All Entries Tagged With: "Communication"
Quoteworthy: Chinese Proverb – Involve me and I’ll understand
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! Tell me and I’ll forget; show me and I may remember; involve me and I’ll understand. – [...]
Quoteworthy: Cicero – Be Brief
When you wish to instruct, be brief; that men’s minds take in quickly what you say, learn its lesson, and retain it faithfully. Every word that is unnecessary only pours over the side of a brimming mind. – Marcus Tullius Cicero
Quoteworthy: William Strunk – Vigorous Writing is Concise
Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts. This requires not that the writer make all his sentences short, or that he avoid all detail and treat his subjects [...]
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: 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 [...]
Leadership Through Communication
A great portion of our efforts to hone our craft revolve around becoming better communicators, or finding that set of symbols that is most conducive to reaching that critical shared understanding for a particular work effort.
Quoteworthy: Karl Popper
It is impossible to speak in such a way that you cannot be misunderstood. – Karl Popper
Time Travel for Context-free Use Cases
Yes, sometimes we BA’s need to think of creative ways to help us withhold the technology and implementation detail from our requirements.
Bookmarks & New Favorites (09-38)
a few of the articles I found “bookmark-worthy” over the past week.
More Business Analyst Link Love (09-28)
Here are some worthwhile links to help fill your brain with business analysis.
What’s in a Signature?
Is there such thing as a peaceful, amicable “sign-off”?
Your Name is Safe in My House
A friend of mine once told me of an uncle whose “byline” – for lack of a better term – was, “your name is safe in my house.” What he meant is that you wouldn’t have to worry about him or others in his company speaking ill of you. People took the uncle at his word, too, because he was never heard speaking poorly of others.
Requirements Are the Keystone
Requirements are the keystone of a successful project implementation.
Bright Idea on Requirement Character Limits?
Adam Feldman, blogging from Bright Green Projects’ “Bright Ideas” blog poses a fun and interesting question. Twitter limits entries to 140 characters. Should we do the same for requirements?
Google Wave for Business Analysis
The social web is abuzz with news on the upcoming Google offering, Google Wave.
Best of the Web this Week (09-21)
There are tons of great articles on business analysis and other topics of interest for project professionals that come out each week. It’s impossible to keep up with all of them, but I like to occasionally point out a few I’ve come across that I think align fairly well with what you folks (PA readers) like. Enjoy!