Effective Facilitation for Business Analysts

1. Facilitation Basics

• What Facilitation Is
• The Role of the Facilitator
• To Facilitate or Not to Facilitate?
• Benefits of Facilitation
• Facilitation in Business Analysis

2. Planning a Facilitated Meeting

• Why Planning is Critical
• Defining the Purpose
• The Facilitated Meeting Planning Worksheet
  • Key Characteristics of Participants
  • Meeting Risks and Responses

3. Facilitation Techniques

• Building an Agenda
• Techniques for Facilitated Meetings
  • Brainstorming
  • Gap Analysis
  • T-Charts (or Force Field Analysis)
  • Model Types
  • Impact/Effort Grid
  • Multi-Voting

4. Conducting a Meeting

• Facilitation Actions
• Facilitation Behaviors

5. Virtual Meetings

• Challenge of Teleconferences and Web-Conferences
• Meeting with Dispersed Participants
• Best Practices for Virtual Meetings

6. More Techniques for Facilitation

• Brainwriting (Anonymous Brainstorming)
• Root Cause Analysis
• Criteria-Based Grid
• How Various Models Can be Used with Groups

7. Managing Conflict

• Understanding Conflict
• Good vs. Bad Conflict
• Resolving Conflict between Participants
• Resolving Conflict between Participant and Facilitator

Exercises:

• Complete a Facilitation Meeting Plan
• Create Meeting Agenda
• Practice Facilitating Multiple Meetings
• Practice Root Cause Analysis
• Complete a Criteria-Based Grid

• The role of facilitation in business analysis
• Plan a facilitated meeting
• Create an agenda and risk analysis
• Use the appropriate facilitation techniques in a meeting
• Plan for and facilitate in a virtual meeting environment
• Use advanced brainstorming, analysis, and decision-making techniques
• Manage conflict in a facilitated meeting

Systems analysts, business analysts, requirements analysts, developers, software engineers, IT project managers, project managers, project analysts, project leaders, senior project managers, team leaders, program managers, testers, and QA specialists.