All IIBA IIBA-AAC certification exam dumps, study guide, training courses are Prepared by industry experts. PrepAway's ETE files povide the IIBA-AAC Agile Analyst practice test questions and answers & exam dumps, study guide and training courses help you study and pass hassle-free!

Techniques on strategy horizon

3. Visioning

Starting a new project, new initiative, or new venture You must comprehend why you are acting in this manner. What does the end result look like? What is your ultimate goal? Why bother spending all of this time, effort, and resources doing this thing? Essentially, you want to establish the North Star, the ultimate goal that will inspire people to do what needs to be done. This is called "visioning." There are two key definitions that you need to understand when it comes to "visioning." First, a mission statement. A mission statement is a quick and memorable way of communicating your organization's unique purpose, function, and day-to-day goals to employees, clients, and other stakeholders. Another definition is "vision statement." A vision statement is the description of the ultimate goals and overarching purpose of an organization.

So your mission statement will explain why the organisation exists and what its purpose is, whereas your vision statement will explain where the organisation wants to go and what it wants to achieve. Generally, individual projects and initiatives within the business will not have their own missions. Typically, they will share the mission of the parent organization. However, each project and initiative may have its own vision, an ultimate goal that it wishes to achieve. There is a good template that helps define the vision statement. Let's have a look at it. First, you start by identifying your customers—the people who will benefit from your initiative. Then you define their key needs or opportunities that you are going to address with your project or with your initiative. Then you explain what it is you're going to deliver to them—what is the product or service, and what is its name or description?

Then you explain what the product is, what the gist of it is, and how it is going to start addressing the needs or opportunities. And you explain the key benefits of this product. Then you list the key competitors to your product and service and explain how yours will differ from them. Let us apply this template to our problem with paying the bills. To do that, let me jump back to the mirror. I've got a little template here that I created myself for the vision statement. Let's ideate for a while and fill in the gaps for our solution. So let's start with the four statements that are going to benefit from our solution based on this scenario. Obviously, these are the farmers, but not all the farmers. We are specifically talking about farmers in remote locations. So let's make it more specific.

Okay, so for farmers in remote locations who want something, let's think about what it is our farmers want. in our scenario? From the scenario itself, we realised that they wanted to pay for their electricity bills on time. So this is the definition of our audience. Farmers in remote areas who want to pay their bills on time, and we'll provide them with a solution, a product or service. We don't know yet how this product is going to look or how it's going to function. So let's keep the product definition a bit high-level for now. I'll call it just a new payment system. new payment system, and let's define what it is and what this new payment system is going to be for these people. This new payment system is going to become a new payment channel. Ideally, a payment channel of preference because it will be easy to use So let's write it down. It is an easy-to-use payment channel.

That's not how you spell payment. Payment channel that is simple to use. So let's describe this payment channel and what it is going to do. This payment channel will allow them to pay their bills or maybe even receive the bills. So, in essence, they manage their bills. So let's write it down. That allows them to manage their bills. and not just any bills. We are talking specifically about electricity or maybe utility bills.

So how is it going to be different from the competition? Unlike other traditional channels, our product is going to do something differently. Our products will not rely on people going physically into the stores. So let's write it down. This will be our key competitive advantage. Our product does not require people to travel to offices. So let's read it again. For the farmers in remote locations who want to pay their bills on time, the new payment system is an easy-to-use payment channel that allows them to manage their utility bills. Unlike other traditional channels, our products do not require people to travel to offices. All right, this is a good first draught of a vision statement.

Obviously, you may want to spend more time refining the words and the phrases, maybe updating the template a little bit so it reads really nicely and is really to the point. But as I said, it's a good start to draught your vision statement. And from here, you can take a few iterations to get the vision statement that you'd really like to say more about. It is highly unlikely that you will write vision statements on your own. Most likely, it will be a collaborative effort. So you will need to facilitate a workshop to come up with a vision statement. Let's take a look at how we can facilitate such a workshop. This is how you do it.

You identify a group of stakeholders and invite them to the session. You explain it to them. What are you attempting to accomplish, why is a vision statement necessary, and how will the process unfold? And then you give everybody a card with a template just like the one that we've just looked at. You ask the people to fill in their templates individually without talking to each other, based on their own best understanding of what the problem is you're trying to solve and what the product is going to look like. Then you ask them to share these cards with the audience. Place them on a physical wall where everyone can see them, or in a tool like Mirror where everyone in a virtual session can see them. What happens next is that you ask people to examine all the cards and vote for the ones that they like best. But instead of asking them to vote for the whole card, you ask them to vote for an individual statement inside a card, so it will look something like this: Each statement receives an equal number of votes.

And what you do next is you pick up the statements that have the most votes, and you compose a new card, a new statement, based on these statements. And this is how you land on a combined vision statement. After this is done, you ask the people to review the combined one, refine it as needed, and proceed forward with this one as the new version of your vision statement. This is how you can facilitate a session like that to get a collaborative vision statement rather than one written just by yourself. So what are the benefits of using vision statements? First of all, they specify what is considered within and what is considered outside the scope of the product or initiative. They focus the team and stakeholders on the organisational value to be achieved, and they help organisations decide when enough product is delivered to stop working on this initiative. They have, however, some limitations.

The first is that this effort becomes useless if the vision is not referred to later on for decision-making and prioritisation down the track. It may lead to confirmation bias, which means people may attach themselves to one solution and fail to learn from evidence or explore alternative options. Finally, the best visioning depends on multiple factors, such as imagination, diversity, trust, and the ability to collaborate within the group. Otherwise, the vision can lead the team to make their own decisions. You need to understand that every time you set a goal or generate a vision, you trigger a change in the business, and any change in the business generates impact. When proposing a solution, you need to understand what the impact is going to be on all levels and how initiatives and delivery activities are aligned with overall organisational goals.

The impact map is a visual map that breaks down the organisational goals into specific deliverables. Let's take a look at how we are building this map. First, you gather all your key stakeholders and team members in one space to collaborate. Then you start mapping, and you start with your goals. You identify the organisational goals the solution aims to achieve. Those goals will answer the question, "Why are we doing this?" Then you identify the stakeholders or actors who can contribute to achieving the goals.

This answers the question, "Who can influence goals?" Then you map your impact. These are the actions those actors can take to achieve the goals. It answers the question: "How will actors influence goals?" And finally, you map out the deliverables. This identifies which deliverables and functions will help actors achieve organisational goals. It answers the question, "What?" Once the impact map is created, keep it visible for later revision and refinement. This map will get the team focused on organisational goals rather than features. And it will reduce waste by preventing scope creep and overengineering or overdesigned solutions.

4. Value proposition

In order to create a good vision statement, you need to understand how your product is going to generate value. So let's have a look at how we build a value proposition. A value proposition is a process or a model that includes the following:

First and foremost, you must determine who the solution's stakeholders are. Both external stakeholders, such as end users, customers, or employees, and internal business stakeholders, such as users from within the business or people who can indirectly benefit from the solution, Then you identify the needs of each stakeholder group and try to articulate what will provide value to that group. What is important for them? What is going to be beneficial for them? Finally, you identify the process to satisfy those needs. Customer value is typically composed of the benefits that they will get, whether real benefits or sometimes perceived benefits when they think something is important.

And this value will be offset by the associated costs, such as what they need to pay or what extra effort they need to apply in order to get that benefit. There is this nice model that will help us understand our customers better and design solutions to address their needs. This model breaks the world down into two areas. One is the customer area, which is represented by this circle. Another one is the solution area represented by this square. In the customer area, we start with understanding their jobs, the tasks that they have in front of them, and the things that they want to do. Being in a certain context, once we've understood what the tasks are, we can start looking at the gains. That is, what is it that they want to achieve by the end of the process?

What are the things that will make them happy? At the same time, the process may be associated with some pain. These are the things that make it difficult for them to complete their tasks. In order to populate this canvas, you will most likely do research. You will speak to your customers or run a survey to understand what their tasks are, what they like about achieving these tasks, and what obstacles or pains are associated with them. After you've done the research and collected enough insights to fill in the cameras, you can move on to solution mode. In the solution mode, you must design a specific set of functionalities or capabilities within your products and services for each task or customer job. Basically, if there is a task that the customer needs to get done, you need to have an element of your product that will address this task.

For all the benefits that the customer has, you need to understand how your solution can generate them. So you start writing down the gain creators and how your solution is going to generate gains for the customers. The same happens with the pains. For each of the identified pains, you begin to design how your solution will alleviate the existing pain. Now let me jump back to my mirror board so we can see how we can fill in these canvases. Let's start with the customer jobs here. So based on what we know about this scenario, we can assume a couple of jobs they might have. So let's start with the obvious ones. For example, to get the bill in order to pay it, we need to get the paper bill itself so that we can pay it, right? What else can be there?

Let's think about it. Obviously, we need to pay the bill. That's another very obvious job that we may have. Then, after we paid, we needed to store the confirmation and the receipt from that transaction so that we would have them somewhere for our own records. And in case any disputes need to be resolved, Then there may be some extra scenarios that the customers may want to achieve. For example, they may want to know when the next bill will be generated. They may also want something else, for example, to be able to check how much they owe at any moment in time and other things like that. This process may generate a large number of customer jobs. Let's stick to these for now. So let's move on to the gains. What are some of the gains that we can find in this process?

Well, first of all, the confidence is pretty obvious, the confidence. So once everything is paid and settled, I have confidence that my power supply is up and running. For gains, I'll most likely change the colour to green. Another thing is the feeling that I'm in control of the situation. It's a good feeling to know that you have everything planned, everything done, and everything working. Now let's move on to the paintings. What might be the pain for our farmers? And I'll start by changing the colour to red, and the obvious thing is travel. So you recall how we began with it. Travel time is a huge nightmare. Another thing may be the open hours of the offices. If they're not open when I'm in town, it'll be a hassle the next time, and I'll have to travel further. Another issue is that I don't know when the next bill is due, among other things. So make sure that all of these postcards are based on some insights, some data that you can collect, that they're based on conversations with people, or any other statistics that you get every time a postcard like this comes out. A post-it note is based on an opinion rather than insight or data.

It means your solution may be based on assumptions rather than facts. And it means that eventually you may end up building something that people don't really want to have. So make sure that every time you populate a canvas like this, you have a way to prove and validate the points that you put on the canvas. All right, now let us move on to our solution area. So for each of the customer jobs here, our solution will have a component or a model that will address it. So, for example, we may consider building a mobile application that will allow people to access their account. We might think about putting in a phone line support so that people can call the company and set everything up over the phone. We may also consider updating the website. So these will be the products and services that we will provide to people to address their jobs.

Now, moving on to gain creators, if the people are interested in confidence and being in control of things, we may think about giving them some advanced reporting in the system, maybe some dashboards, maybe some historic data, to really empower them to be in control of their billing. And when it comes to pain relievers, first of all, the online, remote nature of the product This will address the travel time, and then the 24x7 access will address the open hours and maybe some projected costs and an estimated time of arrival. for the next bills. We'll address the last pain from here. So as you can see, our solution area just mirrors what we have in the customer world in terms of solution components and solution capabilities. It is really a good start to start plotting your solution on a high level, on a strategic level, just to understand what your value is that you're proposing to the customers and how you're going to deliver on that value.

5. Customer journey mapping

Another powerful technique is the customer journey. Customer journey mapping is another tool that helps understand the customer's world and design products tailored to their real needs. It is interesting that agile extensions are available today, but Guide does not have customer journey mapping in the list of agile techniques.

It does, however, refer to customer journeys a few times in the text, so it will be good for us to understand what it is about. A great and simple definition is: Following journey mapping helps you visualise how customers experience your product or service and how they feel along the way. There is no one single way to build a customer journey map. Just as there is no single template to use, If you Google it, you will see that there are a lot of different ways to visualise a customer journey template.

Essentially, everyone makes their own to meet their specific requirements. There are, however, some steps that are usually repeated. You start with identifying the customer persona. This is an example user or example customer whose journey we're going to track. Then you define the phases of the customer lifecycle. These are the stages of the journey, from the start to the very end. After that, you identify the actions or touch points. These are the activities that your customer performs, or the touch points between the customer and the business. The points in the journey where the customer interacts with the business Then you explore the motivation of the customer behind their actions. Why do they take this or that step in the journey?

Then you research how the customer feels at each touchpoint. What does this interaction make them feel? And finally, you research what they consider blockers or issues on the journey. Some things can be improved. A good framework to use when building the stages of the customer journey is the five E's. It starts with enticement. What event triggers the user to enter the journey? Then you go into the answer stage. What are the first few steps for the user in the journey? Then we go into the engagement stage.

What tasks are the users trying to accomplish when interacting? And then they go into the exit. How does the user complete the task? How do they exit the journey? And finally, extend? What happens beyond the primary journey? What is the follow-up that occurs after the user completes their tasks? Let's take a look at how this journey might look for our farmers in the mountains. So as you can see, I've jumped back into my mirrorboard, and I have something like a template here already. You don't have to follow the same template, but this one works pretty well for me.

So I know who my persona is. That's that farmer in the mountains. And now I need to understand what the stages of their journey are. Let's start with entice. So, what could be the inducement for them to pay their bill? I would argue that the first step in this process is receiving the bill or interacting with the bill. So I will just create a stage called "bill" so far. We can rename it later if we find it necessary. All right. Then, as they received the bill, they required specific entry points into the interaction. What will the entry point be? I'd say that the entry point into the interaction is the time when they realise they need to pay. So the due date is approaching. After that, they go into the engagement, which is payment, and then they exit the process.

So they received some confirmation of payment, and this is how the process ends. They also need to come back home. We'll probably cover it in action. And then what happens after it? What is the extent? What is the follow-up? I'd say that once they've received the confirmation, they'll need a way to keep the receipt or gain confidence. That is the final stage of our journey. Now let's step through the actions of our persona. I'll use sticky notes for it. So the first thing that happens is that we need to receive the bill. This is the first step that initiates the entire interaction and journey. And then duty approaches.

And there is no actual action here; it's just a timer event. So the user may be waiting for the due date, or they may experience something else. They may forget about the Dbase and get really surprised next time they review their outstanding bills or something like that. So, depending on your persona and the insights that you collect about it, you may decide what actually happens to the persona. In any case, they move on to the next stage, which is payment. And the payment starts with travel. They need to travel to the nearest town. They probably already remember the open hours of the office, but if not, they probably need to do some research or maybe call the office to understand what their open hours are. Then they travel, then they pay. And then, as part of their confirmation stage, they receive the receipt and travel home. And finally, they store the receipt in the cupboard.

Now, let's explore the customer side of this journey. What is their motivation? So at the start of the process, their obvious motivation is to keep their power supply uninterrupted. Let's write it down here. And then, throughout the process, they just want to get it done. And finally, somewhere here, they get new motivation. Now they want to keep the record and feel secure, so that they know that their payment has been processed and they don't have any issues. When it comes to feelings, it is interesting. So some of these steps may result in positive feelings, and some of them may result in some negative feelings. So let's explore that. I'll use the red one to represent negative emotions and the green one to represent positive emotions. So first of all, they start with receiving a bill and automation. That's a negative feeling. Something like "Oh no, I need to pay again." Then, as the deadline approaches, they may feel like "it's time to travel," which they don't want to do. Okay. When they finally arrived at their destination, they probably felt a bit of relief. So I use a less negative colour here; I have finally arrived.

But then, after they arrived, they needed to spend their money; they needed to pay again. It's another negative experience. They may see a long queue waiting for the payment. There may be some delays with the payment, and there may be some other negative issues with paying face-to-face. I'll just call it, "I need to spend my money here." And then, finally, they finished the payment. So again, it's somewhat of a relief. But then I need to travel again. And finally, when they come back home, it is the moment of final release when everything is over. So I'll mark it green. So in terms of the pain points, we can call out a few obvious ones. So, first and foremost, an unexpected amount on the bill can be extremely inconvenient travel; it can be inconvenient working hours of the office where they can pay; and it will require additional travel time to return.

And finally, the touch points. So what is an attach point? Attach points are an interface between the customer and the business. So it may be a digital touch point such as a website or application, or it can be a physical touch point such as an email or physical instruction. So in our current process, all the touch points are physical. So the first touch point is the bill, the second touch point is the office, and the final touch point is the receipt. As a result, we now have a "customer journey map."

This is a customer journey map that explains the journey the way it is performed now, with no changes to the process. It is a good tool to analyse what is going on at the moment. But at the same time, it can be used as a starting point for designing your future state experience. There are two ways you can approach it. One advantage is that you can model the future state on top of your current experience in the same artifact. Another approach would be to draw a brand new customer journey map, which will explain the process and how it is going to look like. So let's use an example here of plotting some future state elements on the existing canvas. To do that, I will add another swim lane here. I will call it the future state. We'll give it a bright color, and now I'll add a few captions with some ideas for how this experience can be improved.

For example, with the bill in the future, it may be an SMS bill, a mobile app with some push notifications, or as simple as an email with the payment channels. I may explore something that does not require travel. So it can be an over-the-phone payment, an online payment, or a bank transfer. And with the receipt, it may be an email receipt or a physical letter with a printed receipt. So as you can see, the customer journey map may be a very powerful tool to do two things. Investigate how the experience appears today and how it may appear in the future after the pain points have been addressed.

IIBA IIBA-AAC practice test questions and answers, training course, study guide are uploaded in ETE Files format by real users. Study and Pass IIBA-AAC Agile Analyst certification exam dumps & practice test questions and answers are to help students.