Archives: analysis

When is Analysis Complete? When You’re Finished!

When I teach a class, I’ll ask the students to tell me what they consider to be their pain points and issues with performing analysis. One that seems to come up quite frequently is knowing when you are done. They’ll ask, “How much detail do you have to go to in order to get your [...]

Interface Analysis – it’s not just an afterthought

In the process of confirming my airfare to Honolulu (HNL for those who understand airport codes), I looked at my flights and connections. Two connections each way, three flights out and three flights back. But, two flight segments did not have seat assignments for my ticket, but they did for my wife. So, what do [...]

When do you learn the business?

One of the fundamental tasks of business analysis is to learn the business. Business models and business requirements are developed by spending time with business experts, observing, asking questions, diagramming and confirming process flows, discovering business rules and data. I am interested in starting a discussion about when the BA performs these tasks. I was [...]

The Things We Can Control

2009 was a tough year in many ways. If you were not personally impacted by losing your job or being furloughed, you most likely knew one or more close family and friends that were impacted.

BA Challenge!

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 [...]