April 27, 2007 – 9:00 am – B2T Tip We created a CBAP study group to discuss the BABOK in our organization. Here's how we structured it and what we learned: Assign each Knowledge Area to one or two BAs – they will facilitate the session on their KA Schedule 1 1/2 hours per session Schedule dates/KAs ahead to give everyone time to prepare Require participants to [...]
Author Archives: Barbara
Barbara Carkenord, CBAP®, 
Barbara Carkenord, Co-Founder, Chief Curriculum Strategist, B2T Training, has been involved with business analysis for more than 20 years. In her career Barbara has been as a programmer, systems analyst, Business Analyst, and project manager. She has spoken at industry conferences and written white papers on business analysis. She has detailed knowledge and experience in many structured approaches and methodologies. Barbara’s areas of expertise include business analysis, high-level design, quality assurance, and project management.
Business Case Development – time is of the essence!
April 2, 2007 – 9:00 am – The Atlanta IIBA Chapter meeting this week focused on Enterprise Analysis, specifically business cases. Pamela Robinson of Financial Voyages (http://www.teamfv.com/), gave a great presentation on business case development. Her organization has developed a Business Case Development Framework to help organizations improve their business case development process. It was great to hear another successful professional talk [...]
Make sure your data is accurate before creating new reports from it.
March 19, 2007 – 9:00 am – I have just returned from the 2007 DAMA Conference in Boston. It was an intense conference with over 750 attendees. Topics ranged from Metadata Management to data modeling challenges to developing your enterprise data strategy. I sat in several worthwhile sessions and came away with one excellent suggestion that BAs can begin to incorporate right away. [...]
We don’t need requirements, we’re buying a package!
March 12, 2007 – 9:00 am – How many times have you heard this statement (or something like it)? Sometimes it seems so much easier to buy a software package than to spend the time thinking about what we need and how we want it to work. “There must be a package out there somewhere that we could use.” In many cases [...]
Is your web application at risk?
February 19, 2007 – 9:00 am – The January meeting of the Atlanta IIBA was excellent. We had about 40 attendees and a great presentation. The presenter was Ryan English from SpiDynamics http://www.spidynamics.com/ Ryan spoke about web application security vulnerabilities and pointed out that requirements documents should always include security requirements. These requirements are part of the category called Quality of Service requirements [...]
Think before you Send
February 5, 2007 – 9:00 am – How much time do you spend deciding who to reply, forward, and cc on each email message? Do you find yourself sending lots of follow up/clarification emails because you forget to say something important or your original message is not clear? If you spend very little time thinking before you hit the "Send" button, I want to [...]
Is it urgent or is it important?
January 29, 2007 – 9:00 am – I saw a great article in the PM Network magazine this month. www.pmi.org It really applies to everyone, not just PMs or BAs. The article was written by Bud Baker, PH. D. one of the contributing editors to the magazine and he was referencing the very well read book, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey, PH.D. [...]
How do I explain what I do to my father?
December 28, 2006 – 3:00 pm – At a recent Atlanta IIBA meeting, Lisa Heiser was telling me about the frustration that her dad felt because he doesn’t understand what she does. He asked “How can you have worked for an airline, then a telecommunications company, and then the government? How do you know what to do in these different types of companies? [...]
2007 IIBA Certification exams dates announced!
December 19, 2006 – 10:46 pm – Be sure to check the IIBA web site, for the dates and locations of the 2007 IIBA Certification exams. With locations in four countries on three continents in 12 different cities many BAs will have the opportunity to certify in the coming year. http://www.theiiba.org/content.asp?ContentId=558 If you are interested in taking the exam, I recommend that you start working on your application [...]
We are certified CBAPs!!
December 15, 2006 – 2:05 pm – Well, the results are in and 15 of us can now refer to ourselves as CBAPs!! Certified Business Analysis Professionals through the IIBA. I am proud to say that three of us here at B2T are in this first group: Jonathan "Kupe" Kupersmith, Kevin Quilliams, and myself, Barbara Carkenord. We are also proud to have [...]