I spent a lot of time in the past half-century doing software work: requirements, design, user experience, programming, testing, project management, writing documentation, process improvement leadership, writing 7 books and many articles, consulting, and training. Sure, there were some side trips along the way,.... But basically I’m a software guy. Over all that time, I’ve accumulated numerous insights about the software business. Here I offer 66 of those lessons. Perhaps you’ll find them as helpful as I have.

Requirements management is a critical function for business analysis. Requirements management is focused on ensuring that the business users and stakeholders have the following information available...  But the more important question to have answer to and where the real business value is delivered in requirements life cycle management is answering the following questions:

1. Are the requirements impacting critical business processes?
2. Which processes have recurring change?
3. Are the requirements priorities aligned to key business processes?
4. Which process will be impacted by which requirements?

When I began training to be a BA, I never dreamt that I would need to be a salesperson too, in fact, I'm glad I hadn't realized that as it may have deterred me from, what is for me, the most suitable and fulfilling career that I could have wished for.

The answer is simply this: the ability to sell. The better you are at selling, the more senior you are likely to become, and this is true across the whole business, it doesn’t just apply to Business Analysts.

As much as we like to think we are now in a dynamic and agile world, most delivery initiatives are still some shades of agile and all shades of waterfall. These initiatives could have adopted an agile outlook and naming convention, but the businesses they support are often still predominantly waterfall – going from one clearly defined task to another until realizing value. Think for example, order to cash, just in time logistics etc.

Business process mapping is the most indispensable technique for performance improvement and technology innovation initiatives. More than just boxes and arrows, the process map reveals the “magic” and wisdom of how and why work gets done.

Sadly, too many professionals give process mapping short shrift. Here are 10 tips that will ensure process mapping helps you achieve full potential from your improvement/innovation project.