The Community Blog for Business Analysts

Entries for 'Seilevel'

Last year, I wrote about my Lessons from a Bad Haircut. I’m please to say I finally have a lesson from a good haircut. How did I finally get a good haircut? It was what the stylist did after I explained what I wanted. She drew a quick sketch. It took about 15 seconds. And, with that sketch, I was able to say “No, that’s not what I want.” 60 ...
1 Responses
This entry was published on Aug 22, 2010 / Seilevel. Posted in Business Analysis, Analytical and Problem Solving Skills. Bookmark the Permalink or E-mail it to a friend.
One of the values that we bring is that we can help our clients to decide what scope to cut by providing them with a framework that links quantifiable business objectives to specific features. We create an objective chain to do this and it helps to spotlight features that don’t feed into the core business purpose. Typically our stakeholders are abl...
1 Responses
This entry was published on Aug 17, 2010 / Seilevel. Posted in Project Management, Business Analysis, Analytical and Problem Solving Skills, Leadership & Management. Bookmark the Permalink or E-mail it to a friend.
Sometimes projects are like villains in horror movies: they just won’t die. Even when you’ve doused them in gasoline, set them on fire, then dumped them in a river, they just keep coming back. A project’s extension beyond its natural or expected life is not good for the project as a whole (even though it might help keep you busy). Projects are expe...
0 Responses
This entry was published on Aug 12, 2010 / Seilevel. Posted in Project Management, Business Analysis, Leadership & Management. Bookmark the Permalink or E-mail it to a friend.
If you are a Product Manager or Business Analyst in charge of managing users through User Acceptance Testing (UAT), here are the top 10 things to do to prepare: Formal scripts – prepare formal scripts for the business users to run. If you can re-use any of QA’s scripts, all the better. At a minimum, use your use cases to build tes...
1 Responses
This entry was published on Aug 05, 2010 / Seilevel. Posted in Project Management, Testing & Quality Assurance (QA), Business Analysis. Bookmark the Permalink or E-mail it to a friend.
When creating a data dictionary, it is critical not to design with it.  You should not be attempting to create a database nor should you be showing the relationships of data.  This will be a detailed description of the data involved in your project.  It will also be one of the largest morale draining approval processes you can have f...
1 Responses
This entry was published on Aug 05, 2010 / Seilevel. Posted in Elicitation (BABOK KA), Data Analysis & Modeling, Business Analysis. Bookmark the Permalink or E-mail it to a friend.
As consultants and product managers, it is important that we quickly build and maintain credibility with our team so that we can work productively and effectively.   If you are unable to join the team dynamics, the work that we provide will be met with apathy or even outright hostility.  I’ve learned a few tips to help...
0 Responses
This entry was published on Jul 28, 2010 / Seilevel. Posted in Business Analysis, Soft Skills, Leadership & Management. Bookmark the Permalink or E-mail it to a friend.
At the beginning of almost every project (and even sometimes midway through them) we are asked to create a requirements plan and estimate the time required on tasks and the number of BAs necessary to execute it. In a later post I’ll talk about the actual plan items, but we do have a rule of thumb for how many BAs you need on a project. We have a s...
0 Responses
This entry was published on Jul 27, 2010 / Seilevel. Posted in Project Management, Business Analysis, Leadership & Management, Career as a Business Systems Analyst, Roles and Responsibilities. Bookmark the Permalink or E-mail it to a friend.
On a recent client’s project, we were asked to help in the effort of creating a system to automate much of the current manual processes.  In order to capture the requirements this also meant that we were documenting the business rules that were currently being used.  When I started the project, I did not have a complete understanding...
2 Responses
This entry was published on Jul 23, 2010 / Seilevel. Posted in Business Rules, Business Analysis. Bookmark the Permalink or E-mail it to a friend.
I am all for great tools and processes that increase efficiency of work, facilitate better accuracy, allow for repeatable results, so on and so forth. But sometimes they simply do not fit.  Yes, I just said better is not always good.  Why?  Spending time trying to improve tools or processes on short turnaround projects or tasks is us...
0 Responses
This entry was published on Jul 22, 2010 / Seilevel. Posted in Business Analysis, Analytical and Problem Solving Skills, Tools. Bookmark the Permalink or E-mail it to a friend.
There was recently an interesting post by John Mansour on the Austin PMM Forum (registration required) discussing whether Product Knowledge was an Asset or Liability to product managers. The author makes several claims about how product knowledge is a liability: “In a nutshell, the more product knowledge you have, the less product management yo...
0 Responses
Page 2 of 3First   Previous   1  [2]  3  Next   Last   

Modern Analyst Blog Latests

As we start a new year many of us will take the time to reflect on our accomplishments from 2012 and plan our goals for 2013. We can set small or large goals. goals that will be accomplished quickly or could take several years. For 2013, I think Business Analysts should look to go beyond our traditional boundaries and set audacious goals. Merriam-...
Recently, I was asked by the IIBA to present a talk at one of their chapter meetings. I am reprinting here my response to that invitation in the hope that it will begin a conversation with fellow EEPs and BAs about an area of great concern to the profession. Hi xx …. Regarding the IIBA talk, there is another issue that I am considering. It's p...
Continuing the ABC series for Business Analysts, Howard Podeswa created the next installment titled "BA ABCs: “C” is for Class Diagram" as an article rather than a blog post. You can find the article here: BA ABCs: “C” is for Class Diagram Here are the previous two posts: BA ABCs: “A” is for Activity Diagram BA ABCs: “B” is for BPMN

 



Blog Information

» What is the Community Blog and what are the Benefits of Contributing?

» Review our Blog Posting Guidelines.

» I am looking for the original Modern Analyst blog posts.

 




Copyright 2006-2024 by Modern Analyst Media LLC