Reduce, Reuse, Recycle… and Apply the SCAMPER Technique

I recently had a thought process that I wanted to share… I promise it ends with something useful! I was initially reflecting on Earth Day, which is coming up soon, and thought about how the motto of “Reduce, Reuse, Recycle” can be applied to our work – our processes, tasks, and even people. My mind […]

A BA’s Guide to Validating Requirements

Here’s a question related to requirements validation that pops up regularly in the classes we teach: How do I know I’m not missing any requirements?  My first response is: “You don’t!” I know that’s not what you want to hear, but you have to remember that nothing is perfect. Unfortunately, as business analysts we typically have at […]

Metrics for Business Agility

What should your metrics tell you about your organization? They should tell you: Did we succeed with what we did in the recent past? Are we succeeding now? Will we succeed in the future? Traditional metrics often measure outputs, not outcomes. In an ‘agile world’, we need to understand if what we are doing is […]

What’s the Difference Between Business Requirements and Functional Requirements?

What are business requirements? A common answer I get when asking for an example of a business requirement is a sentence like: “The system shall facilitate the automation of email to the customer.” Is that a business requirement? Well of course it must be. The business told me that specifically, and in those words! It […]

Just Enough Doesn’t Mean None! The Agile Business Analyst Role

I have recently been teaching and consulting in organizations that have transitioned to an agile framework AND have decided, as part of that transition, that business analysts are no longer needed. In this blog post, I would like to note where I think this mentality came from and then argue against it. The agile approach […]