Between You and Your Business Analysis Career
From the category archives:
When beginning work on a project – whether joining an existing effort or helping to plan the kick-off – the competent BA looks around at the players to identify the Stakeholders in this initiative and what they care about. After all, they’re the ones that will have to live with the outcome. The obvious Stakeholders [...]
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Reader Question: I am working at a rapidly growing company as a BA. Sometimes I really find it hard to catch my stakeholders and other interested parts at their places and to make an appointment with them for a meeting. I have tried many techniques and tools like mass email notifications, invitations to join meetings [...]
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As a Business Analyst, I tend to see processes everywhere I go. Whether I’m queuing in a coffee shop or making a hotel reservation on a website, I can’t help but draw a process diagram in my head to understand the “logic” which is hidden into the process, and the business rules that are being [...]
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Reader question: My company has recently created Business Analysis Unit with me as junior business analyst and my supervisor as Senior Business Analyst. However, he left the company even before setting up project plans. As I am not really familiar with the organisation yet, I am wondering where can I get some project ideas from? [...]
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Working with stakeholders to prioritize requirements is an important part of the BA role. Often, prioritization can be a difficult exercise, with stakeholders asserting that every single requirement is a “must have”. When this happens, it can be a sign that insufficient attention has been paid to the project foundations. Prioritization should be based on [...]
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When you are ‘dropped in’ as a consultant into a company that you have never worked for, the most important first step is to begin to build the relationships with your stakeholders. Not only do you want them to trust you, you want to them to know that you can follow through on any deliverable [...]
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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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Reader question: “What domain knowledge is required to be a successful BA in the retail industry and how would you suggest I go about accumulating this knowledge and experience?” Pat’s answer: It is more important to have the skill in asking thought-provoking questions to obtain the who, what, where, why, how information (and how all [...]
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As business analysts, it’s essential that we work closely with our business stakeholders. Whether we’re working on strategy, feasibility or requirements, this closeness often helps to ensure that we gain a real and detailed understanding of the problems that our stakeholders face. In some cases we might try and completely immerse ourselves in the world [...]
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Pat Ferdinandi is one of those people that oozes enthusiasm and goes above and beyond to engage with the business community. She recently released an eBook to help other technologists follow her model. “Parrotology” is an eBook about how to better engage with the business analyst community and make your self irreplaceable. I haven’t had [...]
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