April 14, 2009 – 3:10 pm –
As I hear more and more BAs talking about user stories I feel the need to begin a dialogue on our blog. User stories have been promoted by the iterative and agile software development approaches as a quick way to elicit and document user requirements. Some BAs are being told that user stories are the [...]
March 16, 2009 – 4:51 pm –
I attended the Business Process Innovation Conference in Marietta, GA last week and had the opportunity to hear from some very insightful speakers.
One of the hot topics of conversation revolved around enterprise analysis and how it can add significant value to organizations. Enterprise analysis is work done pre-project to determine the appropriate portfolio path [...]
March 9, 2009 – 8:32 am –
You have been given a user request to add a new field to a screen. You notice that the request is 6 months old. When you call the user to introduce yourself and let her know that you are going to be working on the request she tells you to cancel it! She found a way [...]
March 2, 2009 – 3:42 pm –
I recently hosted an industry luncheon with senior Business Analysts’ and one of the topics of conversation was templates. The question is how helpful are templates and how much are they hurting us?
My take is that templates are helpful to the extent that they provide consistency but become problematic when BA’s can’t see outside their [...]
February 17, 2009 – 2:16 pm –
Many analysts skip the identification of business processes and move right to the Use Cases. Some call these “Business Use Cases” and view them as logical, business requirements. I recommend that both business processes and system Use Cases are important components. They are two different requirement constructs representing two different perspectives with two different purposes.
Business [...]
January 26, 2009 – 7:00 am –
As my wife and I watched our stock and mutual fund investments drop ( I know…we should not be looking at the monthly statements now) we decided we should subscribe to Money magazine. The thought being this is a great time to get some more education in this area. There were many excellent articles in [...]
January 13, 2009 – 4:07 pm –
So the current buzz word right now is Agile and it is used in so many different ways to represent so many different things that the industry is in an absolute tailspin over agile. So let's take a moment to separate fact from fiction.
FICTION: Agile means we don't need to do any documentation.
People that advocate [...]
December 30, 2008 – 4:05 pm –
I just read a very good blog by Alistair Cockburn that summarizes the challenges in agile development when substituting user stories for use cases as the primary functional requirements deliverable. I love it when he says a user story is similar to a use case like a gazelle is to a gazebo. Pretty funny. I highly [...]
December 8, 2008 – 10:16 am –
The 2008 World Congress for Business Analysts conference in Orlando, Florida was informative and enjoyable. The keynote speaker, Pat Williams, was very motivating and clearly defined the characteristics of a successful team. Google’s Sunil Chandra shared some interesting thoughts on the changes in the way that workers communicate and interact.
At a lunch and learn titled “How do [...]
November 22, 2008 – 7:49 pm –
Please take 15 minutes to take the new IIBA BA role delineation task survey. You do not need to be an IIBA member to take the survey. Your responses will influence the BABOK V2.00 new exam questions and knowledge area question percentages. Let your voice be heard. For more information refer to this blog http://blog.theiiba.org/2008/11/babok-version-2-task-survey-your.html
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