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New Post 8/24/2007 5:23 AM
User is offline moderator
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What makes an SME and SME do they have to know everything or just more than you? 
 I have always been curious to find what opinions are on this:

 "Oh, yeah, and subject matter experts not really being experts"

What makes an SME and SME do they have to know everything or just more than you?  If you are not an SME how do you verify or validate that the person claiming to be an SME is actually an SME?

Patrick

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NOTE: Post moved to this new thread by Forum moderator.

 
New Post 8/24/2007 5:39 PM
User is offline Craig Brown
560 posts
www.betterprojects.net
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Re: What makes an SME and SME do they have to know everything or just more than you? 

No-one knows everything so the broader you investigate the better an answer you get.

What becomes problematic is when you get one person assigned to your team and they have either the wrong knowledge set or a contrary view on how things should be done to the project team. 

A classic example is the person who starts to defend the status quo in a department rather than assist in getting a clear view of how things happen. 

Another case is where people don't understand the context of what they are doing and so their focus is on local qualty loops and clientsatisfaction, and the balance against cost mnagement or strategy is lost.  Their explanations of what and how and why things are done can be plain wrong.

A third case is the person who is assigned but doesn't allcoate their time to you because they have prioritised other work.

 
New Post 1/2/2008 6:06 PM
User is offline Kevin Tran
6 posts
10th Level Poster


Re: What makes an SME and SME do they have to know everything or just more than you? 

A SME is whoever's provided as the source of our requirements gathering.  It is very rare to get someone who knows everything but the SME will most likely know more about the process than we do.  Because the business cannot halt operations to accommodate the BA with every SME possible, I believe this is where the great BA's separate him/herself from mediocre ones.  It is up to the BA to probe with the correct questions, be aware of when the SME is providing information outside of his area of expertise, have contingency plans to fill in the gaps from interviews. 

~Kevin~

 
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