The Modern Analyst Blog for Business Analysts

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...

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 pro...

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 perspectiv...

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...

“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
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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...

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...

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...

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'...

“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...

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...

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...

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 ...

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 ...

  Yep!       OK… this could have been a really short editor’s note but I’ll wait to practice word frugality for my Twitter posts. Yep – you can now follow me and other Modern Analyst editors on twitter: http://twitter.com/ModernAnalyst.   Now back to BPM…   First, I’ll resort to some simple logic: ...