The Art and Power of Facilitation

Alice Zavala PMP, Kathleen B. Hass PMP

• Publisher: Berrett-Koehler Publishers
• Year: 2007
• Print ISBN: 9781567262124
• eBook ISBN: 9781567263473
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Betriebswirtschaft
• Subtopic: Industriemanagement

A Volume of the Business Analysis Essential Library Series The heart of the business analyst's role is to drive various constituencies through processes to achieve consensus on the needs of the business. Successfully facilitating meetings — whether a one-on-one interview or a larger presentation — is essential to business analysis. The Art and Power of Facilitation: Running Powerful Meetings provides powerful tools that the business analyst can use to negotiate through the myriad of meetings, informal work sessions, and formal workshops that are necessary to develop business requirements.

Chapter 1

To Meet or Not to Meet, That Is the Question

In This Chapter:

• Think Before You Meet
• Meeting Types

The business analyst uses different types of meetings—one-on-one interviews, small-group working sessions, or formal requirements elicitation workshops—and various facilitation techniques to get the job done. The ability to plan and facilitate effective meetings, bring a group to consensus, and drive resolution of issues and conflicts is essential to the successful business analyst. Therefore, meeting planning and facilitation is at the core of the business analyst’s skill set. As Ellen Gottesdiener notes in Requirements by Collaboration:¹

The cost of ineffective meetings is staggering. The average person attends seven to ten meetings a week, half of which are unproductive, and the average meeting involves nine people … who have as little as two hours’ prior notice.

People come together in teams to complete project work, and yet the underlying group meeting process is often poorly managed. The successful business analyst becomes adept at planning and facilitating sessions for groups of people, conscious and respectful of the participants’ time. As facilitator, the business analyst is ever mindful that when people work in teams, there are two equally challenging dynamics at play. Being results-oriented by nature, people focus on the purpose of the meeting, so that work is actually accomplished. Frequently this is the only issue team members consider. The second dimension of meetings is the process of the group work itself—the mechanisms by which the group acts as a team and not simply as people who happen to be together in a room.

If due attention is not paid to the meeting process, the value of bringing people together can be diminished. Expert management of the meeting process can enhance the value of the group to many times the sum of the worth of the individuals. It is this synergy that makes project work rewarding. The astute business analyst examines the group process and discovers how to quickly transition a group of people that have come together in a meeting into a highly effective team. The goal is for the group of people at the business analysis meeting to be viewed as an important resource whose time and effort must be managed just like any other corporate asset.²

Think Before You Meet

Meeting facilitation and management skills are often overlooked by both project managers and business analysts, the critical project team members who lead multiple kinds of meetings. Because it is clear that meetings are very expensive activities when the cost of labor for the meeting participants and the opportunity cost of spending time on a more effective activity are considered, the professional business analyst takes meeting facilitation and management very seriously.

The first thing to determine is whether a meeting is truly required. For the business analyst, the answer to this question is often a resounding “yes,” but let us explore the question a little further. According to Miranda Duncan³, there are several reasons to hold a meeting, which are shown in Table 1-1.

Table 1-1—Purposes and Goals at Meetings

Meeting Purpose	Goal
Information exchange	Acquiring or disseminating information, or both
Self-awareness or consciousness-raising	Building support
Learning	Imparting knowledge and skills
Creative thinking	Generating ideas, innovation
Critical thinking	Analysis, goal setting, problem-solving, decision-making
Accomplishing tasks	Creating work products, e.g., requirements statements and models
Team building	Building relationships and commitment

Clearly, the business analyst needs to accomplish all the goals in Table 1-1 from time to time. However, it is not always necessary to hold a meeting to accomplish a goal. Sometimes alternatives to holding a meeting just might work as well or even better. Consider the alternatives shown in Table 1-2.

Table 1-2—Alte...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• About the Authors
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• About this Book
• Chapter 1 - To Meet or Not to Meet, That is the Question
• Chapter 2 - Meeting Management Best Practices
• Chapter 3 - Facilitation—It’s an Art and a Science
• Chapter 4 - The Business Analyst’s Facilitation Toolkit
• Chapter 5 - Requirements Elicitation Meetings
• Chapter 6 - Requirements Analysis Meetings
• Chapter 7 - Requirements Specification Review Meetings
• Chapter 8 - Deliverable Verification and Validation Meetings
• Chapter 9 - Closing Comments
• Index