Today we meet Salena Giacomini, who was recently promoted to Director of Business Analysis and invested in training to elevate her entire team.
In this interview, you’ll discover:
- How Salena discovered the business analyst role and was in the job within 24 hours.
- How Bridging the Gap resources helped her be successful, and why she invested in The Business Analyst Blueprint® to learn a framework and see immediate improvement in her skills.
- How she became a manager, and then invested in training for her entire team to cultivate a shared language about deliverables and to standardize their business analysis process.
- How she secured funding to invest in her team by getting clear on the ROI.
- How she’s continuing to improve her business analysis practice with quarterly reviews and goals.
Laura Brandenburg: Hello and welcome, everyone! I am so excited to be here today with Salena Giacomini, who is a BA director. She has been a manager, has been a participant in the blueprint, has also brought her team through one of our programs and has a lot to share with us today about her career and her leadership. I’m just so excited to have you here today, Salena, thank you for being here.
Salena Giacomini: Happy to be here. Thank you.
How Salena Got Her Start as a Business Analyst
LB: I know this is a while back now, maybe 4 or 5 years, but if you can go with the time machine and think back to where you were before you started The Business Analyst Blueprint® program originally. Where were you at in your career? What were you looking for? What prompted you to join the program?
SG: I honestly had never even heard of the term business analyst, so I had no idea what a business analyst was or what they did. I was at a point in my career where I felt like I was hitting a wall with growth. I had gone outside of the scope of my job like many BAs do before they formalize that title, and I had joined different work groups and participated in and facilitated different process improvement initiatives – really just trying to get more involved in how to work interdepartmentally and see improvements there.
There were some shifts in our org structure and I just felt like I was hitting a wall. So, I was venting to my boss at the time and talking through what I’d like to be doing and brainstorming some different ideas.
As we were talking, she actually picked up the phone and called our IT manager, and they were actually hiring a business analyst. And she’s like, I think I’ve got the perfect person for you. Within 24 hours I had a title change. I think probably that participation that along the way doesn’t always feel appreciated really did pay off.
I think it was my reputation that probably got that to push through so quickly. So that was super exciting. But then I found myself in this new role that I didn’t quite understand. And, I had never had a job that I didn’t have a clear orientation for so that was a whole new world for me.
I think I was doing okay. I think I was getting by with my past experience and gut instinct, but I was really lacking a lot of structure. That’s where I started searching for different tools and templates. I actually came across your toolkit, which was a fantastic starting point.
As I started using some of those, I started to question, “Am I using this right? Is this really the right tool for this topic?” I just was getting a little bit in that “analysis paralysis” that I think many of us experience, and just really wanting more of a methodology or a framework.
That’s where I started reading more about what you had to offer and your resources and The Blueprint program was super appealing. Just the idea that you’d be able to start applying some of those skills immediately and start to see some improvement. So that’s what brought me to the program.
LB: Wow! I had never heard that part of your story. It feels similar to mine, where I feel like I was like stopped in the hallway. But it’s like, no, I was really doing a lot of this before. So you had a lot of the underlying competencies; you had a lot of experience. I also had never really heard of business analysis. So you were in the business side of your organization before becoming a BA?
SG: Yes, I was working in our clinical support team doing a lot of administrative work. But, our department was kind of an intersection of a lot of the workflows. So we naturally got pulled into a lot of those discussions where someone voices that there’s a gap in process and then we all kind of huddled together. I should also add, at the time, we were a midsize company, but during this shift in my role, we had also been acquired by an equity firm.
We were now in the business of mergers and acquisitions, and growing very quickly. So, the business model had shifted quite a bit, as well.
Take-Aways from The Business Analyst Blueprint® training program
LB: What was your big takeaway from the program?
SG: It was great going through the different modules to build that confidence that I’m using some of the tools correctly, like business requirement documentation and workflow diagrams.
That was nice because as I was going through the courses, you make it really easy to digest and apply right away. I would be turning in the end of my module thinking, “oh, this is so easy.” Then I got my first feedback, and it was very eye opening.
It was nice to have someone point out areas where I think I was oversimplifying and not connecting to best practices and how little things that might seem finicky to someone, like the way that you’re phrasing something throughout a flow diagram. It’s kind of like, “Oh well, they know what I mean.”
But truthfully, what my takeaway was is that we are all trying to conserve energy so that we can focus on the things that are most important. So little things, like being consistent in the way that you’re documenting and explaining a process, make it easier for the stakeholder or end user to take in that information.
Now they’re really focusing on solving the problem with you and not trying to understand what your documentation says. That was really powerful.
Just having that eight step business analysis process, seeing how your role progresses through a project as a starting point and then being able to take that and adjust with real life scenarios.
Check out the video below for more insight on the 8-step business analysis process.
Showing the Value of Business Analysts
LB: I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone use the term “conserving energy” in that way before, and I love that. Because our stakeholder’s time is so precious and so valuable. So those nuances do help save them time and energy, and give them more thought process for the pieces that really matter, which is not hopefully picking apart our language.
SG: Absolutely. I think we’re in a world now where everything is so fast moving and there’s so much information being thrown at people. To really get someone to focus on something that’s important to you and that perhaps should be important to them, but really getting their attention, it’s not easy.
I think that the easier you make the onboarding, the better results you’re going to see.
LB: That’s a great takeaway. Thank you. You mentioned the eight step process. Maybe you can help connect some of the dots too because the next time we connected it was to train your entire team on that eight step framework. So somewhere between getting pulled into the BA role and a few years later, you became manager of the team. And you were investing in training for the team and growing them as leaders as well. Can you continue that part of the story for us?
Building a Shared Business Analysis Language Among Team Members
SG: I think it’s kind of a similar theme. There is wanting to have that confidence. I think I had gained some confidence in my abilities as a BA, but then to be leading others and helping to coach and give feedback, that to me is a whole other layer.
I felt like, okay, so I went through the program. I’m feeling good about what I produced. But, maybe I’m still thinking about some of this the wrong way. I think what was helpful for me is being able to partner with you and have you go through the course and then get feedback from the team, collectively. It helped build confidence around this framework and if it really makes sense for our organization.
It also helped me grow, with the way the team interpreted some of the stuff was a little different than I had, and there were insights that I had missed. Our discussion on scoping out a project, for example. That’s not something that we had put a ton of emphasis on, which now looking back sounds silly, but skipping ahead some of those steps and then revisiting some and having that be a takeaway for me the second round was really nice.
So as I moved in that role again, I wanted to build that confidence. And then also it’s back to that, where we spend our time and trying to find efficiencies and systems in our day-to-day work.
A lot of our time I felt was wasted on communication, making sure we’re speaking the same language. I felt like, okay, if I take them through this course, we’ll leave with a similar understanding of what the business analysis process is. We were able to define that as a team as we went through the course.
And then having shared language about the kind of deliverables that we have and standardizing our internal BA process.
LB: I loved how your team showed up for the calls. They had such great questions. They challenged me on things. They took the material and really made it their own and took advantage of all the collaboration opportunities that we had.
Check out the video below for more insight on scoping a project
How Salena Transitioned into a Business Analyst Leadership Role
So the piece that’s missing is how did you make that change? Because I know a lot of BA’s, either they think they might want to be a manager someday or are not sure if it’s really for them. What was that decision like for you? How did that opportunity come to be for you to lead the team? What drew you to that? It seems like a natural fit for you now; you seem to be thriving in that role.
SG: Well, thank you. That’s a good question. Our team at the time was really system implementation projects. That was where the bulk of our energy went into. We were forming this mini implementation team, and as we were going through those different conversions with sites, I naturally just fell into more of a leadership type role.
I just naturally like to keep things organized, making sure everyone’s on the same page; it wasn’t necessarily a conscious decision. It just kind of naturally happened. And then I got tapped on the shoulder by my boss at the time and getting that reassurance that he thought this was a good fit. That it’s something that we can continue to grow and pursue.
LB: It’s so very similar to the first one, kind of an organic growth and also an opportunity created.
SG: I don’t want to completely just say “oh, it just kind of happened.” That’s not entirely true. As I was getting that feedback and naturally falling into that role, you do have to be somewhat proactive or assertive with what you want. I made it clear to my boss where I saw my career path going, where my interests were, what I was willing or wanted to take on. I definitely played an active role in that progression.
Making the Business Case for Investing in Team Training
LB: When it came to the training piece, your company invested quite substantially in that team. What was it like for you to make the case for that, or was it something they were looking for you to go out and find somebody to deliver something? How did that part come to be? Because I talk to a lot of managers who are like, “My company just doesn’t have a budget for training.” How did that part of the process unfold?
SG: I really tried to sell the return on investment. I saw how the program was exponentially helpful in the way I did my work after coming out of that and how quickly I was able to not just turn around work – it was more the quality of work. Editing down what I was working on, why I was working on it, and making sure that I was communicating to different stakeholders and members of our project team along the way.
I saw how much efficiency I gained as an analyst doing that. So going through that program myself and seeing those benefits, and hopefully my leadership team also seeing the improvement on my end, and getting feedback from other stakeholders, I was able to explain the thought process for this masterclass.
Not every BA is necessarily going to be able to dedicate that time to the course at the same time. I think a lot of my team members had an interest in doing the full program. One of them signed up for it, actually. She still raves about it. But not all of them could commit to that time commitment.
I wanted to be able to offer something that was really going to help us in the areas that I saw the biggest gaps. That was making our communication easier within the team, level setting on how we understand this is the way we do the BA process at our company, and showing that it can really build up their confidence and ability to execute on some of the ideas they have. Rather than getting stuck in second guessing and doing more work than they really needed to.
It’s really easy when you start working on a problem to find little related problems, and then now you’re going down this path and you’re not even sure what you’re solving at the end of the day. Being able talk about my experience and show that I want to build a team. I want to leave here with clear deliverables that we produce as a team and getting consistent on the way we’re communicating different documents to the business – making it easier for the stakeholders to take that information in.
At that point I don’t feel that we had done the best job we could at explaining what this team’s role was at the organization. It was really a chance for me to click the reset button and formalize our role and show the importance to the organization.
It’s really helpful when you have leaders that do support and believe in you. That’s how I pitched it. I had a lot of ideas for even after we do those courses, where I want to take it afterwards. For me, that was the jumpstart. That was just a starting point for other initiatives I wanted to pursue with the team.
Amplifying the ROI on Training with Quarterly Planning
LB: I remember when you sent me a message and your team was all sitting down to talk about your takeaways. We had spread the course out over a few months, and this was even a few months later. That felt really fulfilling to me to know that the work we did was still having an impact further on.
SG: Every quarter we sit down, we look at what goals we had set. A lot of our quarterly planning is just “what do we deliver on?” This is more what do we want to see, improvements within our team.
Every quarter we review what we had set out to achieve, then we’re setting new goals. We just went through that process with the new year. It’s nice to see that we’re still being able to grow from that experience.
There’s so many conferences and workshops and trainings that you go to and during it, you’re like, “Yes, this is great!” And then you leave and you get sucked into the daily work and forget all about it. I really wanted to make sure that that didn’t happen.
LB: That’s a huge testament to you and your leadership of creating that follow through, too. So I just want to celebrate and point that out to everyone. Training is a piece and also how you choose to leverage it for a leadership role is also a piece.
Is there anything else that you would like to share for anyone listening who might be interested in leadership or might be thinking about training for themselves or their team or anything along those lines?
The BA Leadership Mindset
SG: As a business analyst, in my experience working with my team, it’s really easy, especially when you have projects like an implementation or a conversion project where it’s really easy to get burnt out. I think we’ve all been in situations where, we’re working on a problem and we feel like it’s just going through this cycle where you’re so close to a solution and then someone throws a wrench in it and you’re back to the starting line. I think it’s easy to get a little bit negative or fall into that victim mode. So, I guess one takeaway would be really trying, if you want to kind of move into that leadership role, to start with your own mindset and how you think about different challenges that come your way.
And it sounds corny, but it really is looking at things more as opportunities. At the end of the day, we’re all professional problem solvers, so it’s a gift. You get a new problem you can solve. I think it’s being able to reframe your mindset, find some humor in it, take it a little more lightly, and then rather than just trying to push through and grind, sometimes try taking that step away and internally working on the way you’re viewing different situations and maybe assigning more meaning to it than it needs.
Where are you spending your energy? I don’t want to spend energy on drama. I want to spend it on what can I do? I spend a lot of time reframing – how can I help in this situation?
I think as you shift into a leadership role, if you feel like you’re in a good space, it’s being able to coach others to also reframe the way they’re looking at things and as a BA that’s so important. If I feel like I’m going to go into a meeting and I’m not in the right headspace, I tell my analyst, “I’d rather you just reschedule that meeting if you feel like you can’t really show up and be open minded about the situation or let go of whatever baggage might be associated with it.” I’d rather we just skip it and hold off, spend a little more time with it.
LB: I just want to emphasize everything I’ve heard from you is we’re in a very fast paced, high pressure environment. It’s okay to take a pause. Also to honor one of the things you have shared about the BA Essential Master Class is that shift from reactive to proactive or being more strategic. It’s not easy to honor the strategic, to honor the pause, but that in and of itself is a resilient mindset. That’s huge.
SG: I’m very blessed. I report to someone who also is supportive of that. He trusts our team at this point to make the right decisions and spend our time on the highest priorities and producing quality work.
LB: It’s also enabling you to still deliver on those timelines. Well, thank you so, so much for being with me today and for sharing your insights. I can’t wait to see where you continue to go in your career and where your team goes. So much opportunity.
SG: Thank you so much. Appreciate it.
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