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A few months ago one of my favourite bands, The Scissor Sisters, were playing in my home town here in the UK. I bought some tickets as soon as they were released, and I wasn’t disappointed – they put on an excellent show. During the show, just before they sang one of their most popular [...]
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One of the real challenges associated with business analysis is drilling down to the real business need and requirements. Often stakeholders will come to us with a preconceived idea of what the solution might be, and through a range of elicitation and questioning techniques we help crystallize an understanding of what they really need. Ironically, this challenge [...]
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I have to admit that I have a rather eclectic music collection, with tracks covering almost every conceivable genre. Every time I hit the “Shuffle” button on my MP3 player, there’s a tense moment of jeopardy. Will the next track be by an epic rock legend, or will it be a remix of some trashy [...]
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A well facilitated workshop can be an extremely good opportunity to bring stakeholders together, brainstorm and discuss potential ideas and requirements. Great workshops are often creative, high-energy and fun. They should provide stakeholders with equal “air time” to raise their views, concerns or requirements… At least that is the theory! However, we’ve probably all had experiences where [...]
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A few weeks ago, I was travelling home from London on a rush hour train. The train journey was scheduled to last a good couple of hours, so I took my seat, booted up my laptop and prepared to use the time productively. I was getting into “the zone” and was really making progress when [...]
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As those of you that read my articles regularly will know, I occasionally like to “shake up the hornets’ nest”, in order to provoke thought and to get a healthy debate going. With the end of the year looming, I thought it was a great time to think about BA myths that our profession could [...]
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Elicitation can be a tricky activity. Often when needing to understand the requirements for a particular project, the temptation is to jump straight into facilitating a requirements workshop or holding stakeholder interviews. The challenge, of course, is getting enough stakeholder time, and knowing which questions to ask with the limited time available. Understandably, business stakeholders [...]
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While core business analysis techniques work irrespective of the industry or organization you’re working in and working in a new area can be an effective way of broadening your experience, exposure, and expertise, moving between domains can seem daunting—particularly if you’ve been working in a specific industry for a while. Even moving within the same domain can be disorientating. [...]
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One thing that I’m confident that readers of this site will agree on is that good quality business analysis can add significant value throughout a project’s lifecycle. But let me ask you a question. Have you ever found that some stakeholders just don’t “get” business analysis? They just want to implement a tactical, messy solution [...]
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It’s often said that we make assumptions about people the moment we meet them. We make these assumptions unconsciously, and they might very well affect the way that we feel, interact or work with the individuals in question. It might affect our initial ability to trust them. Imagine the scenario: You enter a top-class private medical [...]
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