Modern Analyst Blog - A Collaborative Business Analyst Blog

» The Lost Stakeholder Analysis Dimension: Engagement

(493 Views) (2 Comments)

Stakeholder Analysis is an important and often ongoing activity that Business Analysts perform as part of their duties. Solution delivery team members need to understand who else is involved or impacted by their work effort, how they can interact with these people or groups, and what sort of tradeoffs exist in pleasing one group over another....

Posted by: larimar

» Why I Don't Use BPMN

(1289 Views) (7 Comments)

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...

Posted by: larimar

» Root Cause Analysis: Using the Five Whys

(1478 Views) (1 Comments)

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 problems descri...

Posted by: larimar

» Mitigating the Risk of Story Point Drift

(836 Views) (3 Comments)

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 perspective....

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

(1354 Views) (5 Comments)

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...

Posted by: Howard Podeswa

» Eliciting Business Rules with an Eye for Data Requirements

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“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...

Posted by: Adrian Marchis

» Dispatches from the WCBA Conference: Retrospectives

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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...

Posted by: Adrian Marchis

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

(1398 Views) (1 Comments)

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...

Posted by: Adrian Marchis

» Art and IT: Two Solitudes?

(1625 Views) (2 Comments)

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...

Posted by: Howard Podeswa

» The 8 key responsibilities for Business Analysts on software projects

(4127 Views) (0 Comments)

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'...

Posted by: Adrian Marchis

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

(4422 Views) (10 Comments)

“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...

Posted by: Adrian Marchis

» Agile - the way I like it...

(1870 Views) (4 Comments)

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...

Posted by: Adrian Marchis

» How much analysis do you really need to do?

(2180 Views) (11 Comments)

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...

Posted by: Howard Podeswa

» Talking with Ford’s Head of Social Media

(929 Views) (0 Comments)

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 ...

Posted by: Barton George

» Top 10 Tech Skills: Process Modeling tops the list

(2077 Views) (0 Comments)

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 ...

Posted by: Barton George

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