Does the business perceive business rules as a true organizational asset? Are they visible, valuable, and universally accepted as data is? Above all, does business rule management attract and sustain enterprise-wide high-level management attention?

Complex Project Management (CPM) is the “next new thing” in our quest to achieve stronger project performance. Successful projects not only deliver on time, on budget, and with the full scope of features and functions. In addition, they deliver the expected benefits in terms of contributions to the bottom line of businesses. And projects today are complex, very complex. Our conventional project management tools and techniques alone are not adequate to successfully manage highly complex projects.

If you've ever been a manager or above in a corporation, you've probably been exposed to the concept of Succession Planning. The basic idea is that all managers should have some idea of who is willing and able to step into your shoes once you are promoted into a new position or change your career focus... It is something that I think is often overlooked within our profession as BAs do not generally manage people, projects or teams. However, we do manage requirements, which like people, projects and teams, generally do not go away just because we move on in our careers. Succession planning is just as important for BAs as it is for managers.
 

Widely-accepted conventional requirements models continue to create creep—changes to settled requirements which are a major cause of project overruns. Business Analysts and others will continue to encounter such creep so long as they follow flawed models focusing on requirements of a product or system being created without adequately also discovering the REAL, business requirements the product must satisfy to provide value.

The goal of rulebook management is to give business workers and business analysts the ability to access and manage decision logic directly. The focus is on the kinds of challenges these business workers and analysts face on a day-in and day-out basis.

Some people use them. Some people don't use them. Some people create them using sophisticated tools. Some use basic drawing programs. As part of the Unified Modeling Language, Use Case diagrams are often the starting point for many software projects. However, questions about Use Case diagrams still linger in the minds of many Business Analysts...

Every project in which we have implemented the Decision Model has seemed to bring further proof that – in the world of business logic or business rules, it seems to create a frictionless environment. We see “Ah ha!” moments time and again when people realize the simplicity to which their complex logic or business rules may be reduced by applying the model.

We are often asked what you need to do to run a successful SOA Pilot. Based on our experience of dozens of pilots, I propose that the following characteristics are essential to success.

It is no surprise that organizations spend over $15B annually on business intelligence and data mining technologies. But despite this focus on infrastructure technologies, there is little emphasis on the art of analysis.

Analysts are being asked to assimilate increasing amounts of data into meaningful information that can be acted upon quickly. This is a daunting task as the volume of data that comes into play is staggering and crippling to most analytic tools. This article discusses three innovations in data analysis that empower analysts to explore expansive data sets and gain actionable intelligence.

It is no secret that our record of complex project performance is rife with failed and significantly challenged projects. This is true for virtually all types of projects. Examples abound – we offer just a few.