Community Blog for Business Analysts

(19 Views) (1 Comments)

Ad Hoc Procedures My belief is that software development should be more of a science and contain as little artistry as necessary. It is great to come up with ingenious processes and guidelines for developing your software, but if they impact your colleagues you must get buy-in from everyone who is impacted before you start using them. Some people...

Posted by: baldrick

» Best Practices - Document Content

(18 Views) (1 Comments)

Unnecessary Documentation The first section that I look for in a document, is the paragraph that describes ‘who this document is written for’ and ‘what benefit they can expect to gain by reading this document’. If I do not see my role, or I do not see any benefit from me spending time reading the document, then I have to ask myself the question, ‘...

Posted by: baldrick

» Best Practices - Inconsistent Documentation

(20 Views) (1 Comments)

If you are writing a letter to your mother, it is fine to create a new a new blank document, type your random thoughts, add highlighting, colors and emphasized text where you want to make and get a point across, and basically format the document with any creative ideas that you feel appropriate. When working with documents in the workplace, ad hoc...

Posted by: baldrick

» Quantitative Risk Analysis

(71 Views) (0 Comments)

I may be overreaching but I include risk analysis as a proper subject of systems analysis. I've done enough TRAs to justify that position—at least to myself. So here's a risk analysis topic. Toying with the idea of getting some certification I took a look at the CISSP and ISC Common Body of Knowledge. One thing I found odd enough to exchan...

Posted by: Marc Thibault

» SAP OnDemand BI

(172 Views) (0 Comments)

SAP has announced a SaaS BI service that looks ideal for SMBs. It seems to have all the tricks you'd expect, so it's worth learning about. Problem: SAP is being cute about their pricing and I don't want to waste a lot of time on this if it turns out to be another overpriced SAP product. Has anyone got any idea what SAP intends t...

Posted by: Marc Thibault

» Best Practices - Ambiguity

(262 Views) (1 Comments)

How many times have you experienced a disagreement between colleagues, only find out later in the project that they were both correct. Chances are that they were using the same word, but both had different ideas of its meaning. [1] I can derive hours of entertainment by playing word games with my friends, by picking a word they are using and purpo...

Posted by: baldrick

» Best Practices - Duplication

(134 Views) (1 Comments)

How often do you see the same piece of information documented in 2 places? I am used to seeing requirements information copied into design documents; whole sets of requirements being copied into a test repository and diagrams copied from one document to another. Unless you employ a strict change management control system that includes a traceabilit...

Posted by: baldrick

» Best Practices

(57 Views) (0 Comments)

This following blogs contain rants and recommendations for good practices, useful not only for when delivering software, but that can also be used any time organization is required. The most common improvements that can be leveraged on any (some on every) development process it has been my experience to be involved with, are the following: ...

Posted by: baldrick

» Thoughts on Specifying Requirements

(90 Views) (0 Comments)

Requirements I have been working with requirements for more than 20 years. To be honest, it was several years before I understood the true purpose of requirements. The enlightenment came about when I was tasked with documenting a presentation to my colleagues that described the characteristics of a ‘good’ requirement. The characteristics that the ...

» Blurring the Lines between Business and IT

(913 Views) (2 Comments)

A “What If” question for business analysts and IT professionals… What if it suddenly became very easy for someone to do both your job and their own, at the same time? If history provides any forecast for the future of IT, we are likely to see some interesting changes in the way human capital is managed – especially for those of us involved in the...

Posted by: Derek Roos

» Measuring the Success of Training Activities

(680 Views) (2 Comments)

I am in charge of a relatively big training effort for a project (approximately 45 live training sessions in 10 weeks, as well as online training opportunities) to assist with the deployment of a new piece of software. The live training alone will involve over 450 people and will be quite in depth and hands on. Training often plays a cr...

» Why Business Analysts Should Not Perform Quality Assurance

(1509 Views) (24 Comments)

I seem to find quite a few job postings for Business Analysts that have a couple of lines in the ‘tasks to perform’ description that scare me like: Define test strategy and test plan Develop and execute test cases Perform stress and load test scenarios It’s not that I don’t believe I am capable of these tasks at some l...

Posted by: larimar

» How effective (or necessary) is a CBAP certificate for job searching?

(53 Views) (1 Comments)

Hello Everyone! I am new to this community blog, and I am interested in learning more about CBAP certification as it relates to my job search. In brief, I was employed with a company for 14 years before being downsized in a mass complany layoff last year. Before the layoff, my title over my last 5 years was a Business Systems Analyst.&...

Posted by: Jason N

» BPMN Library of processes?

(636 Views) (1 Comments)

In my time at programming I created or used any number of routines over and over again that did a specific job, from just a small function like adding a number of days to a date to writing out an error report or selecting data from an SQL database. Now I'm a business analyst and there are many process modelling applications out there that f...

Posted by: Peter

» Tips for managing business meetings

(1186 Views) (2 Comments)

The tips below are things I've learned the hard way and I think they're going to help you, especially if you're new in the BA field. You don't have to take things too seriously, don't be too harsh on yourself and others. There will always be people who criticize you but also those who understand you. Learning how to talk to users, how to manage ...

Posted by: georgiamotoc

» Abandon the use of Non Functional Requirements

(1285 Views) (4 Comments)

This model is provided by Don Firesmith of SEI. Note the lack of an NFR category. More

Posted by: Craig Brown

» Recent CBAP from Portugal

(625 Views) (3 Comments)

Hello BA's I´m a recent CBAP and first's in Portugal. I think the market of business don't know importance of the certification and i'm waiting to see the development of the CBAP here.

Posted by: Jorge costa

» Presenting Reporting Requirements in a BRD

(1272 Views) (8 Comments)

We have been struggling with what to include in a Business Requirements Document concerning reports. Because our BRD is more or less a contract between the client and our IT department, the greater the detail in this document the longer the time to obtain signoff. There are always modifications that are deemed necessary before signoff can happen. O...

Posted by: stobin

» 2009 Business Analyst Salary Survey Results

(2174 Views) (2 Comments)

Ravenflow and ASPE-SDLC have developed a specific, focused salary survey for the BA community. We shed light on the continued growth in need and value of business analysts and how they directly impact wages and opportunities. Thousands of our BA customers participated in the survey, and after third-party statistical analysis we present the results ...

Posted by: ASPE

» CBAP

(621 Views) (2 Comments)

I have just completed the CBAP and would like to share some of my thoughts about the process involved and the exam as I experienced it. I am based in Ireland and sat the final exam by CBT with Castle Worldwide. Exam Preparation In my case I had to study alone for the examination. I would have liked if there was a study group locally but ...

Posted by: KIERANC

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