From the category archives:

BA Practice

Business analyst managers and team leads build a business analysis process and integrate those processes with other organizational activities, from business change to marketing to software development. Practices can range from immature and inconsistent to formal and well-defined.

If your project is a turkey, kill it early

by Adrian Reed on February 1, 2012 · 2 comments

in Engaging the Business,Enterprise Analysis,Leading Organizational Change

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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BAs make the world a better place

by Ryan Knapton on January 25, 2012 · 0 comments

in Leading Organizational Change,Maturing your BA Practice,Positive Attitude

As human beings, each of our time on this planet is finite. We know that time is precious, and we want to spend it doing things that make us happy. For many of us, one aspect of happiness is the ability to make a positive difference, to help put other people into a better position than [...]

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BA Stories: The BABOK might not be a methodology, but the BA still needs one (BABOK 2.1)

by Laura Brandenburg on October 31, 2011 · 6 comments

in BA Stories,Business Analysis Planning,Maturing your BA Practice,Requirements Planning and Management

After 4 weeks of meandering our way through the BABOK, we finally begin at the beginning. This is not to promise, however, that we’ll take it sequentially from here. I think there is great value in pulling the tasks out individually and looking at them out of the BABOK context. While the knowledge areas hold [...]

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The Future of Business Analysis: Innovation and Creativity

by Curtis Michelson on October 27, 2011 · 3 comments

in Leadership,Maturing your BA Practice,Professional Development Strategy

I started this series on “Building BA Maturity” back in January of this year and I’ve really enjoyed all the interviews and conversations with so much of the talent and insight in our community.  From Bob Prentiss to Ellen Gottesdiener.  From Peter Johnson to Thea Turray and James Taylor.  I’ve had a blast and learned [...]

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Help a BA! Are Best Practices Really Best?

by Kent McDonald on September 28, 2011 · 4 comments

in Help a BA,Maturing your BA Practice,Requirements Planning and Management

Reader Question: Is the term “best practice” a misleading buzzword? A current process is normally referred to as “best practice” until analysis is done to identify a new “best practice.” So was the former process not the “best practice” at all and can you reach a point of diminishing returns on the analysis/improvements that could [...]

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Why business analysts need to know more than business analysis

by SergeyKorban on September 22, 2011 · 3 comments

in Domain Knowledge,Maturing your BA Practice,Professional Development Strategy

It has become a good habit for me to review the projects completed over the last financial year. The company I’m at has recognized my contribution over the finished year in a very positive way. The business stakeholders expressed their positive feedback and intention to engage me in the new projects in the coming year. [...]

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Traditional vs. Agile: The Future is Hybrid

by Adriana Beal on September 15, 2011 · 14 comments

in Agile BA Practices,Leading Organizational Change

Even though the Agile Manifesto recently completed 10 years, there are still some lingering misconceptions about the agile approach within the BA community. In this post I’d like to address two points that are often overlooked by business analysts when they discuss agile methods: 1. Waterfall is not the only alternative to agile This is [...]

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Join Your Distributed Team in Virtual Celebration

by Joan Davis on August 11, 2011 · 1 comment

in Engaging IT,Engaging the Business,Managing Business Analysts

Once upon a time, when the world was young and co-workers shared the same four walls, we celebrated special occasions and important milestones together with games, food, and laughter.    However, for decades now we’ve enjoyed the geographical freedom brought on by digital communication, working anywhere in the world, courtesy of a simple data line or mobile hot spot, and with [...]

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Fostering a culture of innovation

by Nik Gebhard on July 21, 2011 · 10 comments

in Leading Organizational Change

Something rings true about the age old saying, “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” If a process is working, why change it, right? Wrong! As Bob Dylan rightly said: “The times they are a-changin’.” Our world is continually evolving and long-standing methodologies and techniques don’t necessarily provide the benefit that they once did. Similarly, [...]

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You could be running the company

by Laura Brandenburg on July 18, 2011 · 11 comments

in Leading Organizational Change,Marketing your value

Last week in the IIBA Career Call-In Show, we discussed leadership for BAs and, specifically, how BAs (whether they have the authority of a lead/manager role or not) are well-positioned to be leaders within their organization. I mentioned a couple of times how leadership is getting pushed down in organizations as complexity increases the sheer [...]

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