The Community Blog for Business Analysts

The probability that a project will succeed is different for different cost and time targets. There isn't a single right answer to "How long will it take?" or "How much will it cost?" There are a whole bunch of answers, each with its own probability of being right. The conventional techniques for planning projects only give us one answer—and it's ...

By Landerson I recently joined a new project where I will be working as the person responsible for the developing and creating the requirements and documentation on a major development effort. As the person on the hook for a significant portion of work, I need to provide accurate time estimates for my portions of the project. I was concerned about...

By Jhulgan I used to dread hearing the question, “So what do you do for a living?”  This was often usually asked by a family member or other acquaintances not familiar with the software development lifecycle, IT, or business processes in general.  For business analysts, product managers, and other software requirements types, it’s diffic...

I am a firm believer in the value of a business analysts and requirements engineering. I am an new Assistant Professor and I have been conducting research in the field for over 6 years now and I can safely say that there is a HUGE gap between the academic and practitioner worlds with respect to business analysis and requirements engi...

I've been thinking a lot recently about the value of the BA, and BA recruitment - at all levels.   A common question that comes up is "Do I need to have experience in Industry X/Domain Y to work as a BA in that industry/domain?"   In a nutshell: Is it like that now? Yes. Should it be like that? Probably no...

It is common for project managers to question the number of BAs they need on a project or how much time needs to be spent on analysis. The underlying concern seems to be a fear of “analysis paralysis”. Whilst not overtly stated, for many project managers, analysis is a necessary evil that if not carefully controlled, will delay the “real” work of w...

As an analyst I almost daily have to solve some kind of problems and I bet you do also. Problems can be in different forms, but I’ve been noticing that the same pattern for finding the solution keeps coming up. I think this pattern is something essential and we use it often but i think it is a good idea to put it on paper. First, every problem has...

Not a suggestion for eliminating the process of documenting a software application, but rather a proposed for replacement of the documenting activity and manually produced documents with something more manageable and less likely to frighten the development team. Initiative for this work comes from a number of discussions I have been following and ...

Ad Hoc Procedures My belief is that software development should be more of a science and contain as little artistry as necessary. It is great to come up with ingenious processes and guidelines for developing your software, but if they impact your colleagues you must get buy-in from everyone who is impacted before you start using them. Some people...

Unnecessary Documentation The first section that I look for in a document, is the paragraph that describes ‘who this document is written for’ and ‘what benefit they can expect to gain by reading this document’. If I do not see my role, or I do not see any benefit from me spending time reading the document, then I have to ask myself the question, ‘...