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Business Analysis and Leadership: Influencing Change

Do you work with business change?

Do you strive to understand organizations undergoing change, define what’s needed and deliver value?

Do you work towards the delivery of real and lasting benefits?

Then this new book and website is for you! Please have a look around and join in the conversation. You can click on the pictures below for a quick overview, use the menu above for a more in-depth look and sign up to the right to hear more about business analysis and leadership occasionally and when we release new resources. Thank you!

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Self

The book starts off by exploring how you can work on yourself to become a leader, with contributions on:

Skills

Courage

Facilitative leadership

Communication

This section concludes with a question: ‘Are you waiting to be annointed?

Project
The next section looks at all aspects of leadership within your own project:

Working with project managers

Difficult stakeholders

Facilitation

Problems

Visual thinking

Design thinking

Agile

Patterns

Uncertainty

Creativity

Organization
Effective business analysis deals more widely than just the project, so leadership across the organization is important. We look at:

Operating effectively

Context, climate and culture

Global working

Systems thinking

Power and Politics

Partnering

Strategic thinking

The section ends with an opinion piece entitled: ‘Leading from the Middle’

In the wider world
The best business analysts will have a reach well beyond their organizations. You can read more in this section about:

The leadership role

Thought leadership

Ethics and fair process

Professionalization

The section ends with an inspiring piece about being a change agent and an endpiece story, which integrates business analysis, creativity and play.

The contributors

Dr Penny Pullan and James Archer co-edited the book, writing several chapters each. There are twenty-six authors in addition, drawn from across the Business Analysis community worldwide and those who serve business analysts in their professional lives. The editors knew many of the authors from the Business Analysis Europe conference over the years or from Penny’s BA Summit.

The full list of authors includes:

David Baskerville
Dav Bisessar
Kevin Brennan
Michael Brown
Sarah Coleman
Joseph da Silva
Nick de Voil

Simon Edwards
Tamsin Fulton
Allan Kelly
Alan Kendall
Emma Langman
Jake Markham
Chris Matts

Roger Mawle
Kent J McDonald
Ruth Murray-Webster
John Niland
Vanessa Randle
Adrian Reed
James Robertson

Suzanne Robertson
Melanie Rose
Kate Stuart-Cox
Corrine Thomas
Andy Wilkins

You can see the authors’ pictures and learn more about them here.

What people say:

As far as books go, this might take the BA biscuit! Very excited about this…!

Georgiana Mannion, Senior Business Analyst (via Twitter)

A good range of topics, will be good reading for my commute.

Brian Simpson, Lead Business Analyst (via Twitter)

I always suspected BAs were in a position of power and leadership, but always doubted it. This evening’s IIBA event showed me how we are (in a position of power and leadership), and if the book is as good as the evening, it will be too.

Sally Hopper, Business Analyst (after an event with seven of the authors)

This book draws together a diverse set of sources to help a BA to gain a deeper understanding of what it takes to be a change leader from any perspective.

Kathleen Barret, former CEO of the IIBA [from the back cover]

It is vital that business analysts adopt a leadership role and this book will provide a valuable resource to enable them to do so.

Debra Paul, MD AssistKD and bestselling BA author [from the Foreword]

This inspirational book consists of contributions from leading thinkers and practitioners in business analysis around the world, blending together a wide range of perspectives. Their case studies and practical advice will support you in becoming an outstanding influencer of change. Topics covered include:

facilitative leadership
working with the project manager
dealing with difficult stakeholders
the iterative business analyst
global working and virtual teams
systems thinking
power and politics
strategic thinking
becoming a thought leader
ethics, professionalization and best practice
developing your skills, and the courage to apply them
communication and negotiation

Whatever your job title, if you are involved in business analysis in any way, you will find this book and this website invaluable.

Find out more about the editors Penny Pullan and James Archer. Find out more about the authors here.