Delivering data and reporting solutions in a corporation often involves working with Finance and Performance Professionals. However, they are busy a significant number of days during the year due to Month End, Quarter End, Year End, Operational Reviews, Strategy Refreshes, Planning, Forecasting and whatever the Leadership Team have requested for last minute!

Then add a fair number of initiatives that they need to work on, plus they would probably like a holiday or two, this will probably mean they have limited time to collaborate with you on your data solutions, but you need their domain knowledge to be able to deliver…

In my experience, there are a number of strategies you can employ to approach this challenge:

1. Understand when they are busy ask them at the start what their responsibilities are and build up an understanding (or even a calendar) of their activities so everyone can figure out when they are likely to be less responsive or not have time to work on the solution.
2. Ensure there is Leadership Team backing of your project objectives and get your initiative towards the “top of the list” for them to work on. Ideally you can get it on to their appraisal objectives so that they know they are judged on getting the solution delivered (and providing value!).
3. Make it a win for them. If you can deliver a solution that makes their day-to-day activities easier, replacing manual processes and inefficiencies they are much more likely to collaborate and work towards a successful solution. Or equally deliver a solution that is going to add a lot of business value and “make them look good”.
4. Be up-front on what time you need from them (eg requirements workshops, validation activities, running UAT with end users, etc). Have a clear time frame and set of tasks so that you can plan with them around their other duties.
5. Use them when you need them. Be mindful in how you deliver your solution, you can often waste time and goodwill due to dependencies, technical debt or other challenges delaying or preventing activities from taking place.
6. Make it as easy as possible. Do as much as you can to make it easy for them to collaborate with you. For example, prepare some requirements recommendations for them to review rather than a “blank sheet”, or ensure a thorough validation before giving them the solution to check themselves, or understand how they are going to perform validation activities and help automate some or all of their steps.
7. Bring them into your team. Back-fill their current responsibilities so that they have the time and focus to work on the solution. This obviously requires some good stakeholder negotiation, additional budget and can it take a lengthy amount of time to find a replacement resource. Also, be warned they are often drawn back into the day-to-day activities, especially if you’ve got a “50%” arrangement for them to work on your team, getting a report to the CFO is always going to take priority over your sprint objectives.

Be also mindful that the data and reporting solutions you deliver are rarely for the Finance and Performance Professionals to use themselves, but you are going to need their end user engagement, domain knowledge and trust for the solution that you deliver.

Many of these techniques apply regardless of who you are working with, but with Finance and Performance Professionals you should always take particular consideration for these hard working employees!