Business Analysis Link Share (09-24)

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Here’s some “light reading” on some interesting analysis topics to kick off your weekend. Wait, you don’t really read business analysis articles during the weekend… do you?

• Business Analysis and SCRUM Development is a really interesting and well-conceived article. As is the case with many such articles, the comments are great, too. This quote gives the gist:

Over the past few years, the rise in popularity of SCRUM has raised many questions as to how agile works in practice.  One of the recurring questions has been: is there a place for the business analyst within the ADM environment?

In my view, the answer is unreservedly and unquestionably ‘yes’.

• In Need of a Theory for Software Engineering is an article by Ivar Jacobson that I found out about via Craig Brown. I had never actively looked, but I didn’t even know Jacobson blogged! And get this -  I just found out he tweets, too. In this article, he addresses methodologies and shares some methods for “finding the ‘truth’ of software engineering.” My favorite quote is the following:

There are many ways for people to learn software engineering but the only way to get good at it is through practice and experience.

• Check out Angie’s thoughts on COTS (commercial off-the-shelf) implementations and enhancements at The Business Analyst Blog. She is also looking for some feedback on others’ experiences with COTS  implementations and enhancements.

Organizations often prefer COTS applications because of a belief that these applications can be implemented faster out of the box than homegrown systems with very little custom development or ongoing IT maintenance. One mistake companies make is choosing a vendor or package before thoroughly analyzing their business requirements. Just like any other project the business drivers, the core business processes, the data, business rules, the users and external interface requirements need to be defined and understood before a solution is selected. Once the requirements are defined, performing a gap analysis with each of the COTS applications under consideration is recommended.

• Management methods, tools and theories – This is a very thorough, content rich page full of links to, well, management methods tools and theories. I think I picked this link up from Kevin (@bainsight).

• Simulating Success is a Forbes article on “how high-fidelity user-interface simulations reduce risk and improve the quality of software development.”