2015 has kicked off and most of us are already fully entangled in the daily grind. Unlike people, projects show no sign of a ‘getting back into the swing of things’ period. The pressure keeps building as organisations are pushed to keep up with industry in order to stay competitive and profitable. So what does 2015 have in store for us? My view is that the following 4 trends can be expected to be prevalent for Business Analysts during the year.

Rather than expecting use cases to contain all of a system’s functionality, I prefer to employ use cases to help the business analyst discover the functional requirements. That is, the use cases become a tool to reveal functionality rather than being an end requirements deliverable themselves. Users can review the use cases to validate whether a system that implemented the use cases would meet their needs. The BA can study each use case and derive the functional requirements the developer must implement to realize the use case in software. I like to store those functional requirements in a software requirements specification, although you could add them to the use case description if you prefer.

...the fact remains, you cannot build anything of substance, be it a system or otherwise, without a methodology. The question then becomes, how to construct a methodology suitable for your company or a given project. To this end, I offer this tutorial on designing methodologies.

There seem to be thousands of guides that will (or at least say they will) prepare you for the job interview and make you flawlessly land the job of your dreams. That’s pretty cool, but actually before you nail the job interview, first, you have to get to this stage and this proves unreachable for thousands of candidates every day. So this time, for a change, let’s focus on the 8 traps that await you on your way to the interview for your dream job.

With 24-hours a day, unceasing news being forced in our ears and down our throats, with computers that blog, phones that text and everything that twitters, we have information rushing back and forth at us at speeds that can only be measured in nanoseconds. It is information on steroids and it can and often does get us in trouble[1]. Analyzing, corroborating, vetting and authenticating this rush of information, misinformation and hyperinformation are at times almost impossible.

In the corporate world, when we join a company, we are normally presented with several documents from the Human Resources department which we are asked to sign. As a newcomer, you would be wise not to rush through this process and review each document carefully. If you have questions, ask. You do not want to be surprised if a problem arises during your employment or afterwards as an ex-employee

As Business Analysts, we are usually dubbed as “Change Agents”. The challenge, though, is that most of us find this role very bewildering and, even, distressing.

Maybe it’s time to get back to the basics behind requirements and why we need them. In this 3-piece article series, we are getting back to the basics of requirements. Our first installment addresses how to ask the right questions.

People are dealing with really serious things in their personal life and though we would love for those we lead to leave their personal life at the door when they enter work, it's not always that easy. As I've been leading over the last few years I have found that these 5 tips have helped me to lead through the world we live in today.

If you are a Scrum Master of an agile team, your prime purpose is to help the software development team remove obstacles that are impeding progress. The best practice approach in succeeding at this is to assume the role of a neutral facilitator. That is, the Scrum Master guides the team through a process for solving situations themselves rather than the Scrum Master proposing a solution. This article provides two workshop scenario exercises (an internal team conflict and a team conflict with the product owner) that help the Scrum Master practice the neutral facilitator role.

During a recent project where we were adopting aspects of Agile into a very waterfall environment I found myself repeatedly verbalising the concept of ‘definition of done’ to project owners and sponsors. This explanation was met with satisfied faces from people who loved the concept. This lead me to think how this seemed to be a revolutionary concept where it is something that I live by and strive to do everyday.

A combination of process modeling (BPMN) and decision modeling  (DMN) simplifies business processes by eliminating and replacing entire sections of the model with a decision model—the decision logic of the process model is precisely captured by decision modeling a separate yet linked model.

More successful business analysts seek out feedback, face tense situations head-on, and actively pursue new challenges. While they don’t necessarily like to fail, they trust in their ability to bounce back so they choose the difficult over the simple.  It’s not uncommon for a successful business analyst to need to navigate any of the following situations, with grace.

People ask me why I seem to be “black and white” on so many issues. Two reasons come to mind: first, I learned early in school that you do not get credit for making a mistake. If this has changed, please let me know. Second, the nature of my work in the information systems world has taught me there are right ways of doing things, as wel...

The question of efficiency in business analysis and, what is more, of potential obstacles that prevent an analyst from being efficient, has always been considered very important. It goes without saying that there are some more or less objective reasons that prevent analysis from being done properly... There are however some types of problems that are caused by not so obvious reasons.