should be considering.
But the difference with the ECBA and the ACBA, not to get them confused, is the ACBA, I feel, is much more valuable because you can apply real world experiences using these different techniques and tools that are taught throughout the course.
If I was just doing say a LinkedIn course, where you’re clicking through different videos, it’s just giving you a broad understanding of what business process analysis is. By doing the ACBA, you can actually take away what’s being instructed by the instructors and then apply it to different situations. Even if you’re not working as a business analyst or you’re not working in an IT section, you can use it within any job that you’re doing or even volunteer work. If I wasn’t a business analyst, I can see many ways that I can now bring these techniques to the IIBA Ireland chapter and to structure more to plan out.
If we’re doing a particular professional development initiative, we can scope it out a bit better. We need to identify our stakeholders. We need to understand what are our goals, what are our objectives, how do we measure those? By using the different techniques within the ACBA, it’s a lot more valuable because you’re getting that verification that you’re using them the correct way. You’re getting different feedback from different instructors. You know that you’re on the right track. Whereas if you’re doing the ECBA, it’s just an exam. It’s validating that you know the difference between the terms and the definitions within the BABOK and the different types of stakeholders. What is a project manager? What is a business analyst? Things like that. What are the key knowledge areas? I’d say that that would be the main difference.
ANDREA WILSON: Very good explanation. We hear this a lot. If I’ve done this, then why do I need this? Or help me choose between the two. It’s not that one is any better than the other. There’s value in them and there’s value in them together. You can validate that you have this knowledge of these terms and the entire BABOK. And you can say that I’ve got this passed exam, but you can also say over here with the ACBA that you have this other knowledge. This knowledge here is also important. There’s value here in applying the knowledge you have over here, and you get that opportunity to practice it with your ACBA.
JAMES DEAN: Exactly. It’s all about being able to apply the techniques in different situations. And as a business analyst, I think by doing any course, you’re not going to know how to apply the techniques to every single situation that you would come across as a BA, but with the ACBA, it does give you the core techniques and practices that you can use to then figure out how you can apply it to different situations as you work as a BA.
ANDREA WILSON: Cool. Is there anything you would like to say to anyone who might be considering doing their ACBA?
JAMES DEAN: I’d say go for it. Don’t hold back. It may seem challenging at the at the start, especially if there’s a lot of different modules or terminology that you’re not familiar with. I would say for me, data modeling, the third module in the course, was completely new to me. I did work with some system analysts or solution architects in the past, but very briefly looking at entity relationship diagrams, but I never knew, myself, how to go about creating it, how the requirements would be fed in from a stakeholder, or when you’re eliciting from a stakeholder, how you would actually elicit them to then feed it into in ERD, and then how it maps to the different techniques like the data dictionary and how that then applies to if you’re using UI software elements, how the data dictionary will dictate the data fields and the data validation and the rules, and the min and the max, and all those things that need to be considered for data requirements. It was a whole eye opener for me, but absolutely brilliant experience because I never thought that that part would be valuable as a business analyst. I always thought that would be more technical, or with the development team database. But I can see much value in the way it’s taught in the ACBA course, how we can use it as business analysts within any project that we’re doing that involves data requirements or data mapping, data integration, or things like that.
I would say, if you’re thinking of any particular module that you’re like, “Oh, I don’t know about that,” I would say, give it a go, because, for me, this course has been one of the best experiences because it’s given me the confidence to now go forward and use these techniques. Although I might have been using me of them before, it’s given me the confidence that, hey, I actually know exactly how to use them. I’ve gotten that confirmation from my instructors. I’ve gotten the feedback. I’ve applied the feedback, and I’ve used it on a project that I’ve been working with.
It’s been a value to me to see how it’s being worked, but also within my company, because they’re like, “Oh, okay. We can see how now these techniques,” for example, my project manager, she was like, “Oh, I think I need to do more business process analysis, or when I’m scoping out a project and you’re not involved, I can do some use cases.” It’s enabled different people within the company to not…I think a lot of times people think it’s a business analyst, and they just do all the requirements. We just write all the requirements, hand it over to the development team, and then that’s it. We go away, we go to the next project, but it’s so much more.
By doing this course, even the last module, it gives you the best practices and the eight steps that you can apply to any project, which has been beneficial for me because I’m able to now go to senior stakeholders and say, “Hey, not that we need to use all of these eight steps when we’re doing all of these projects, but this is what we should consider. We need to consider what part we’re on.” I’ll give you an example.
Last week, I was assigned to a new project where we’re building a new product for something. The first thing I asked, I was, “What are we building it for? What’s the problem we’re trying to solve? What’s the opportunity we’re trying to address?” And I still haven’t got that clear answer. That’s an ongoing discussion. Before, the expectation from the person who’s going to assign me to that project is just to start developing straight away. But hold on, we need to take a step back. I’m thinking of the 8 steps. We need to actually identify who our stakeholders are, identify our business objectives, determine our scope, we need to come up with a solution approach.
All of this, if it’s already been considered, then I need to review that documentation, I need to do me document analysis, or I need to use different techniques to actually analyze the solution approach so that we can ensure that, okay, this is the right way forward.
But until I know all of these answers to the questions that I have, we can’t just jump straight into development. It’s not the best way to do it as well because I, as a business analyst, because we work with the development team, we need to understand what we’re trying to achieve so that we can actually help the development team understand the value that they’re going to deliver by building X feature or capability. And if we don’t understand that, and we don’t understand why we’re doing something, then it’s of no value to us. It’s of no value to the team. We could have end up building something or developing something that won’t be used by the user or won’t be used by the customer. And we don’t want to be in that situation.
Although it might seem if you’re using these techniques with your senior stakeholders or seeing different stakeholders within different projects, there might be a bit of pushback. But if you explain the value by doing, not an entirely upfront analysis, but the key analysis, I would say, at the start of a project, then it enables you to bring value in the whole project because you’re going to miss anything, or you’d be less likely to miss something as you go through the project.
ANDREA WILSON: Well, well, let me just applaud you here, because what I heard you say is this non software developer person who just felt this was not their area has now gone through this program and learned to communicate better and the value of communicating with developers and even learning a little bit about data modeling without having to do any coding.
You are now able to talk to your project manager and your development team and explain to them why we don’t need to go forward yet until some key information is identified to save us from ourselves. We can build something and that’s awesome. It sounds like we have an idea of what we want to build, but we need to step back. Why are we building it?
This framework you’re mentioning, I think it’s important to mention here that 8 step framework is a part of the final module of The Business Analysis Blueprint, and that brings it together and makes you ask these very important questions before you even get started. Why are we here? What are we trying to achieve? Who are the people that need to be involved? Where is it we’re trying to go? And you felt the confidence, then, to say, “Hey, we’re not going anywhere yet. Let’s get these answers.”
JAMES DEAN: Yes, because previously I would just shut up and get on with it. But then as you get through the project, I’ve been on a project before and if I had asked the question at the start, we might have been in a situation where we are now, or where we were prior, before thinking. But now I know that we can, as business analysts, question not to be difficult, but to ensure that we’re solving the right problem that we’re identifying.
If we’re going to be building the solution, how are we going to measure it, and who do I need to talk to actually elicit the requirements? I think that’s important, the key things that are important. Because a lot of people, especially in some companies that I’ve worked with don’t see the value of identifying stakeholders. But if you don’t identify stakeholders, you could have a missed requirement and you could have a critical missed requirement or a process that needs to be included within the solution.
I’ll give you another example where I was using the use cases and wireframes module and using the different techniques within another project that I was working on. We had just created a use case diagram with the different use cases. And then the plan was to iteratively take each of those use cases and use the use case documents within the course to go through each of the flow.
What we found by even mapping out just the use cases, the assumption was made that there was only one stakeholder group involved. When anyone says it’s just one I think it’s from my experience that it’s never just one, it’s always at least two. I was like I need to verify that. I don’t like assumptions. I always validate assumptions because at least we know if we validate something, at least we’ve got our answer. We’ve done a bit of analysis just by looking at the different use cases and how each use case flew or flowed together within the whole journey of the solution.
Straight away we found there was a gap. There was a key stakeholder that was missing, which would, it was the frequency template project where this particular stakeholder, once the frequency templates were created, they needed to use them in a different area of the system.
Because we were changing this whole solution of how it worked, it had an impact on this particular business process that was missed for the stakeholder group, we were able to use the use case analysis, and the wireframes part of that course to actually say, “Oh, okay. We actually need to talk to them too to understand what do they need to do and how does this impact them.” By using the mixture of the use case of module two, and the last module by identifying stakeholders, it actually, then, did not increase the scope, but it identified a missed requirement, and that could have led to rework if we had got further into the solution and the development parts.
I think that was valuable by using that technique that we were able to literally see, okay, yeah, this stakeholder is missing from the solution. How did we know that? Well, because when I was using, I can’t remember exactly what step, but when you’re trying to determine the scope, and you’re identifying your primary stakeholders, and you’re understanding the existing systems and processes by looking at a particular process and how that fed in with the solution that we were proposing, it enabled me to then say, “Oh, this, this stakeholder, what about him? He needs to be considered.” That was one part that was valuable.
ANDREA WILSON: Nice. I think we’ve touched on every module of the course. That’s awesome. It sounds like you had me major impact here from every module and that has allowed you to make some very big wins with your current employer and I am looking forward to hearing more about those new wins that will come along.
I will congratulate you again on earning your ACBA.
JAMES DEAN: Thank you.
ANDREA WILSON: My hat’s off to you. Kudos for doing that and adding to your list of achievements. Thank you again, James, for visiting with us and sharing all of this information.
I enjoyed you as my own participant as a part of the program, and I’ve been watching things that you’re doing, and I just can’t wait to see what happens next.
JAMES DEAN: Thank you so much.
ANDREA WILSON: Thank you for joining us.
JAMES DEAN: Yeah, thanks so much for all of your support and guidance. Of course, I couldn’t have done it without you, so thanks so much.
ANDREA WILSON: Awesome. I’m glad to see everything you’ve achieved, James. Thank you again for our meeting with us today.
JAMES DEAN: Thank you. Thank you Andrea.
