April 7, 2008 – 9:00 am –
Recently I participated in an interesting discussion about software development projects. There was an underlying assumption by some that using a consistent software development life cycle (SDLC) on all projects is a good thing and someone asked how to best enforce it. For me, enforcement is a morale killer. In working with many companies over [...]
February 25, 2008 – 10:33 am –
Business analysts are rarely allowed enough time to elicit, analyze, and confirm requirements. Why? One reason may be that we don't ask for it. An important BA skill is the ability to accurately estimate the amount of time required to perform analysis work and be able to explain and justify it to project managers and [...]
February 18, 2008 – 9:00 am –
I presented a webinar for Catalyze (www.mycatalyze.org) on February 14th entitled Designing a Sure-Fire Stakeholder Strategy. The presentation touched on the importance of business analysis planning, specifically planning for stakeholder communications. We had 150 attendees and I was not able to answer all of the questions that were submitted. I will answer the remaining questions in upcoming [...]
January 7, 2008 – 11:02 am –
2008 promises to be a great year for business analysis! We have finally hit our stride – lots of people in our companies are beginning to understand what we do and the value that we bring to the organization. The IIBA has certified over 200 CBAPs in it's first year and is working to make [...]
November 12, 2007 – 7:30 am –
Even though development tools and techniques have improved drastically I still hear from corporate application users that the systems their IT department built or purchased for them lack usability. We all know that projects are still failing or challenged based on the triple constraint (Time, Budget, Scope). I wonder if the addition of a fourth [...]
October 9, 2007 – 10:34 am –
Traceability is a necessary component for complete and accurate requirements. Traceability is used in many aspects of requirements development and management. A simple definition is that "tracing requirements" means that we show relationships or links between different requirements components. Examples include:
Which data requirements are used in each process?
Which business objectives are supported by each business rule?
Which [...]
September 17, 2007 – 9:00 am –
I attended a Certified ScrumMaster training class this year delivered by Lithespeed. The class was very valuable, and I want to share a tool, trade-off matrix, to help set customer and team expectations. In my opinion this is a tool that should be used on all projects early in the planning stage. Here is an example [...]
September 10, 2007 – 9:00 am –
Some people cannot understand why data requirements are important. There are a lot of Business Analysts who say they have never collected data requirements and do not understand why they should. Here is one small example from my experience. I was doing some business analysis consulting at a state agency that was just beginning to use [...]
September 4, 2007 – 9:00 am –
A BA's understanding of how business stakeholders do their work is very critical to gathering the right requirements to meet their business goals. A BA, like a detective, investigates until he or she has uncovered the details about how the business operates: the good, the bad and the ugly. It's true we need to understand the business [...]
August 20, 2007 – 9:00 am –
Many BAs have experienced analysis paralysis at least once in their career. This phrase describes the situation when you keep thinking/analyzing a problem, doing more research, documenting what you have learned, and then repeating the activities. Think, research, document. Think, research, document. It is the BA's equivalent of an infinite loop in programming. We get [...]
