How Many Business Analysts Does it Take to Change a Light Bulb?

How Many Business Analysts Does it Take to Change a Light bulb

With this being an election year, you often hear a lot about budgets, reducing costs, and making things more efficient.  All political candidates promise to balance the budget, reduce costs, and make everything better.  But in order to do all of these things, we need to understand why things cost so much in the first place.

I have been working in the IT industry for a long time.  I started off as a programmer and I am now a business analyst.  Back in the good old days, back when IT cowboys were IT cowboys, changing a light bulb was easy.  You just changed the damn thing.  You didn’t even ask any questions.  Over the years, however, bean counters and analysts got more and more involved until the mere act of changing a light bulb has become an expensive exercise.  Obviously, I am using light bulb changing as a metaphor but this metaphor illustrates what has happened in today’s businesses and government departments.

Here is how it works today.  Some bright spark in senior management decides it would be really great if someone could change a light bulb.  This bright spark might even be the CEO.  This grand vision is passed down to middle management.  Middle management must first try to align this grand vision with the company’s overall vision and strategy.  How does changing a light bulb fit into the strategy?  Is this act consistent with the company vision?  If it is not, then middle management must spin this initiative so it does fit in because when you get right down to it, senior management does not care whether their grand initiative aligns with anything.  A number of strategy meetings are held.  Eventually, once changing a light bulb does align with the company strategy and vision statement, middle management can then worry about cost.  At this point, middle management requires some luck because if the company changes senior management and goes through a restructure, senior management will toss out the current strategic direction and vision statement and come up with a brand new one after going away to some really cool location and spending an expense filled week in luxury coming up with the new vision statement and strategy.  At this point middle management must perform the analysis of light bulb changing all over again but only after making sure the new senior management still wants someone to be able to change a light bulb.  But let’s assume middle management got lucky and senior management stayed in place.  It’s time for. . .

The business architect.  The business architect takes the light bulb changing initiative and tries to fit it in with all of the other business activities.  After a number of meetings a new business architecture diagram is created with light bulb changing taking its proper place.  At this stage the business architect needs a little luck because if senior or middle management changes. . .well, you get the idea.

Next, the light bulb changing initiative is turned into a project.  The project manager needs to commission people to provide an estimate of what is needed to get this grand initiative from conception to reality.  A budget needs to be created and interdepartmental fighting begins for the limited dollars.  If light bulb changing comes from the top or really close to the top, then the departments fight over who gets to carry this out because success means an easier climb up the corporate ladder.

The project manager creates a really nice presentation complete with cost projections, revenue projections, benefits to the business, and risks if the business does not change light bulbs.  This goes to the steering committee, which is usually made up of senior management, and final approval is given probably after a few tweaks here and there.

At long last, enter the humble business analyst.  A business analyst gathers the requirements for any initiative and this is no exception.  Requirements I hear you ask?  What requirements?  This is simple.  Someone needs to change a light bulb.  But we business analysts are not paid the big bucks for simply writing down obvious requirements.  Heck, business analysts aren’t really paid big bucks but that is beside the point.  We’re paid to ask the really tough questions based on the very real principle that despite all the processes which have gone before, senior management have no real clue what they really want.  By the way, in fairness to senior management it is often the case that not until detailed analysis takes place do we truly know what we really want so my previous statement is not a dig at the intelligence or lack thereof of senior management.

In this case, some of the really tough questions a business analyst asks are:

·         Does this apply to one specific light bulb or does light bulb changing need to work for all light bulbs?

OK wait, before I go any further, you the reader might say “what an absolutely stupid question to ask, of course this should apply to all light bulbs.”  Not really.  It all comes down to the money.  Businesses often start off with a grand vision but then that gets reduced when cost comes into it.  Most of the time, the final answer to this question is “We’d really love to be able to change any light bulb anytime, but this is not feasible now so let’s just concentrate on the one light bulb.” 

OK, now back to the really tough questions the BA must ask.

·         What type of light bulbs does this apply to?

·         What is the safety legislation around changing light bulbs?

·         Who is qualified to change light bulbs?

·         What are the approval processes involved before a light bulb can be changed?

·         Where do we get new light bulbs from?  If we engage a regular supplier, we need to get Legal to draft up a contract.

·         What do we do with the old light bulbs?

·         When do we change light bulbs?  For example, do we change them after they have gone out, or do we need some sort of scheduling to anticipate when a light bulb is changed so we experience no outages whatsoever?  If we do have scheduling, does the scheduling agent push a notification to someone alerting them that a light bulb needs to be changed, or does someone simply check the calendar?  And if we do alert someone, what should the alert look like?

·         Do we need an inventory system to keep track of light bulb stock levels?  Do we want an automatic ordering facility to kick in once light bulb levels get low.  And how do we define what a low level is?

·         What is the tolerance level for light bulbs?  How long should these light bulbs last given normal usage?  How much energy should these light bulbs require?  We must perform energy to luminosity analysis to determine the optimal light bulbs.

·         Who will prepare the tender document to source a supplier?

And that’s just a few questions.  There are many other things to consider.  How do we ensure the people delivering light bulbs to the premises are not terrorists?  How do we check light bulbs for explosives?  Do we need qualified chemists for this?  And on and on it goes.  Then, of course, these questions need to be answered and documented before any light bulb can change.

Thus, the short answer to how many business analysts does it take to change a light bulb is zero because business analysts never change them.  They just find out who does, when they do it, and whether they are allowed to stand on one leg while doing so.

There are cases in which heavy duty analysis and planning is required.  If you are designing and building a nuclear submarine, you had better get it right.  The light bulb example serves to show how often trivial things get blown out of proportion within organizations.  I have worked for many organizations and government departments over my 30 year career in IT and I can say with absolute assurance that this sort of thing happens all the time.

If you think governments are immune to this, think again.  Consider the example of entry forms into the United States after September 11.  I am an American who lives in Australia so I often enter the USA from an international location.  I did this sometime after September 11 and was shocked to see the entry form contain this question.

Are you a terrorist or do you belong to any terror organization?

Oh my God are you kidding me!  We can laugh about this but think of what had to happen for that question to appear on the form.  I remember thinking wow, they might as well ask me if I am carrying drugs or whether I belong to an organization which distributes illegal drugs.  Then I discovered those questions were also on the form.  Anyway, think about it.  Somewhere in the bowels of a government agency, planners got together after politicians or management set a mandate to fight terror.  Someone had to propose the wording.  Then the wording needed to be checked to make sure it did not lead to profiling or did not offend some group or race.  Once approved, the new forms needed to be printed en masse.  Then they needed to be distributed to airports and ports all over America.  People had to be trained to deal with these questions.  What if someone answers yes?  Does that mean they are a terrorist or could it mean they are a smartass?  Maybe both.  So training was involved.  How much money went into perhaps the most ridiculous bureaucratic form in world history?

Despite what many people may think, there are some very smart and very good senior executives out there.  Some politicians are also smart and capable.  The problem is, however, that many in positions of leadership are either too incapable or too lazy to truly make an enterprise or government agency more efficient by removing all the ridiculous costs associated with changing a light bulb.  Many leaders are graduates of the hack and slash jobs school of cost reduction.  They are either unaware of, or uncaring of technologies or solutions which could preserve jobs and reduce costs.  They lack the ability to think outside the box enough to run a streamlined and efficient organization.

Like the managers who approved the ridiculous terrorism question on entry forms, they are only interested in protecting themselves and damn the cost.  I hope those running for office this year are able and willing to take the massive costs out of changing light bulbs in today’s organizations and government departments.  It requires flare and hard work and mostly putting the right people in charge who are not afraid to actually make things more efficient and not hack and slash their way to cost savings which ultimately leads to inferior products and services.