Accelerating Business Analysis Lessons Learned Process

This Powernoodle Solution was developed with the help of Powernoodle Expert: Larry Simon Larry Simon and his company the Inflection Group provide business analysis, IT management advisory, e-business and enterprise architecture services to a broad range of companies, public sector organizations and early stage businesses. Before founding the Inflection Group, Larry was a senior partner at Ernst & Young Canada Consulting where he had national responsibility for E&Y’s facilitation and solution delivery centres. While at E&Y he also served as the firm’s Chief Methodologist and Chief Information Officer. He was also previously the Head Judge of the Canadian Information Productivity Awards and on the faculty of the University of Toronto Rotman School of Management. He has over 2,000 classroom hours of experience teaching IT strategy, business analysis, project management, TOGAF and IASA Foundation courses. He is currently on the Ontario Board of CIPS (Canada’s association of IT professionals) and is the IT Infrastructure and Cloud Computing research lead for IT Market Dynamics. Connect with Larry on LinkedIn: ub/larry- simon/0/147/26 2

Powernoodle sessions help you bridge the gulf between business people’s understanding of their business and the specialist knowledge of IT people. Using Powernoodle, groups quickly and respectfully make decisions that everyone understands, supports and is willing to implement. Powernoodle is an Accelerator for Business Analysis. 3

This guide will provide you with clear guidance on how to organize and facilitate a Lessons Learned Process using Powernoodle. You will learn how to:  Accelerate involvement by stakeholders.  Produce better, more valuable outcomes by including more stakeholders and building consensus as you go. Incorporating Powernoodle 4

Intuitive Design and Familiar Process You can customize every Powernoodle session to generate the outcome you need. 5

Using this Guide: A Powernoodle session has an Organizer and any number of Participants. This guide is designed for an Organizer and discusses some features of Powernoodle that are available only to the Organizer. This guide also contains information about the role of Participants in a Powernoodle session. 6 Looking for more detailed directions? Watch the Organizer Training Series videos Looking for more detailed directions? Watch the Organizer Training Series videos

It Starts with the Right Question. 7 Using Powernoodle in your lessons learned process will provide you with richer, more useful outcomes in a comprehensive report. You will be able to involve more people at key points in the process, regardless of their geographic location. You will benefit from feedback that is:. ConvenientConfidentialCandid More Diverse Efficient

The Powernoodle Organizer’s Job  The Organizer creates the session, invites Participants, and leads the group through the Powernoodle steps: Brainstorm, Categorize, Combine, Vote, Rate, Prioritize, and Action Plan.  Depending on the session’s purpose, the Organizer is able to customize the Powernoodle as needed.  Every Powernoodle creates a Powernoodle Report, a complete record of the viewpoints expressed in a downloadable Excel spreadsheet. 8

Question: What is your Favourite TV show from the following list. Participants enter a sticky note for each TV show in your list. Powernoodle Illustration IDEA: 1 Modern Family IDEA: 4 Two and a Half Men (Kuchar) IDEA: 5 The Office (with Carrell) IDEA: 2 Big Bang Theory IDEA: 3 Two and a Half Men (Sheen) IDEA: 6 The Office (w/o Carrell) Rating: E veryone rates each show based on 3 weighed criteria W AYS TO F ILTER I DEAS Voting Single Criteria Rating (one rating scale) Multi-Criteria Rating (weighted scales) Prioritize INITERNAL DRAFT V49 R OLE OF Q UESTIONS Powernoodle is question-centric Value of outcome is driven by how the question is worded

Invite everyone involved in the project to identify the key users who should be asked for their input. Narrow the list through Voting if necessary. This becomes your Lessons Learned focus group. Create three Powernoodle Questions. Invite your Lessons Learned focus group Participants to input their answers in the Brainstorm step: What went well during this project? What went not-so-well? What should we do differently next time? Work through each question concurrently. Finish the Brainstorm step in each, then move to the Voting, Rating and Prioritizing steps. Lessons Learned Process 10

 The Report is created automatically after your session ends, saving hours of transcription and interpretation.  It is available in Excel spreadsheet format for you and your participants.  It captures every discussion thread for future reference and action. Saving Time with the Powernoodle Report. 11

For detailed examples and directions, you can:  Watch the Powernoodle Organizer Training Series videos.  Log in and visit the Help section.  Contact us at  Join the Powernoodle user groups online. Powernoodle Help and Support 12

13 Website: Twitter: Join Larry in the Powernoodle Group on LinkedIn.com

Powernoodle Template: Accelerating Business Analysis Lessons Learned Process by Larry Simon and Powernoodle Inc is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. Based on a work at and 14