Golden Rules for Business Analysts

Like all professions, business analysis has its golden rules – rules that are fundamental to the design of successful business systems. They might seem like common sense but it’s surprising how often we forget them and get ourselves into hot water.

Here’s a short list of some of the more relevant ones:

- The sooner you find a problem, the cheaper it is to fix
- Get the specifications right
- Recognise the total cost of a system
- Don’t design the solution before you’ve analysed the problem
- What applies to small systems doesn’t apply to large ones
- Don’t allocate conflicting roles in a project to the same person

Now let’s have a look at what they mean, together with some real life examples witnessed by the author...

Author: Colin S. Penn