Hi guys, i was wondering whether you could help me.
Im currently doing my work experience program as a BA and would like to know what resources i can use to map Enterpirse Architecture, where can i find definitive use case examples for the Marketing industry and would you be able recommend any general research hubs.
If you could help with these areas or with any useful resources for the marketing industry within which a BA can work on that would be great.
Thanks guys, Navi
Ravi,
"to map Enterprise architecture": I suggest that you try "TOGAF" and "the ZACHMAN FRAMEWORK". They are large frameworks, so all the best. You can Google them.
"definitive use cases": well these things just DO NOT exist! If you do find one I'd be interested . Even the Use Case GURUs, Cockburn and others would tell you that definitives do not exist; and many a time its not needed. People spend far too much time getting to the "definitive". I worked on a project once where we were hell-bent on creating definitive specs. It took us almost a year and reams of paper; at the end of the day we used just 60-70% of our definitive specs, the rest went to the requirements graveyard.
Use cases are behaviours (the value thing the actor does) that are governed by requirements. Hence, if the requirements are different, use cases by their nature are a dependency and therefore cannot be definitive. May I also suggest that you speak to your Marketing people and find out what they WANT; what are their requirements? Then work out the use cases and the non-functional requirements.
"useful resources for the marketing industry": I suggest that you research some end-to-end processes within the marketing domain. Check SAP ORACLE (PeopleSoft) and other CRM/Sales, Campaign and Marketing vendors to get an idea of the process areas that would be of interest to you. However, if you were interested in Strategic Marketing then its a totally different ball game.
Hope this helps a bit.
warm regards,
K
HI K, thanks for the fast response.
I apologize i didnt define what i meant properly.
In the first phase of my work experience we are encouraged to use research methods to define requirements without actually setting foot into an advertising agency. I was searching for Advertising Agency business processes or general information about the advertising process which will allow me to specify first level requirements. Although we are trained for requirements ellicitation with the limitation that is placed on me i am finding it very difficult to map processes.
As far as enterprise analysis goes, i have seen many examples of business departmental enterprise analysis but it seems using the internet as a research source example enterprise analysis' cannot be found. I am using this analysis to be able to map further processes.
Im sorry i didnt mention these details, but i was hoping that someone on this forum could shed some light or steer me to some useful resources. It seems finding BA relevant resources is quite easy in the finance industry (my last project), but as far as the marketing / advertising industry is concerned i feel it is near impossible to find these resources, any help you could offer me would be great.
Also if anyone on this forum has worked within marketing or advertising, if you could have a look at what i have done so far as far as requirements goes i would be very appreciative.
Thanks K
Navi ( i got it right this time)
"No worries" and thanks for the clarification!
A good strategy would be to find out what software they use in the industry, find out what processes each of the software "packages" support. Contact the vendor and do a preliminary interview.
For example, i've just googled Advertising Sofware and I got a swag of items. Have a look at http://www.agencycentral.com/index.html. Not only do "AgencyCentral" give you the core "Functions" of an ad agency, they also provide demos. So do http://www.orbisglobal.com/ and they also have demos. For example, for your first part of your research, I'd look at their offerings and begin to group the "functions" into core processes.
Coming from the financial sector, you'd know that ad agencies are essentially "job shops", that is they do lots of once off projects and therefore they'd focus on job costing with some core functions: establish client (CRM), establish ask and budget (terms of reference), delivery/production (Fullfillment), track costs against budget (job costing) and manage assets etc.
All the best.
K.
Hi K,
thanks alot, that clears alot of things up i will have a look into the advertising software.
Kind Regards and thanks again for all the help
Navi
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