The Modern Analyst Blog for Business Analysts

Have you ever had to use a map to get somewhere, and after navigating around the wilderness for hours, eventually had to ask for directions because it failed you?   Alternatively, have you ever read directions to assemble a toy, and rather than help you, the directions made things much more complicated? Perhaps you just figured it out o...

INTRODUCTION Being dropped in the middle of a project that is already in a bad shape (over budget, over schedule and under compliance) is not easy (or funny). So try to make the best of it and get out of it alive. On most cases, you get a project start with the business case or whatnot, then continue on with a chain of events. On most of my encou...

Analysts everyday and in every domain of business come across obstacles in their analysis and efforts that prevent them from best meeting the needs of the business. These obstacles can be in the form of business processes, or system limitations, or both. Furthermore, a considerably big obstacle can be potentially detrimental to the spirit and purpo...

If you are managing business or systems analysts, trying to identify the skills and competencies required of your analysts is not an easy task. The expectations placed upon the analyst vary widely from organization to organization. The variations are so drastic that the actual title doesn’t not say much about the type of work your analysts do. ...

In most of the projects and organizations I have worked for I have seen a very interesting pattern: - Developers get developer specific tools such as MS Visual Studio. - Testers get testing specific tools such as Mercury TestDirector. - Analysts get MS Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. The more "progressive" organizations might provide their busin...

After posting my last entry on questioning suspect requirements, I've read a great piece on the SlickEdit blog titled "How to Design Software With Bad Requirements." Scott offers some practical tips to help developers deal with bad requirements. These also apply very well to business analysts and systems analysts: come up with good us...

The Systems Analyst role is and will continue to be one of the best careers for a long time. In their “Best Careers 2007” report, US News and World Report lists 25 professions that will continue to grow in demand. With the advent of outsourcing, it is not surprising that the software engineer or web developer professions are NOT on the list....

Michael Vinje, an I.T. and software engineering specialist with more than two decades experience, has written an article on 5 Traits of a Successful project. Anyone in charge of business analysts or systems analysts can benefit from understanding and analyzing these traits.  Here is a rather quick summary: 1. Balance demand with cap...