Advance Your Business Analysis Career
From the category archives:
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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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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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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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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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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Urgent vs. Important I’m sure at some point in your career you will have either been trained on or read about personal effectiveness. One of the common tools that is used in prioritisation is the “Urgency vs. Importance” graph that appears in Stephen Covey’s 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. The theory in Covey’s book [...]
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Do you have one of those “favorite projects” in your archive of accomplishments, one that you feel you really nailed when defining the needs of the situation? One of my favorites goes back 10 years now – a Case Study in Enterprise Analysis that called for quickly gaining an understanding the scope of compulsory changes [...]
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Considering the benefits that a disciplined approach to business analysis can bring to organizations, it is hard to understand why so few of them spend the time and effort necessary to establish performance objectives for the BA work, and to develop a solid performance measurement system to monitor progress toward those objectives. Organizations that push [...]
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I was recently asked by my manager to provide a little input about what it means from an employee’s perspective to be an accessible manager. My input is to be used to help bring some direction into some planned efforts by my organization to address things proactively to ensure maintenance of good employee morale. As [...]
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It’s being discussed in several places on the net whether business analyst actually is or at least should be an internal change agent in the company. One may say, well, it depends on whether this business analyst has such an opportunity or whether his management would give him such responsibilities. It’s interesting, by the way, [...]
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3 posts
Recently posted: How to Start a Business Analyst Career eBook – now available on Kindle and Nook!
35 posts
Recently posted: Dipping My Toes in Ice Water: a Story of Perseverance
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Recently posted: Help a BA! What’s the difference between business analysis and business development?
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Recently posted: The Virtual BA: Video Conference Self-Awareness
19 posts
Recently posted: If your project is a turkey, kill it early
9 posts
Recently posted: The Future of Business Analysis: Innovation and Creativity
11 posts
Recently posted: Help A BA! How Do I Find a Mentor?
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Recently posted: The stupid analyst
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Recently posted: The Power of Index Cards
