Advance Your Business Analysis Career
From the category archives:
A participant of the course, Crafting Better Requirements, that I’m teaching at the My Business Analysis Career platform asks: We run into situations where the business users want provide the design of the solution besides the business requirements. The technical team is against it — they would prefer to be responsible for the design phase. [...]
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Sometimes inspiration comes from the most unusual of places. I’m a real fan of stand up comedy, and as any true stand-up fan will tell you, the only way to fully appreciate a show is to see it live. I have spent many a Friday evening enjoying unheard-of-acts performing in small, intimate venues. On one [...]
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When you watch Dancing with the Stars, there are certain elements you are looking for as each couple takes their turn on the dance floor. You are watching for their technique, their ability to listen and interpret the music, the confidence on their faces, and that spark between the couples. Each week you watch, a [...]
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You probably know this feeling. You’re on a conference call with technical and business resources, explaining the business problem that needs to be solved, when suddenly it feels like there’s no one else on the line. Why don’t they respond? Where did you lose their attention? This very real situation is a common source of [...]
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At the start of many projects we are in a state of natural ignorance, as we don’t yet know what we don’t know. This is esepecially true when defining a problem or strategy or eliciting requirements. It is extremely valuable to uncover as much relevant information early in a project’s lifecycle, so that we can [...]
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Reader question: “How do people go about collecting report requirements from clients and trying their best to reduce overheads whilst still fulfilling the data needs? I know there has been a big drive recently for Green IT and how companies can reduce their carbon footprint, is this a tactic that should be used? In addition, [...]
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Part of preparing for requirements elicitation is identifying questions. You definitely want to avoid securing valuable stakeholder time only to be lost about what questions to ask! Some stakeholders will talk your ear off, but others need to be led through a conversation. Regardless, I’ve found that preparing a list of requirements questions helps me [...]
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In my last post on Bridging the Gap, I introduced some key concepts for planning virtual meetings: Consider the focus of the meeting or workshop; Minimize duration & maximize value; Involve everyone – create a collaborative spirit among those who will participate. With these themes in mind, your distributed team’s discovery, design and planning activities can [...]
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Last week I was re-reading the BABOK chapter on “Elicitation”. Doing a deep-dive into the BABOK is part of my professional development plan to ensure I’m making the most of each project opportunity that comes along and also part of my initial phase of CBAP-preparation. For the most part, the Elicitation knowledge area seemed like [...]
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When was the last time that you spoke with your customer at length about the things that are most important to them? When was the last time you asked yourself what you thought the customer might say to you if this question were posed? If you have been waiting for the most recent defect log [...]
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