Do you remember being six years old curious about everything? I know my 2 six year olds are constantly asking ‘why’ and according to my parents, so did I. Just yesterday, pulling into the gas station I hear:
Why are we stopping here?
Me: We need gas
Why?
Me: Because the car is low on gas and we won’t make it home without it
Why?
Me: Because cars need gas to drive
Why?
Me: Because that is the way they are designed
Why?
You can see where this is going….
Being a Business Analyst is often the professional equivalent of being an annoying 6 year old child and I’m sure our stakeholders sometimes views us with the same annoyance as a parent; but, if the 6 year old was expected to design a new car or find an alternative to using gas to power cars, then they would need to ask these questions just as a Business Analyst would when determining business need.
When conducting Enterprise Analysis, trying to determine the business need or root cause of the problem, asking why is often the best tool a BA has, specifically the ‘5 Whys’. The first time I heard about the 5 whys was when I started my second BA position with a new company whose technology and practices I was completely unfamiliar with. Coming from a place where I was a business SME in addition to a BA, the unknown of this new company was very unsettling; a mentor suggested I use the 5 why’s to determine the business need for a project I was just assigned. The 5 why’s was a new concept to me and when I swallowed my pride and asked what this was, I learned it’s the simplest yet often a difficult skill for some BA’s to master, asking why repeatedly (often 5 times but not always) until you are convinced you have identified the actual root cause and business need.
Asking why is the easy part but asking why several times when each time the stakeholder thinks they answered your question and looks annoyed with you for not being satisfied with their answer can be tricky to master. Personally I found this approach painful the first few times I tried it and I often gave up after 2 or 3 whys because I quickly became insecure… I’m the professional Business Analyst here to help solve a problem and I can’t seem to understand what the problem is, maybe I’m not so good at this after all, I began to think and I gave up on this technique. About a year later I was working on a time sensitive project where taking the time to uncover the business need through other methods simply wasn’t an option and I remembered my past experiences with the ‘whys…’ I forced myself to step out of my comfort zone and pulled the whys back out of my BA toolbox and to my surprise, it worked! Yes it was uncomfortable it at first and yes I felt like the stakeholder was judging my intelligence asking why so many times but at the end of our meeting, I truly understood the business need root cause and the stakeholder also had a better understanding of what they truly needed as well; in a 1 hour meeting, I accomplished what had previously taken several meetings. I can’t say using this tool has always gone this smoothly, there have been times when after a few why’s the stakeholder was stumped and couldn’t answer my questions which was a little awkward but it allowed us to quickly identify that the right people weren’t at the table and prevented time from being wasted.
Do you use the 5 whys in your enterprise analysis activities, embracing your own inner annoying 6 year old child? If not, what is your go to technique for defining business need and root cause?