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» Business Analysis Conference Europe 2010

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The Business Analysis Conference Europe 2010 is building on its highly successful inaugural conference with more workshops and a third track – Business Agility and Business Analysis. It brings together business analysis specialists from across Europe and beyond, providing a platform for promoting the BA profession and opportunities for BAs’ p...

Posted by: Adrian Marchis

» When the Client Isn't the Customer

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Usually when a Business Analyst is working on a project the client (which I’ll define as the party or stakeholder who receives the benefit of the Analyst’s services) and the customer (the party who is paying for the Analyst to render the services) are one in the same, at least from an overall organizational perspective (i.e. the client and customer...

Posted by: larimar

» Video: Business Analysis and User Experience Activities

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This is a great presentation covering business analysis and UX activities and how the two distinct yet overlapping disciplines related to each other and cannot be split. Free one hour education in business analysis & UX design. During the Opencast Matterhorn Leadership and Planning Meeting, Allison Bloodworth and Judy Stern of UC Berkeley Edu...

Posted by: Adrian Marchis

» BA ABCs: “A” is for Activity Diagram

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This blog begins a series on BA tools, based on my book “The Business Analyst’s Handbook”. In each blog, I’ll be moving through the alphabet, highlighting a BA tool that begins with the letter of the day (not quite Sesame Street, but not PeeWee ‘s Playhouse either). Today’s letter is “A” – for activity diagram. Example: The following activity dia...

Posted by: Howard Podeswa

» Spring Cleaning Your Personal Backlog

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As spring begins to plant its roots in the Northern Hemisphere, many people will begin an annual spring cleaning of their home. All the clutter that has accumulated over the past 3, 6, 9, or even 12 months since the last cleaning is collected, assessed and then dealt with (either by moving stuff to a better location, actually using the thing,...

Posted by: larimar

» BABOK 2.0 Free Download/Access (V2)

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I've seen so many questions being asked by people looking for a free download of the BABOK® 2.0 (Business Analysis Body of Knowledge®). And the clear answer is yes and no. Members of the IIBA (International Institute of Business Analysis) can download the BABOK® 2.0 for free from the IIBA's website (login required). Outside o...

Posted by: Adrian Marchis

» The Lost Stakeholder Analysis Dimension: Engagement

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Stakeholder Analysis is an important and often ongoing activity that Business Analysts perform as part of their duties. Solution delivery team members need to understand who else is involved or impacted by their work effort, how they can interact with these people or groups, and what sort of tradeoffs exist in pleasing one group over another....

Posted by: larimar

» Why I Don't Use BPMN

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First off, let me just say that I really like the BPMN standard, especially the 2.0 Beta specification. I find the notation to be a powerful and expressive language that takes into account not only the standard elements in business processes but also considers all sorts of interesting possibilities that may arise. I think the new Choreo...

Posted by: larimar

» Root Cause Analysis: Using the Five Whys

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Business Analysts are often thrown into projects to help gather requirements around a known, defined problem. Other times we’re asked to analyze the current state of a certain process, organization, system and look for ways to improve areas that are clearly lacking. I’ve noticed that when we are brought on a project, the problems descri...

Posted by: larimar

» Mitigating the Risk of Story Point Drift

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In many Agile projects requirements are not typically written in the form of a formal requirements document. Instead, a collection of concise but effective means of describing what must be built called user stories are often used. User stories describe the behaviour, performance, or interface of a system from a customer’s perspective....

» Agile Development: What we can learn from property developers – or what they’ve learned from us

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Agile Development: What we can learn from property developers – or what they’ve learned from us

Readers of this blog (both of you; I know you’re out there!) may have gathered by now that I’m a big fan of mixing it up: art/science/business/philosophy/politics/psychology and anything else that can be thrown into the pot. I believe that the more you let your worlds bleed into each other, the more opportunity there is to benefit from th...

Posted by: Howard Podeswa

» Eliciting Business Rules with an Eye for Data Requirements

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“Business Rules and Data Requirements: Pulling in Tandem for Success” was the title of another session I attended at the WCBA conference. Mary Gorman, Senior Associate with EBG Consulting, focused on business rules and their relationship to data in the context of requirements elicitation. Copyright Notice: Major portions of this blog post...

Posted by: Adrian Marchis

» Dispatches from the WCBA Conference: Retrospectives

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Dispatches from the WCBA Conference: Retrospectives “Slow Down to Speed Up: Retrospectives for Improving Product and Process” was the title of one of the workshops I attended during day two of the WCBA conference. Ellen Gottesdiener, Founder and Principal Consultant, of EBG Consulting tackled the subject of “Retrospectives”. It was a great pres...

Posted by: Adrian Marchis

» Dispatches from the WCBA Conference: Jogging through the IIBA® BABOK®

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Here’s a dispatch from the first day at the World Congress for Business Analysts (WCBA). I attended an all-day workshop titled “Get the Right Stuff, Fast: Jogging through the IIBA® BABOK® with the Requirements Roadmap” lead by Mary Gorman of EBG Consulting. Mary is a Certified Business Analysis Professional™ (CBAP®) and works as Senior Associated...

Posted by: Adrian Marchis

» Art and IT: Two Solitudes?

(2255 Views) (2 Comments)

In these ‘tough economic times’ everything seems to be measured in dollar value and if that kind of value isn’t readily discernable, we often assume there is no other value either – or none that matters. It’s behind personal financial expert Suze Orman’s diatribe against teachers (who, according to Suze, can’t possibly have any self-respect if they...

Posted by: Howard Podeswa

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