#21 The cost of busy work

Hi everyone!

Today's Jimmy Brief is all about waste.

The sad truth is that from an outsider's perspective, a lot of business analysis is pretty indistinguishable from busy work. Add to this the fact that there's a ton of pressure to always appear busy, and you have a perfect storm.

A perfect storm of wasteful practices.

We all like to think we're 'outcomes-focused' and 'add value' but a lot of what we do just adds waste into the system.

Waste reduction

Think you're not wasteful? I want you to reconsider. So I wrote an article all about it for you: The cost of busy work: a guide to business analyst waste.

The good news is that a ton of good lean thinking has already gone into waste. The bad news is that there are eight different kinds of waste and business analysts can create every one of them.

The article is a deep dive into all the different kinds of waste we can create, what that waste can look like, and what to watch out for.

Read it on my website now …

Think you’re waste free?

In case you think I'm talking about "other people", I'll be crystal clear: I'm not. I'm talking about all of us because we're all responsible for waste and we all have to deal with the consequences of wasteful practices.

I think our obsession with tools, techniques, and 'best practice' is distracting us from a ruthless focus on value and delivery. The result? We're associated with process, overhead, admin, instead of critical thinking and decision making.

This kind of everyday waste simply adds to the general degradation of the business analyst role. Where we used to be considered a lead project role, we commonly report to product owners. Worse, we architect our own low value. 

Being waste free isn't just a target, it's how to do high-value work.

So here's the challenge – how are you minimising your waste?

As always, I would love to hear your thoughts on this (or anything else), so do reply to this email, DM me on LinkedIn, or send me a letter via pigeon. 

I cannot tell you how much I like hearing from y'all!

And until next time, stay excellent! 💖
Hannah