Advance Your Business Analysis Career
From the category archives:
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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Is your BA style to go for glory? Do you seek praise around every bend? Do you want to be seen, heard and acknowledged? Do you vigorously voice your ideas and take all the credit? In today’s cutthroat business world I do not blame you if you do; often when one is at the project [...]
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During the past few days my curiosity-muscle has been tickled by the dormant value that resides in understanding stakeholder backgrounds early on in a project. Of particular interest is how this relates back to project timeline estimations and planning. “How?” you ask. Allow me to explain… I wouldn’t expect much “umming and ahhing” if I [...]
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Last week I had the pleasure of speaking to the Phoenix Chapter of IIBA on the ROI of Business Analysis. Two really significant themes emerged early in this presentation: Over 90% of the BAs report through the IT organization. The most pervasive problem with selling the value of BA lied with members of their own “IT” [...]
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Some recent posts across the blatherverse have highlighted some considerations that we as good business analysts must employ when developing and delivering our documentation and deliverables. These got me to thinking about my own very strong feelings in the past about what I should be doing as an analyst and how my audiences should be [...]
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Ask not what your developers can do for you, ask what you can do for your developers. These past few weeks I’ve been practically overtaken by a waterfall of humbling experiences. To be perfectly blunt, the developers did not like my requirements specifications. It was hard to realize that I had failed to communicate requirements [...]
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Today we meet with David Brandenburg, an enterprise architect with 15 years of experience in various technology roles. David is also my fiancee, but we cast aside our wedding planning talk to discuss the interrelationships between our respective fields in enterprise architecture and business analysis. David helps us see how new technologies can enable fancier [...]
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Business analysts tend to be detailed, thorough, and well-informed through research. It’s part of what makes us so good at helping people analyze and solve problems. But if we feel committed to letting people know when we’re right (and they are wrong) we can quickly sabotage some of our best relationships and alienate ourselves. One [...]
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We have all been here. You’ve defined just the right feature or solution to solve a specific business problem. It’s elegant. It’s simple. It’s even got a hint of beauty about it. When you get ready to present it to your technical team for implementation, you get the answer you least expect…”that’s impossible” or it’s [...]
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This past January, Barak Obama was sworn in as the 44th President of the United States. Traditionally the new administration’s first 100 days is closely scrutinized. Although I wasn’t elected to the office of Business Analyst, I scrutinized my first 100 days just as closely. Although I have worn the hat of a “BA” many [...]
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3 posts
Recently posted: How to Start a Business Analyst Career eBook – now available on Kindle and Nook!
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Recently posted: The Virtual BA: Video Conference Self-Awareness
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