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Seilevel

Lessons for a Good Hair Cut

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 ...

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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.

Seilevel

What do you do when the client isn’t focused on the business outcome?

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...

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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.

Mendix.com

Visual Modeling – Stopping IT Failure at the Root of the Cause

I came across this slideshow from CIO Insight a few weeks ago. The aggressive-looking deck attempts to explain why IT projects fail. I’m always a bit weary of headlines that seem this simplistic, but who knows – maybe they thought up some new ways to blow a project that millions of us hadn’t already avoided, accomplished, or observed. Better yet, w...

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This entry was published on Aug 17, 2010 / Mendix.com. Posted in Agile Methods. Bookmark the Permalink or E-mail it to a friend.

Mendix.com

The Mendix Community Fully Embraces Open Source

The idea of open source information gathering has been utilized in the scientific community for centuries. It is no secret that sharing information created by communities of experts provides the most productive basis for advancement, regardless of subject matter or field of study. Business engineers developing on the Mendix platform utilize our own...

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This entry was published on Aug 13, 2010 / Mendix.com. Posted in Technical Topics. Bookmark the Permalink or E-mail it to a friend.

Seilevel

It’s So Hard to Say Goodbye: Tips for Getting Closure on Your Project

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...

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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.

Seilevel

Top 10 User Acceptance Testing Preparation Tips

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...

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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.

Seilevel

RML® Model 4 – Data Dictionary

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...

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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.

Mendix.com

5 Steps to Improving your Career as a BA

The community of business analysts in the United States and abroad is taking notice of their impact on the world economy. Not long ago, the idea of a business analyst was new – sitting on the border of technology and business, sharing lunch with both ‘geeks’ and ‘suits,’ and creating value with only the uncanny ability to collaborate between these ...

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This entry was published on Aug 03, 2010 / Mendix.com. Posted in Career as a Business Systems Analyst. Bookmark the Permalink or E-mail it to a friend.

Seilevel

Building Credibility With Your Team

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...

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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.

Seilevel

How many Business Analysts do I need on my project?

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...

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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.

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Modern Analyst Blog Latests

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