All Entries Tagged With: "Communication"

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
— George Orwell

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!

IT’s Interest in Business/IT Alignment

Bob Lambert says IT should take the initiative in solving problems of business/IT misalignment, and thinks the requirements process can be an effective vehicle for reaching out. I agree.

I could come up with a number of reasons why IT has an interest in being the one to reach out, but one reason in particular occurred to me as I was reading through Lambert’s post….

Accounting for Technical Debt

Hidden costs of the “quick and dirty” solution.

What do I know about “Maximizing IT Value?”

Catch my recent Requirements.net podcast interview.

Preparing Questions for a Great Customer Interview

Good questions lead to good requirements.

How hard could it be to design the stop sign?

I recently stumbled upon this video, got a kick out of it and thoughts I’d share. It is basically a video parody for the process of designing the stop sign if the project were kicked off in 2008. There have definitely been times in my career as a BA where I’ve felt like the poor chap trying to design to the customers’ specs.

Oh.. and for geeks like me who saw this and then wondered when we really did get the stop sign, here’s an interesting link.

Documentation is No Substitute for Interaction

I’ve long been of the opinion that involving as many stakeholders in the project as early as possible is a key to successful business analysis, and, more importantly, to successful projects, and have said as much in a few of my posts on this site.

Jim Highsmith, in the book Agile project management : creating innovative products, thinks that the reason projects tend to have so much documentation and so few results is that:

Weekly Digest – 08-16

IT communication problems, usability, suggestions for success, and a few funnys.

With requirements, discussions matter most

Mitigating the waterfall effect.

JB Weekly Digest (07-44)

Software developers are in pain, 10 types of programmers, best geek quotes, relationships, usability, and other goodies.

Recommended Link for July 1st

Just linking a good read on communication; particularly conversations.

The Practice of Leadership – Blog Archive – Resolving stuck conversations.. -

Conversation creates involvement, which generates the commitment. It’s commitment that ensures aligned action and an effective end result. Therefore, getting the conversations right is of critical importance.

Weaknesses of E-mail Communication

E-mail is a great communication medium, but it is not without its weaknesses.

Advantages of E-mail Communication

Here are just a few benefits of communicating via the most popular application on the Internet.

Timeless Management Principles

I found an excellent post on Leader Notes on some selected key management principles while actually doing some research to try to pen a similar post on my own blog. I liked Malcom Munro’s post so well that I thought I’d just do some commentary on some of the principles listed in hist post instead of trying to reinvent the wheel.

The 6 “Be’s” of Meeting Etiquette

A meeting can be very productive. A meeting can be a veritable nightmare. A lot depends on the professionalism of the participants.

I’ve devised a list that I think provides a broad but helpful guide that, if followed by meeting attendees, will result in a quality meeting where objectives can be met, and the tearing out of hair by its roots by participants can be greatly reduced, if not eliminated.