Analysis Paralysis

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Wikipedia defines analysis paralysis as:

Analysis paralysis (or paralysis by analysis) describes an individual or group process when overanalyzing or overthinking a situation can cause forward motion or decision-making to become “paralyzed”, meaning that no solution or course of action is decided upon within a natural time frame [1].

As you can see from the definition, analysis paralysis is not just a case of business analysis. If you are having difficulty making decisions or taking the next step because you are over-thinking or over-analyzing on any subject, including your work and personal life, then you are suffering from analysis paralysis.

The counterpart of this is that the analyst does not think the work, documents, and models she/he has created are sufficient and cannot complete her/his studies. Although analysis paralysis usually occurs in complex situations, it is also possible for it to occur in routine work.

Because analysis paralysis causes bottlenecks and slows down your business processes, it impacts time first and most significantly. Deliverables that cannot be completed on time are the most common result of analysis paralysis. Even worse is the situation where the analysis work is never completed. The analyst is so stuck at that point that they cannot complete the analysis process and what must be delivered.

Better yet, the analysis process is somehow completed, and the results are somehow delivered. However, due to the negative impact of analysis paralysis, there may be numerous errors and omissions.

We can summarize the effects of analysis paralysis as follows:

• Deliveries are delayed
• Reduces efficiency
• The analyst’s self-confidence is weakened
• The institution’s confidence in the analyst is weakened
• Creativity decreases
• It leads to fatigue and boredom
• Increases costs
• Causes scope creeping
• Increased risk
• Wrong decisions
• Failure of the project

The most effective way to deal with analysis paralysis is to prevent analysis paralysis from occurring in the first place. You can see this in the title “Preventing Analysis Paralysis”, which tells you what you need to do to avoid analysis paralysis. To avoid falling into the analysis paralysis trap, you need to be aware of the causes of analysis paralysis. You can read about it under the heading “Causes of Analysis Paralysis”.

If you are suffering from analysis paralysis, the first and perhaps the most difficult thing to do is to become aware that you are trapped in analysis paralysis. To gain this awareness, you must know the symptoms of analysis paralysis. When you know the symptoms and realize that you are suffering from analysis paralysis, you can manage and recover from it.

Symptoms of Analysis Paralysis

To avoid analysis paralysis or get rid of it as quickly as possible, you must first understand the symptoms of analysis paralysis. If you notice any of the following signs, you have probably fallen into the analysis paralysis trap.

• You get stuck with the problem itself rather than the solution of it and are not able to fully understand it.
• You need to communicate with the stakeholders again and again.
• It seems like it takes forever to gather the requirements.
• There are so many options that you cannot decide.
• You spend a lot of time researching, but there are still things to research, and you cannot predict when the research will end.
• You get lost in possible scenarios and there is no end to “what if this, what if that” scenarios.
• You think you need a lot more information to do an analysis and you do not know when it will be completed.
• You cannot decide which techniques and/or models to use. You are constantly switching from one technique to another, from one model to another.
• You take too much time to decide.
• You cannot trust the decision you are making or the work you are doing, and you keep reviewing it.

Causes of Analysis Paralysis

We can divide the causes of analysis paralysis into three categories: caused by the analyst, caused by the analysis process, and caused by external factors. These causes, even dangerous enough by themselves, often occur together with a few of them. Knowing and identifying them would be a good start to prevent analysis paralysis or, better yet not getting analysis paralysis in the first place.

Some reasons must do directly with you as an analyst. Fear of making mistakes, avoidance of responsibility, lack of confidence, perfectionism, and inexperience are the main reasons you will encounter most often.
Inexperience means a lack of experience, knowledge, and skills. If you do not have experience with the task assigned to you, it is very likely that you will have difficulty obtaining the necessary information, analyzing it, modeling it, and documenting it. Inexperience can come in many different forms. In general, we can group them as follows:

• You have just started the analysis
• You have no experience in the field
• You are new to the institution
• The way of doing business is different there

If you are an analyst just starting out in business analysis, elicitation, requirements development, choosing and using techniques, documenting business analysis information may seem too complicated and you may get bogged down.

Even if you are an experienced analyst, you may have difficulty if it is a business domain you have never dealt with before.

If you are working with a new institution or a completely unfamiliar team, you may not know who should do what for whom or what to ask. This can leave you stuck in processes like information gathering, analysis, and approval.

A whole new way of doing business: Using different techniques, differentiating process steps, and a new document template can also impact your work mastery, like the above.

Perfectionism is the belief that you cannot make mistakes under any circumstances. The most important difference between a perfectionist and someone who strives to do their best is the fear of making mistakes. The person who strives to do their best focuses on doing the best they can with the knowledge and resources they have and know that there is always the possibility of making mistakes. However, that possibility does not stop them. If they are a perfectionist, they will have a hard time finishing the job or delivering the results because they think they will always make a mistake no matter how well they do their job.

Maybe it bothers you to be held responsible for the failure of a job. The reason for not taking responsibility may be your perfectionism or inexperience, but also some risks or situations that occur during the analysis process may make you avoid responsibility. You may not want to finish the analysis of a risky project and leave it to the development team. But it’s not right for it to be totally your responsibility either. You may be experiencing a bottleneck at this point.

Like the above, lack of confidence leads to you not being able to decide when the analysis work will be completed, you will constantly find something missing and do something new to fix it.

Some factors that lead to analysis paralysis are related to the analysis process, such as the procedures to be followed, the templates used, the techniques, and planning.

The most common mistake in analysis planning is not setting a clear time frame for the analysis work. If you do not have a specific time frame, you will be more inclined to continue with the analysis. In addition, an analysis study with an undetermined start and end also causes problems. If the deliverables are not clear, you may be trapped in analysis paralysis again because it is not clear what the analysis documents will include and what techniques will be used. Insufficient stakeholder engagement is also a flaw in the analysis process and gives a hard time with the analysis. In addition, it should be clear which diagrams will be created and which models will be drawn as part of the analysis process. This ambiguity alone can lead to analysis paralysis if the diagrams and models are not clear enough.

External factors that lead to analysis paralysis are usually stakeholders, corporate culture, business needs and uncertain or variable requirements, and project context.

The most troublesome situation in business analysis is the indecisive stakeholders who do not know exactly what they want. Equally critical are vague and ever-changing requirements. With undecided stakeholders, it is very difficult to clearly identify the business need, and the problem, which can lead to analysis paralysis. Similarly, constantly changing and unclear requirements lead to analysis work being stalled. Apart from that, the fact that no one in the institution or in the client company wants to take responsibility, the uncertainty about the decision-making authority, and the inability to reach the stakeholders can also paralyze the analysis work.

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Preventing Analysis Paralysis

The first step to avoiding analysis paralysis is to learn to recognize it. Knowing the causes and symptoms of analysis paralysis is your most important tool for what to do to avoid analysis paralysis. What to do next will depend on the task, project, stakeholders, institution, and context, but the following will help you in many situations you may encounter.

Perhaps the most important thing to avoid analysis paralysis is to establish the main goal. What is your goal? Why are you doing this? What exactly are you being asked to do? Try to make the answers to these questions as clear as possible.

A clear main objective is a good start. However, if your deadline is not set, you still run the risk of falling into analysis paralysis. Whatever you plan to do, determine how long you must do it.

A fixed goal and deadline may seem good to you. That may be the case if your project is small or short-term. But if you are doing a long-term or big project, you should break your work into small parts. This means breaking down your goals, deliverables, tasks, and deadlines into manageable pieces.
Be sure to plan what you will do. Clearly define your starting and ending points. Even put milestones between the start and endpoints, depending on the size of the job. Define intermediate deliverables.

Now it looks like you have taken serious action against analysis paralysis!
Prioritize the important things in your work. Do valuable work first and get quick results. This way you reduce the amount of work by delivering something, you gain the confidence of your stakeholders by completing some work, and you gain self-confidence.

Gain resilience to uncertainty. Uncertainty is inevitable. In some jobs, there is much less uncertainty and in others, there is much more. Try to manage uncertainties as risks, assumptions, and unanswered questions. Try to rule out what you cannot manage. If you cannot rule it out, try to postpone dealing with it. Work first with uncertainties that you can manage. You will see that as your work progresses, different options for other uncertainties will come up.
Apply progressive elaboration. Do a high-level analysis first. Then go down to the details step by step. Obtain necessary approvals from relevant stakeholders at each stage. In this way, you will both do business fluently and get the approval of the stakeholders.

With what you have done so far, you are in a fairly secure position. Remember, however, that there are other pitfalls to other analysis paralyzes. What has happened so far has been more about business analysis management. Now let us talk about mindset issues.

Aim for acceptable, not perfect. In the previous title, we talked about perfectionism and the problems it can cause. So, what is acceptable? What is acceptable depends on the institution you are working for, the situation you are currently in, and the people involved. You may need to determine what is acceptable for each task you do as an analyst. You should determine this based on the standards of the institution you are working with, the client you are working with, and especially the stakeholders who will perform the acceptance of your work. Then you should strive to do the work that you have determined is acceptable on the acceptance scale.

Limit the information you consume and the options available to you. We live in a time that is rich with information and resources. While this situation has many advantages, it also risks directly paralyzing analysis. Unlimited information and options can make you unable to perform well. Set limits on yourself, both in terms of choices and knowledge. So, you do not fall into analysis paralysis.

If you find that you are somehow heading toward analysis paralysis, be sure to try to get someone else’s opinion. If possible, a mentor or an expert can show you some things you are not seeing. If there is no such person, even if she/he is not an expert or even a complete stranger in the field, another eye/ear can help you to notice new things. Try to explain the situation to them. Even if it does not make much sense, the questions they ask may be helpful to you. Finally, if you have no one else to talk to, get out of your own head and try to look at the situation from someone else’s perspective. And don’t wait until you’re ready to get things done. Start somewhere!

How to Deal with Analysis Paralysis?

If you have somehow gotten into analysis paralysis, all you have to do is to recognize it and take the necessary steps to get out of it. To deal with analysis paralysis, you can try the following:

1. Acknowledge that you are caught in analysis paralysis and accept your situation.
If you suffer from one or more of the symptoms you read about in the heading “Symptoms of Analysis Paralysis,” you are having analysis paralysis. But you need to make it a habit to check the status from time to time to recognize this. You can do this very easily. Ask yourself at the end of each workday, or every Friday at the end of the weekend: Is everything okay? Did anything go wrong? Is there a risky situation? It only takes a few moments to ask yourself these questions and think about their answers. But in those few minutes, you can identify a problem that could cost you days or even weeks.

2. Assess the situation.
If you are caught in analysis paralysis, immediately stop whatever you are doing. Conduct a root cause analysis. Determine the reasons for your analysis paralysis. Get a picture of the situation you are in. Evaluate the condition of what you have (resources, time). Do not hesitate to get support if you need it as you are doing this.

3. Create an exit plan.
Create a plan to overcome analysis paralysis. The recommendations in the “Preventing Analysis Paralysis” heading will also help you get out of analysis paralysis. At this stage, you should emphasize quick wins. A few quickly completed tasks will boost your morale and momentum. Also in this phase, you should not hesitate to get support from someone else.

4. Follow the exit plan step by step. Evaluate the situation and update your exit plan if necessary

Conclusion

Analysis paralysis means that the analysis process is essentially blocked by you. Even if the project you are working on is complex or the stakeholders are disinterested, the analysis paralysis depends heavily on the analyst. Their reactions to internal or external parameters and the responsibility for managing them are yours. Analysis paralysis is often caused by your inexperience, perfectionism, lack of planning, and erratic approach.
We may think, what if the problem is with the project and not with ourselves. Believe me, even if it is an impossible project, there are things you can do. For example, you can avoid taking over the project, or by dividing the project into phases, you can at least exclude elements that add complexity from the scope of the first phase. You can reframe the definition of success by disclosing the risks of the project.

The easiest way to determine if you are suffering from analysis paralysis is to check your pace. If you are progressing more slowly than expected, first try to understand why you are slowing down. Is it analysis paralysis or something else? If you conclude that the situation you are in is analysis paralysis, create and implement an analysis recovery plan immediately. If you can make an early diagnosis, you may not even need a recovery plan for analysis paralysis. You may be able to save the situation by making a few small adjustments to your work or the way you look at the work.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analysis_paralysis,z Analysis Paralysis, Wikipedia