When software products are late to launch, a practical solution is to drop features from a release while still delivering a product your customers will love. If part of your process is to tie business objectives to product features, you'll have at hand the information needed to decide how to proceed-as well as a guide to prioritize development efforts throughout the project. Joy Beatty explains how to elicit measurable business objectives from stakeholders. She demonstrates how to write statements that describe how a feature contributes to business objectives and ways to assign a business value to each feature. Armed with this data, stakeholders can compare features quantitatively, taking emotion out of scoping decisions. As a reminder of the techniques discussed, Joy shares a Business Objectives Model quick reference for you to take home and use in your requirements elicitation sessions.

1.
BW2
Concurrent Session
11/7/2012 10:15 AM
"Using Business Objectives to Design
Better Products"
Presented by:
Joy Beatty
Blue Ocean Services at Seilevel, Inc.
Brought to you by:
340 Corporate Way, Suite 300, Orange Park, FL 32073
888‐268‐8770 ∙ 904‐278‐0524 ∙ sqeinfo@sqe.com ∙ www.sqe.com

2. Joy Beatty
Seilevel
Joy Beatty is vice president R&D at Seilevel, a professional services company helping customers redefine
how they create requirements to ensure only the most valuable features get built. Joy drives new
methodologies that improve elicitation, requirements modeling, and business analysis COEs. She developed
Seilevel’s BA training curriculum and provided training to more than 600 BAs through seminars, industry
conferences, and Seilevel classes. She has authored several papers in refereed journals, is currently working
on the IIBA® BABOK v3, and writes about Seilevel methodologies on seilevel.com, on the blog, and in a
new book Visual Software Requirements.

3. Using Business
Objectives to
Launch Better
Products
Seilevel Training Series
Joy Beatty
© Seilevel, Inc. All rights reserved
joy.beatty@seilevel.com
Agenda
Why we need to cut scope
Business objectives defined
Using business objectives to
select features
© Seilevel, Inc. All rights reserved
1

4. A long
time ago
in a galaxy
far, far away…
Blue, the BA,
focused his battle
strategies on
ON-TIME DELIVERY
© Seilevel, Inc. All rights reserved
But today,
it’s not enough,
budgets are being
CUT DRASTICALLY
65% of features can be cut
X
© Seilevel, Inc. All rights reserved
feature feature
feature
feature
feature
feature
feature
feature
feature
feature
X
X
X
X
X
2

5. We have difficult decisions to make about
cutting scope
© Seilevel, Inc. All rights reserved
How do we decide what features to
cut?
Does the squeakiest wheel get to build their features?
Does the most senior member of the team pick?
Why don’t we roll the dice?
Can you justify the value of your most needed features?
© Seilevel, Inc. All rights reserved
Select features that add the
most value by using….
BUSINESS OBJECTIVES!
3

6. Agenda
Why we need to cut scope
Business objectives defined
Using business objectives to
select features
© Seilevel, Inc. All rights reserved
What’s your definition of a business
objective?
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Measureable target that specifies when
the business problem is solved
4

7. How can we identify business objectives?
Confidently ask “why” stakeholders are
doing the project
Understand the problem they are trying to
solve
BUSINESS
PROBLEM
BUSINESS
OBJECTIVE
© Seilevel, Inc. All rights reserved
It’s okay to not know!
Copyright Seilevel
Focus on money
Business objectives relate to “money”
Reduce costs
Increase revenue
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5

8. PDM Secrets
Revealed
Inside!
Popular
Business
Analyst
Attire
Monkey
Wins
Elicitation
Contest
See inside
for “Our
Top BA
Model”
October. Issue 007
The
Best &
Worst
of 2012
Work with a
partner to identify
your best and
your worst
business
objectives
© Seilevel, Inc. All rights reserved
Cover story: Look at what companies set
as the best business objectives of the year
and where they simply fell flat
Agenda
Why we need to cut scope
Business objectives defined
Using business objectives to
select features
© Seilevel, Inc. All rights reserved
6

9. Typical business analysis approach
SUCCESS
METRICS
PRODUCT
CONCEPT
PRODUCT
FEATURES
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A business objectives approach
Product Concept
may have changed
PRODUCT
CONCEPT
BUSINESS
PROBLEM
BUSINESS
OBJECTIVE
FEATURES
PRODUCT
CONCEPT
FEATURES
Features may
have changed
© Seilevel, Inc. All rights reserved
1

10. The Business Objectives Model
BUSINESS
PROBLEM 3
BUSINESS
OBJECTIVE 1
BUSINESS
PROBLEM 1
BUSINESS
OBJECTIVE 4
BUSINESS
PROBLEM 4
BUSINESS
OBJECTIVE 2
PRODUCT
CONCEPT
FEATURE 1
BUSINESS
OBJECTIVE 5
FEATURE 2
BUSINESS
PROBLEM 5
BUSINESS
PROBLEM 2
FEATURE 3
BUSINESS
OBJECTIVE 3
BUSINESS
OBJECTIVE 6
BUSINESS
PROBLEM 6
© Seilevel, Inc. All rights reserved
Example of a Business Objective Model
PRODUCT
CONCEPT
ONLINE
TRAINING
BUSINESS PROBLEM 1
SALES PEOPLE
NOT SELLING
ENOUGH
PRODUCTS
BUSINESS OBJECTIVE 1
BUSINESS PROBLEM 2
INCREASE
SALES TO
$1 MILLION
SALES PEOPLE
DON’T
UNDERSTAND
PRODUCTS
BUSINESS OBJECTIVE 2
PROVIDE
TRAINING TO
SALES PEOPLE
TRAINING
SURVEYS
DOWNLOADABLE TRAINING
© Seilevel, Inc. All rights reserved
2

11. We can use Objective Chains to select
features
Evaluate the value
of features or sets
of features
INCREASE REVENUE/
DECREASE COSTS
Objective Factor
Objective Factor
Objective Factor
Objective Factor
© Seilevel, Inc. All rights reserved
FEATURES
Objective
Equations
Data
Needs
FEATURES
Example of an Objective Chain
Current state & Assumptions:
1000 sales reps
600 take training today
90% pass tests if trained
25% pass tests if not trained
640 pass tests today
INCREASE REVENUE
Increasing # sales reps who passed
tests increases sales
$39K increase in sales
($200 x 195 new passed
tests)
Taking training before tests
increases # passed tests
Providing training options
outside classroom increases
participation
835 pass tests now
(90% of 900 + 25% of 100)
Participation
increases by 30%
© Seilevel, Inc. All rights reserved
Providing online training
increases
# of reps taking training
300 more reps
take training
(30% of 1000)
ONLINE
TRAINING
Providing offline training
increases
# of reps taking training
DOWNLOADABLE
TRAINING
$39,000
$3,600
Participation increases
by 2%
Feature value = $3.6K
3

12. Agenda
Why we need to cut scope
Business objectives defined
Using business objectives to
select features
© Seilevel, Inc. All rights reserved
Why don’t you have business objectives?
Confusion about what business objectives are
Management won’t tell us
Stakeholders don’t want to be measured
Stakeholders don’t actually agree on the objectives
© Seilevel, Inc. All rights reserved
4

13. There are challenges in measuring the
value of features
Complaints about time to write and
evaluate
Data isn’t collected today
Organizations don’t want to take time
to measure
© Seilevel, Inc. All rights reserved
Business objectives aren’t defined to
use in prioritization
What if I can’t do this?
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5

14. Take-away: You get a business objectives
cheat sheet!
© Seilevel, Inc. All rights reserved
What questions do you have?
joy.beatty@seilevel.com
www.seilevel.com/blog
www.seilevel.com/resources
© Seilevel, Inc. All rights reserved
6