Pleasure. Passion. Purpose.

Saw a tweet today by @ChrisBrogan, "Pleasure. Passion. Purpose. - three types of happiness, reported by @zappos in Delivering Happiness." This was a new perspective for me. As a Business Analyst, its important to help foster happiness for both business and technical team members alike. A challenge at times, because everyone has different pleasures, passions and purposes. A few years ago, I joined a team after most of group had already formed. Additionally, two of the team members had applied for my job, creating some hostility toward me, even before they knew me. So how did I overcome it?

Playing dumb served me well in this case. The technical teams knew their jobs and had definite ideas how things should work. The business was tired of not having a voice with the team. First, I worked daily with one of the two competitors for my job. I let him know that I was new, and needed him to teach me. Constant stroking of his ego became a task I eagerly accepted. Eventually, I let him know that he was MUCH too valuable as a technical expert to be a "lowly" Business Analyst. As far as the second competitor, he took his queues from the first and eventually quieted down, too. For the whole technical team, we held weekly meetings where they brought me their "wish lists" of how they wanted things to work. Most of them were simple and easy to implement. The biggest challenge, they wanted the Project Manager gone stating too many meetings and little time to actually produce the work. When the Test Analyst and the key stakeholders also expressed the same concern, I did my best to reduce their meeting load, but eventually asked to have the Project Manager reassigned and I served as PM until a replacement was identified. It worked! I had gained the respect of the team. And the new PM was GREAT! Everybody (business and stakeholders) loved her! From then on, the tasks rolled out quickly.

So when we, as Business Analysts, look at root causes for issues with any team, don't forget to consider the dynamics of the personalities. I find it important to understand how the team members prefer to work. Some like to have daily scrum sessions, others are very independent and disciplined workers. I like to tailor the project approach to the team members and avoid forcing them into some methodology. A happy team, is a productive team.

It doesn't hurt to offer movies and popcorn once in a while, too. Even if it is in the company auditorium (during office hours, of course). Cheap and effective teambuilding time.