We live in the era of constant change, as we hear daily in technology news and business meetings. Businesses are trying to keep up with the pace of changes by improving and transforming themselves. More and more initiatives and projects have to be completed “yesterday” meaning that they have very tight deadlines and high urgency.
What …
Read MoreWhile working on multiple projects over the last year, I noticed that they had similarities (evolutionary improvements were required) and as a result I applied similar sets of requirements to the solutions. In other words, patterns emerged.
Stephen Withall first introduced the idea of requirement patterns in his book “Software Requirement Patterns” (Microsoft Press, 2007). A requirement …
Read MoreThere are many barriers impeding effective communication between the BA and stakeholders. Information overload, organisational “silos”, outsourcing and geographical separation across time zones all form a part of the obstacle course BAs navigate in their job. In some companies, ineffective management, internal politics and bureaucracy lead to poor staff engagement. People in such places aren’t …
Read MoreYou have probably seen the scary statistics of failed projects. They often reveal that the major cause of project failures is poorly defined requirements.
I’ve talked about the effects of poor requirements before. They have a negative impact not only on the current project, but also on the business …
Read MoreWhile preparing for ITIL certification a while ago, I participated in practical games showing the importance of ITIL principles. The Service Desk team was the most stressed in those games, as it was trying to handle multiple incidents of different nature.
I started thinking about a way of putting some order into their chaotic activity. I …
Read MoreI’ve recently been involved in a discussion on how to better prioritise requirements. It’s an important topic because the requirements prioritisation process can get rather lengthy,and it’s good to speed it up.
The discussion focused on the difficulties with getting business stakeholders to agree on the requirements priorities because all stakeholders “naturally” have different priorities.
Why is …
Read MoreThere is a lot written about use cases and their application in business analysis. A good understanding of the business context is required to develop use cases which will deliver good value to a business customer.
This article discusses an approach to get the most of use cases and deliver the necessary solution to the …
Read MoreDo you wish it didn’t take so long to elicit requirements? Do you think you spend too many hours getting business users to identify business problems, confirm gathered requirements and provide feedback on the proposed solution options?
Do you and the stakeholders sometimes walk away from meetings frustrated about the lack of progress? Do you wish …
Read MoreIn the previous post we’ve established that the success of business analysis hinges on communication, and postulated that visual communication is the easiest way to improve productivity and the effectiveness of communication.
It is a cliche that a picture is worth a thousand words. The reality …
Read MoreIt struck me the other day that business analysis as the name of the profession doesn’t really reflect what’s involved in it.
Analysis is only one part of a business analyst’s activities, and perhaps not even the biggest or the most important. What business analysts do actually consists of three key categories:
[imageeffect type=”frame” align=”aligncenter” width=”473″ height=”422″ …
Read More
