All Entries in the "Business Analysis" Category
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.
The Business Analyst Balancing Act
BA’s must balance the risk of missing requirements against that of paralyzing the project until “everything” is known.
Classic Business Analysis Articles
I was sorting through some of my bookmarks and articles I’ve accumulated over time via the Web, and found that there are a few articles that I seem to refer back to time and again.
Business Analysis Can Kill a Project (In a Good Way)
Scrapping an ill-fated project before it gets started can be as valuable as seeing a project through to successful implementation.
Passing Thoughts on Business Analysis II
A few more passing thoughts on business analysis.
Four Key Knowledge Areas for Business Analysts
Four key knowledge/capability domains that are especially important to the business analyst.
The IIBA: Timely or Premature?
Welcome to Practical Analyst, a site specializing in practical insight for business analysts and project professionals. If you’re new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed or follow me on Twitter. Thanks for stopping by! I picked up an interesting article by Joe Gollner this morning in my Google Alerts that seemed [...]
Thinking of Becoming a BA? Q&A with Laura Brandau
Laura and I chat about her new book on what it takes to become a business analyst.
Escalation and Infinite Regression
Fancy words for pretty common ways simple projects can quickly morph into gargantuan ones.
Patterns and the Evolving Business Analyst
Let’s focus on what I consider the capstone to development and “evolution” as an analyst; the ability to learn, recognize and apply patterns.
Are “Project Teams” Really Teams?
My personal study of what makes successful teams, to which I’ve recently alluded, is ongoing. Most recently I came across the article “Project teams are not teams”, which seems to provide a pretty direct answer to the question I posit in the title of this post.
Passing Thoughts on Business Analysis & Requirements
Here are just a few impressions I’ve jotted down over the past few weeks that may never evolve into full blog posts, but that I wanted to share just the same. Please feel free to chime in with your support or challenges to my list, or with your own observances.
So, what do you do, exactly?
Business analysts? How many times have you been asked what you do for a living and had to pause to think for a minute about exactly how to describe it?
I’m with Einstein
What are some things we could improve by simplifying? How can we think differently and what can we do differently to get the desired results instead of the same old results?
What Good is the “As-is”?
Adrian Marchis at Modern Analyst posted a helpful article on process mapping describing, among other things, diagramming the “as-is” process as part of the overall process mapping exercise.
A very interesting and active discussion has followed concerning whether modeling the “as-is” process is valuable, or a waste of time and effort.
Did I Really Write That?
As I was scanning through some of my old documents, I found that I wasn’t that thrilled with a lot of my older work. Ever had that happen to you?
Notes from the BABOK 2.0 Launch Webcast
Kevin and Julian did a nice job with the presentation today and answered a lot of questions. I am glad I attended. Maybe it’s my inner geek coming to the surface, but I was really pretty excited by some of the ideas IIBA is working on and about the new and improved body of knowledge.
Here are a few notes I jotted down while listening that I thought my readers might find interesting.