Between You and Your Business Analysis Career
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OK – I admit it. One of my favourite parts of the BA role is facilitating workshops. I love being able to coax ideas out of people’s unconscious mind and I love the co-operation, creativity and healthy tension that present themselves in a good workshop. Executed well, a workshop is a valuable use of stakeholder [...]
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Did you have a part time job when you were at college? I can still remember mine vividly. In order to support my studies (and my many social activities) I worked in a late-night convenience store. Working there was an education – I learned how to handle all manner of situations involving people. Working in [...]
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Explaining the role of the Business Analyst to those not involved in Change can be a real challenge. I have always found it useful to use analogies, but I’ve never been able to find an analogy that quite fits the BA role. I’ve heard and used many – from a BA being like a nurse [...]
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Right, I might be branded a heretic, but I’m going to say it. Organizations that deliver every project that they kick off (with the project’s scope intact) are either extremely lucky, extremely risk averse, or extremely misguided. This sounds like a contrarian view, and may even sound a little controversial. In fact, you might (quite [...]
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The start of a new year provides a psychological “fresh start” and an opportunity to reflect on past successes and future challenges. In particular, I always find January a great time to take stock of the areas where I’d like to develop my career over the coming year. However, when it comes to personal development [...]
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Imagine the scene. It’s 22:30, and an aircraft is preparing to take off for a long haul flight. In the cockpit, the captain and first officer are busy carrying out their final pre-flight checks. They check the weather, the fuel levels and a whole range of technical dials and indicators. They start to map out [...]
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However much you enjoy your job, chances are that you have some days where you start to wonder exactly why you chose business analysis as a career. As BAs, there is no doubt that we feel the pressure now and again – whether it’s from a screaming programme manager, or perhaps just the pressure we put [...]
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As a BA, joining a project that has been in force for some time can be challenging. There are normally a whole host of previous decisions that have been made, and it’s likely that key members of the project team will have already formed a working relationship with each other. You might not know the [...]
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Have you ever considered to what extent your SMEs and stakeholders understand “projects” and the more broad discipline of “business change”? It’s something that’s rarely talked about, but I recently had an experience outside of work that has led me to re-evaluate the assumptions I make about stakeholders’ knowledge. I’ll tell you my story…. I [...]
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There’s an old expression that says “you get what you measure”. This may be a little clichéd, but it generally holds true within organizations and processes. It’s human nature to shoot for the objectives that have been set, and it is human nature to pay attention to the metrics which are being measured. If metrics [...]
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382 posts
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