Wednesday, April 30, 2008
I was just putting a presentation together for the Michigan Council of Women in Technology (MCWT), http://www.mcwt.org/ , called “Negotiations for Amateurs”. As I was putting the presentation together, brushing up on my negotiations knowledge and recollecting my experiences I made this interesting connection. I am sure others probably have also, but I thought I would throw this out there to find out.
Negotiations has always been a key skill for business analysts. Requirement priorities – negotiate. More time needed for analysis – negotiate. Package requirements into releases – negotiate. I think you get the point. But as I reviewed the formal steps of negotiations and the key to making negotiations work, I seemed to find similarities between the steps in the negotiation process and those in gathering requirements. As I stress to my requirement workshop participants – focus on the why – the business reason or the need. Do not jump to solutions. But in negotiations the tendency is also to jump to solutions or to just state your position. The key to effective negotiations is that you also have to get to the why – the interests. If you don’t get to the interests then you are not giving much value to what you are negotiating for or giving each of you a chance for that win/win.
So learning negotiations can help a business analyst in many ways! You may want to check out the book “The Negotiation Fieldbook” by Grande Lum. Short read with some nice examples.
Article written by: Gina Schwalm, PMP, CBAP, Business Analysis Curricula Practice Owner, TEKsystems Partner via Lighthouse Consulting Partners
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