While the Business Systems Analysis line of work is just beginning to be recognized as a profession of its own, the shortage of business analysts and systems analysts continues to get worse.  And the shortage is global!  Would you believe that India is having a shortage of qualified IT professionals? Well, you better believe it!&nbs...

The question will undoubtedly arise during your tenure as a business analyst, ‘How do I manage a difficult stakeholder?’ I once encountered a stakeholder, a very highly respected mathematician, who had developed an application based on a mathematical model of his weather systems. The algorithm was amazing. The application sucked. It wa...

A few years ago, I had shifted with bag and baggage to the US. I thought that the upcoming project would consume me for at least a couple of years. Alas, that was not the case. I returned home in five months. Well, I don't even want to begin to think about the financial and emotional set back that my family and I had to endure! Why did this happen...

Would you like to be perceived as effective? Want to succeed? Make sure you follow up.   As a BA you are involved in several initiatives at different stages of development.  What separates an average professional from an exceptional one is following up on tasks assigned to others on your projects. I'm too busy,...

Do you want to be an effective BA?   The first step is to make the key stakeholders trust you. As I wrote in my previous post it is the first step in establishing yourself when you're the only BA in your organization.  When I joined and sat down for my first meeting with the project team not only was I met with stares of host...

Are you the first and only Business Analyst in your company?  If so, you know how hard it is to survive while doing your job and bringing about organizational change.  If not, you may be frantically thinking "How do I get out?!".  This post is to share my experience in how to not only survive but thrive! I joined a mid-size company...

In the quest to improve safety records, organizations often rely on motivational posters, classes or training programs to help teams minimize risk and improve safety performance. However, great safety records are not achieved through these efforts alone. Improving safety requires leadership – organizational leadership at the front lines that is equ...

Teams and organizations are constantly plagued by project execution errors and failures. These failures create an execution gap -- a gap between what an individual and/or team plans to do and what they actually do instead. Just as retention rapidly degrades after learning, so does project execution after strategic planning. So what can be done? In...

Do you know how to provide collaborative leadership in a disciplined fashion? And how does one define disciplined collaboration? The current business and leadership literature touts the importance of collaborating in our turbulent world. Large and small businesses and teams struggle to wrap their heads around just what collaboration is. Many see co...

Do you know what your business's core competencies are? Is there just one or are there many organizational attributes? If you answered that there are many, how would you describe them succinctly? Core competencies are one or a combination of a few unique or rare abilities; however, a description of core competencies is not simply a laundry list of ...