Business Analyst Community & Resources | Modern Analyst

The Modern Analyst Blog for Business Analysts

Jarett Hailes

Why I Don't Use BPMN

First off, let me just say that I really like the BPMN standard, especially the 2.0 Beta specification. I find the notation to be a powerful and expressive language that takes into account not only the standard elements in business processes but also considers all sorts of interesting possibilities that may arise. I think the new Choreo...

13 Responses

This entry was published on Feb 09, 2010 / Jarett Hailes. Posted in Sequence Diagram, Data Analysis & Modeling, Enterprise Analysis (BABOK KA), Business Analysis, Domain Modeling, Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN). Bookmark the Permalink or E-mail it to a friend.

Jarett Hailes

Root Cause Analysis: Using the Five Whys

Business Analysts are often thrown into projects to help gather requirements around a known, defined problem. Other times we’re asked to analyze the current state of a certain process, organization, system and look for ways to improve areas that are clearly lacking. I’ve noticed that when we are brought on a project, the pro...

3 Responses

This entry was published on Jan 25, 2010 / Jarett Hailes. Posted in Elicitation (BABOK KA), Business Analysis, Analytical and Problem Solving Skills. Bookmark the Permalink or E-mail it to a friend.

Jarett Hailes

Mitigating the Risk of Story Point Drift

In many Agile projects requirements are not typically written in the form of a formal requirements document. Instead, a collection of concise but effective means of describing what must be built called user stories are often used. User stories describe the behaviour, performance, or interface of a system from a customer’s perspectiv...

3 Responses

This entry was published on Jan 17, 2010 / Jarett Hailes. Posted in Project Management, Business Analysis, Estimation, Agile Methods. Bookmark the Permalink or E-mail it to a friend.

Howard Podeswa

Agile Development: What we can learn from property developers – or what they’ve learned from us

Readers of this blog (both of you; I know you’re out there!) may have gathered by now that I’m a big fan of mixing it up: art/science/business/philosophy/politics/psychology and anything else that can be thrown into the pot. I believe that the more you let your worlds bleed into each other, the more opportunity there is to benefit from th...

9 Responses

This entry was published on Dec 13, 2009 / Howard Podeswa. Posted in SDLC, Process, and Methodologies, Agile Methods, Rational Unified Process (RUP). Bookmark the Permalink or E-mail it to a friend.

Adrian M.

Eliciting Business Rules with an Eye for Data Requirements

“Business Rules and Data Requirements: Pulling in Tandem for Success” was the title of another session I attended at the WCBA conference. Mary Gorman, Senior Associate with EBG Consulting, focused on business rules and their relationship to data in the context of requirements elicitation. Copyright Notice: Major portions of this blog post...

0 Responses

This entry was published on Nov 27, 2009 / Adrian M.. Posted in Business Rules, Data Analysis & Modeling, Elicitation (BABOK KA), Domain Modeling. Bookmark the Permalink or E-mail it to a friend.

Adrian M.

Dispatches from the WCBA Conference: Retrospectives

Dispatches from the WCBA Conference: Retrospectives “Slow Down to Speed Up: Retrospectives for Improving Product and Process” was the title of one of the workshops I attended during day two of the WCBA conference. Ellen Gottesdiener, Founder and Principal Consultant, of EBG Consulting tackled the subject of “Retrospectives”. It was a great pres...

1 Responses

This entry was published on Nov 18, 2009 / Adrian M.. Posted in Project Management, Leadership & Management, Agile Methods. Bookmark the Permalink or E-mail it to a friend.

Adrian M.

Dispatches from the WCBA Conference: Jogging through the IIBA® BABOK®

Here’s a dispatch from the first day at the World Congress for Business Analysts (WCBA). I attended an all-day workshop titled “Get the Right Stuff, Fast: Jogging through the IIBA® BABOK® with the Requirements Roadmap” lead by Mary Gorman of EBG Consulting. Mary is a Certified Business Analysis Professional™ (CBAP®) and works as Senior Associated...

1 Responses

This entry was published on Nov 17, 2009 / Adrian M.. Posted in Business Analysis Planning (BABOK KA), Elicitation (BABOK KA), Enterprise Analysis (BABOK KA), Requirements Analysis (BABOK KA), Solution Assessment and Validation (BABOK KA), Business Analysis. Bookmark the Permalink or E-mail it to a friend.

Howard Podeswa

Art and IT: Two Solitudes?

In these ‘tough economic times’ everything seems to be measured in dollar value and if that kind of value isn’t readily discernable, we often assume there is no other value either – or none that matters. It’s behind personal financial expert Suze Orman’s diatribe against teachers (who, according to Suze, can’t possibly have any self-respect if they...

2 Responses

This entry was published on Jul 10, 2009 / Howard Podeswa. Posted in Business Analysis, Soft Skills. Bookmark the Permalink or E-mail it to a friend.

Adrian M.

The 8 key responsibilities for Business Analysts on software projects

I stumbled upon a great blog post by Jerry Nixon, Principal Architect for NixonCorp, which covers from a developer's perspective eight reasons why Business Analysts bring value to a project through what they do: Extract Anticipate Constrain Organize Translate Safeguard Simplify Verify Read Jerry'...

0 Responses

This entry was published on Jul 04, 2009 / Adrian M.. Posted in Career as a Business Systems Analyst, Roles and Responsibilities. Bookmark the Permalink or E-mail it to a friend.

Adrian M.

I want to be a Business Analyst… Raise me, mentor me, and set me free!

“Once upon a time, young people learned a trade through years of apprenticeship.” Have you noticed an interesting dilemma faced by those wanting to enter the business analysis profession? There don’t seem to be any “Junior Business Analyst” jobs. Most hiring organizations are looking for practitioners with prior business analysis experience. Ima...

13 Responses

This entry was published on Jun 07, 2009 / Adrian M.. Posted in Leadership & Management, Career as a Business Systems Analyst, Getting Started as a Business Systems Analyst. Bookmark the Permalink or E-mail it to a friend.

Adrian M.

Agile - the way I like it...

This month’s eJournal issue is about Agile and the Agile Business Analyst with a couple of great articles by Ellen Gottesdiener and Scott Ambler exposing upon the agile side of the business. At ModernAnalyst.com we try really hard to showcase editorial content which is relevant, educational, well balanced, and thought provoking. For t...

4 Responses

This entry was published on May 11, 2009 / Adrian M.. Posted in SDLC, Process, and Methodologies, Agile Methods. Bookmark the Permalink or E-mail it to a friend.

Howard Podeswa

How much analysis do you really need to do?

As a BA, one of the central guiding principles for me has always been, "If it isn't going to make a difference to the outcome, don't do it." Yet I see a lot of confusion amongst BAs about how much analysis to do on a given project. Are structural models (class diagrams and ERDs) always worth doing or are they a waste of time? How much detail should...

12 Responses

This entry was published on May 03, 2009 / Howard Podeswa. Posted in Business Analysis, Tools. Bookmark the Permalink or E-mail it to a friend.

Barton George

Talking with Ford’s Head of Social Media

Last week I attended the Web 2.0 expo in San Francisco. In case you thought that social media was just for web 2.0 start-ups and teenagers, one of the cooler talks I saw was given by Scott Monty, the head of Ford Motor’s Social Media efforts. I was so intrigued that I thought I would grab him for an interview. He graciously ...

0 Responses

This entry was published on Apr 09, 2009 / Barton George. Posted in Tools. Bookmark the Permalink or E-mail it to a friend.

Barton George

Top 10 Tech Skills: Process Modeling tops the list

Last week I came across an article on NetworkWorld.com that listed today’s “Top 10 Technology skills.” The list was based on work done by Foote Partners, which conducts quarterly assessments of IT pay trends in the US. Foote Partners’ CEO David Foote says “what’s unique about this downturn is that IT departments are hiring talent in certain ...

0 Responses

This entry was published on Apr 07, 2009 / Barton George. Posted in Business Process Management (BPM), Business Analysis. Bookmark the Permalink or E-mail it to a friend.

Adrian M.

April 09 Editor’s Note: Should the BA care about BPM and SOA?

Yep! OK… this could have been a really short editor’s note but I’ll wait to practice word frugality for my Twitter posts. Yep – you can now follow me and other Modern Analyst editors on twitter: http://twitter.com/ModernAnalyst. Now back to BPM… First, I’ll resort to some simple logic: ...

1 Responses

This entry was published on Apr 05, 2009 / Adrian M.. Posted in Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN), Service Oriented Architecture (SOA). Bookmark the Permalink or E-mail it to a friend.

Page 2 of 4

First Previous 1 [2] 3 4 Next Last