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Adrian M.

You Must Question Requests from the Business

A while back, I was reading a Computerworld - Singapore article on Business Intelligence and embedded in it was a small, but significant, truth about the business analyst role. The article points out that a common mistake made by many organizations is to treat the business analyst as a request taker. That is - if the bu...

1 Responses

This entry was published on Jan 07, 2015 / Adrian M.. Posted in Business Analysis Planning (BABOK KA), Elicitation (BABOK KA). Bookmark the Permalink or E-mail it to a friend.

DMLeVoir

Is it just me, or do I really dislike BA work?

I was lucky enough for awhile to do very technical systems analyst work. Now I am only given what I suppose are traditional BA assignments. I find the work boring, tedious, uninspiring, and most of all I feel unappreciated and undervalued. I feel like a glorified secretary - I take notes and write up requirements or meeting minute...

1 Responses

This entry was published on Jan 06, 2015 / DMLeVoir. Posted in Roles and Responsibilities. Bookmark the Permalink or E-mail it to a friend.

Adrian M.

Employers Should Do More to Train Business Analysts

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...

1 Responses

This entry was published on Dec 17, 2014 / Adrian M.. Posted in Leadership & Management, Career as a Business Systems Analyst. Bookmark the Permalink or E-mail it to a friend.

Adrian M.

The Popcorn Way and the Business Analyst

The problem: Do you know when you’re done? Given a specific project with a reasonably defined charter and clear business goals you, the business analyst, set out to elicit and document the detailed business requirements. So when do you stop? Whether you lead a team of business analysts or you do the work yourself, you probably struggled tr...

2 Responses

This entry was published on Dec 03, 2014 / Adrian M.. Posted in Elicitation (BABOK KA), Analytical and Problem Solving Skills. Bookmark the Permalink or E-mail it to a friend.

Adrian M.

BA: If You Want to Succeed, You've Got to Read!

To be an average analyst is fairly simple... .... all you have to do is go to all the meetings, complete all the mandatory training courses, and listen to feedback from your manager. But... IF you want to be a GREAT analyst - if you want to truly be successful THEN that's not enough. To truly succ...

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This entry was published on Nov 16, 2014 / Adrian M.. Posted in Career as a Business Systems Analyst. Bookmark the Permalink or E-mail it to a friend.

Martin@DocProd

Three Great Tools for Managing Bulleted Lists

This post describes three great tools for managing bulleted lists in Microsoft Word. They allow you to automatically punctuate them , reorder them , and select them for further processing. This post complements my earlier article Three Great Tools for Editing Tables that described tools for efficiently entering and numbering the content in Micr...

0 Responses

This entry was published on Oct 20, 2014 / Martin@DocProd. Posted in Tools. Bookmark the Permalink or E-mail it to a friend.

Martin@DocProd

Three Great Tools for Editing Tables

I use Microsoft Word a great deal in my work as a BA, it is my primary tool for formally communicating text based project deliverables. Where I can, I like to use tables, so that I can quickly capture information and present it without having to write full, grammatically correct paragraphs. Over the last few years, I have prepared a numbe...

1 Responses

This entry was published on Aug 23, 2014 / Martin@DocProd. Posted in Tools. Bookmark the Permalink or E-mail it to a friend.

Thai Son

Relative Item Point (RIP) Estimate Methodology

ABSTRACT Software development is burdened with high levels of complexity (and many unknowns), yet it requires perfection for the software to compile and work. Because of these factors, no estimation approach is going to be foolproof. It is believed that relative item point estimation is just as accurate as any alternative (WBS, UCP) while offering...

1 Responses

This entry was published on Aug 22, 2014 / Thai Son. Posted in Estimation. Bookmark the Permalink or E-mail it to a friend.

sbowling999

Dealing with Difficult Stakeholders

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...

4 Responses

This entry was published on Jul 27, 2014 / sbowling999. Posted in Business Process Management (BPM) , Elicitation (BABOK KA), Requirements Analysis (BABOK KA) , Leadership & Management, Getting Started as a Business Systems Analyst. Bookmark the Permalink or E-mail it to a friend.

Alan

BABOK v2 - End-to-end data flow diagram analysis can highlight issues

As part of preparation to sit the IIBA CBAP exam, I wanted a one page summary of the overall BABOK flow. The first step of creating a summary matrix showing a derived master list of documents (e.g. Inputs + Outputs) versus the process that creates or uses it was interesting, but not entirely helpful. By using the matrix to create an indicative ...

1 Responses

This entry was published on Jul 09, 2014 / Alan. Posted in Business Analysis Planning (BABOK KA), Elicitation (BABOK KA), Enterprise Analysis (BABOK KA), Requirements Analysis (BABOK KA) , Requirements Management and Communication (BABOK KA), Solution Assessment and Validation (BABOK KA), Business Analysis, Structured Systems Analysis (DFDs, ERDs, etc.), IIBA & BABOK. Bookmark the Permalink or E-mail it to a friend.

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Jarett Hailes

Three Audacious Goals for Business Analysts in 2013

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-...

Howard Podeswa

Hey IIBA, What’s Up With That?

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...

Adrian M.

BA ABCs: “C” is for Class Diagram

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