August 13, 2007 – 9:00 am –
Sometimes Business analysts tease Project Managers, we joke that we are more important than they are. In a meeting with a group of BAs last week I was reminded of how much we need PMs!!
Analysis paralysis! We joke about it but it is a real problem. Most BAs can get stuck in details whether they like to [...]
August 6, 2007 – 9:00 am –
The international BA is not as glamorous as the International Man of Mystery, Austin Powers, but it is exciting. For a number of reasons, many BAs are interacting with customers and team members across the globe. One of the keys to success is to understand and sometimes embrace the culture of the people with whom you are interacting. [...]
July 23, 2007 – 2:09 pm –
The main program at July's Greater Atlanta IIBA chapter meeting was about User Flow Diagrams. The presenter was Carol Kilpatrick, modeling and design specialist, from Delta Technology. She gave a great presentation on how she documents work flow diagrams to focus on user actions. There were two points Carol made that apply to all documents we produce as Business Analysts.
1) [...]
June 25, 2007 – 9:00 am –
I attended the BusinessAnalystWorld Symposium in Atlanta last week. One of the speakers whom I enjoyed was Keith Barrett from ProcessExchange Inc. http://www.process-exchange.com/
Keith spoke about Reuse Based Requirements Development & Management (RBRDM). I was very glad to hear someone at the symposium talking about requirements reuse because it is an area that I think we should be [...]
June 18, 2007 – 9:00 am –
We tackled a complex analysis problem yesterday and I was reminded how great it is to have a developer available to help with brainstorming during requirements elicitation.
A manager at one of our clients has a very complex algorithm for optimizing revenue in a boutique division of their organization. This division has been so successful that the senior managers [...]
June 11, 2007 – 9:00 am –
In May 2007 I attended the Project Summit/BusinessAnalystWorld conference in Washington, DC. I sat in on a presentation called “Can the BA Save the World?”, presented by a fellow CBAP, Marcos Ferrer. Marcos is a facilitator, planner & system implementer with over 30 years experience in computing and over 22 years experience in business analysis.
When I saw [...]
April 16, 2007 – 9:00 am –
As mentioned in last week's "Getting Started Part I", I start each project by making notes about what I already know about the project. These are some questions I like to answer about each project to document what I know before I can produce my detailed requirements plan.
Has there been a Project Manager assigned? Do [...]
April 9, 2007 – 9:00 am –
What should you do first? Would you define your requirements scope before you start to identify and analyze your stakeholders or vice versa? Would you receive the same answer if you asked 10 Business Analysts? I would bet not. Many might answer that they identify scope first before they can identify requirements stakeholders. Others would start [...]
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 [...]
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. [...]
