Archive for March, 2010
Quoteworthy: Paul Martin Lester – Words and Images Work Together
Words and pictures are intricately linked in journalism, advertising and educational contexts. Words printed under a photograph, the caption, signal the importance of the common sense representations portrayed in the image. Words beside a picture in an advertisement explain a product and its attributes clearly to a potential customer. Words spoken by an instructor give [...]
Quoteworthy: Kipling – Six Honest Serving Men
I keep six honest serving men (They taught me all I knew); Their names are What and Why and When And How and Where and Who. – Rudyard Kipling
Seven Steps and a Nice Little Process Template
I recently read and highly recommend Barbara Carkenord’s book, Seven Steps to Mastering Business Analysis, and must admit it has quickly approached the top of my list of favorite business analysis resources. It covers the basics needed to help get new analysts off to a productive start, but is also a nice handbook for the [...]
Don’t Forget the Constraints!
In addition to eliciting and specifying the requirements, an important part of the analyst’s value-add lies in helping business stakeholders and delivery teams identify and understand the constraints that will apply for the solution.
Begin with what you HAVE to do
The simple fact is, you can’t know all the details upfront. You can and should, however, be able to work with your stakeholders to identify the broader range of necessary capabilities and constraints, or “placeholders for conversations”.
Free Desktop Tools a Business Analyst Should Know About
Below is a short list of free desktop/productivity tools that I use regularly. I thought some of you might benefit from knowing about them as well.
Quoteworthy: C.S. Lewis – Don’t use words too big for the subject
“Don’t use words too big for the subject. Don’t say infinitely when you mean very; otherwise you’ll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite.” — C.S. Lewis
Quoteworthy: George Orwell on “Scrupulous Writing”
“A scrupulous writer, in every sentence that he writes, will ask himself at least four questions, thus: 1. What am I trying to say? 2. What words will express it? 3. What image or idiom will make it clearer? 4. Is this image fresh enough to have an effect?” Politics and the English Language, 1946 [...]