BRMConnect Provided Value for My Organization

by Tina Pomeroy

While the entire conference was a wonderful experience that provided an overall value for my organization, a few sessions at BRMConnect really hit home.

In my organization, the BRMs have great relationships with most aspects of IT, but there are gray areas between some roles, and we sometimes find ourselves stumbling over each other. The “Partners in Business Value Realization: BRM Role Interaction with Business Analysts and Project Managers” open panel discussion highlighted those areas for improvement and provided insight on the primary roles of each member of IT.

We are also currently in the process of stakeholder mapping, and Bill Harrison’s “Strategic Relationship Power Tools” was crucial in teaching us how to take it to another level. While our initial plan was to draw connections between individual business partners to BRMs and executive leadership, Harrison’s exercise was valuable in showing how they interact, as well as highlighting the strength of business partner relationships with other stakeholders.

Another aspect of the conference that I’d like to emphasize is the diversity of the sessions. On Your Feet’s “BRM Lessons from Improv” provided a true-to-life account of the BRM world, since there are days when we don’t really know what we’re walking into when we meet with our business partners. Not to mention Service Management Art’s eye-opening Grab@Pizza simulation! What a fantastic example of how we can sometimes lose sight of seemingly obvious steps in achieving a goal (i.e., sharing business roadmaps) amidst the flurry of activity that is IT.

During my time at the conference, I was also able to meet my BRM Mentor, Aleksandr Zhuk, face-to-face. This was an invaluable experience—even though our mentoring relationship is only a few months old, I have already gained a wealth of knowledge from him. If you are not part of BRM Institute’s mentoring program, I highly suggest you look into it!

Overall, the inaugural BRM Institute conference was an enormous success! Based on the information I gained from the combination of session speakers and my own personal networking, our IT Leadership team will be working to implement several changes over the next few months, which will provide improved value to our entire organization.