Have you ever been pulled into a project at the last minute, after the scope has been set, the timeline locked, and critical decisions already made? It’s a scenario many business analysts face, and it […]
The Key Role of Business Analysts in Early Project Planning
When starting a new project, establishing clarity about scope is absolutely essential. Scope clarity means defining what’s included in the project or the initiative, and just as importantly, what’s not included so that everyone involved
How to Scope a Project: A 5-Part Approach
There is one incredibly important thing to do first on ANY project… ⛅ Especially if you are in an ambiguous role like being a “Business Analyst.” 💯 Even if you’ve done this 100 times before.
New Project? Here’s What to Do First…
To be successful as a business analyst, you need a toolbox and a framework. 🎯 A TOOLBOX of techniques that you can pick and choose from, based on the needs of your project and team.
The Business Analyst Blueprint® Framework
As a business analyst, you need to have the ability to showcase how data seamlessly flows between information systems, ensuring smooth operations, and avoiding the headaches of data inconsistencies and mapping issues. With data mapping,
Imagine using a simple wireframe to create a visual representation of a screen in just a matter of minutes. No, you don’t have to be a UX designer to even aspire to be one. In
Looking to master the art of clarifying project scope in a flash? Say hello to the System Context Diagram, your secret solution to project scope! In today’s world, projects are only becoming more and more
How to Create a System Context Diagram to Model Data Flows
One of the most frustrating challenges on a project is when the developers build a solution that everyone thought the business signed off on only to have significant changes surface during testing or even after
How to Get Meaningful Sign-Off on Requirements
Strong business analysts know use a variety of techniques and craft specifications for specific project and stakeholder needs. Find the options you have for packaging requirements.
5 Types of Requirements Documents Business Analysts Create
Many business analysts are perfectionists by nature and want to do everything they can to avoid making mistakes. But it’s not uncommon for our perfectionism to actually be the root cause of the challenges we
How to Avoid These 5 Business Analyst Mistakes!
Did you know that using visual models can improve communication, reduce misunderstandings, and facilitate collaboration in business analysis projects? If you’re not using some type of diagramming tool in your business analysis job, you may
5 Effective Diagramming Tools You Can Afford
Today we’re going to answer a question that comes up quite often, and that’s what technical skills a business analyst needs to be well-positioned in the job market and to be able to have detailed
These Are the Top Technical Skills that Business Analysts Really Need to Know
As you explore job roles, are you curious about the difference between a business analyst and a subject matter expert (SME)? Are you unsure if your skills qualify you as a subject matter expert or
What is the Difference Between a Subject Matter Expert and a Business Analyst?
You’ve likely heard about ChatGPT, the free tool released by OpenAI. Imagine being able to expand your thinking, create draft documentation with ease, and streamline your work as a business analyst. This is all possible
How to Use ChatGPT (and OpenAI) to Increase Your Efficiency as a Business Analyst
Are you working with new stakeholders in a new company or project? As a business analyst, building rapport with critical stakeholders is one of the best ways to get a new project started effectively and
How to Build Rapport with Critical Stakeholders
As a business analyst, you can make a huge difference in how change is managed and save your teams a lot of re-work while neutralizing the negative energy often associated with change. In this short
As a business analyst, it’s your role to analyze the To Be Business Process and help your stakeholders define how work will flow once the new solution is in place. In this short video, you’ll
How to Analyze a “To Be” Business Process
As a business analyst, it’s your job to analyze the As Is Business Process in your organization to help everyone get on the same page. If customers are getting frustrated with your organization’s level of
How to Analyze an “As Is” Business Process
User stories are a way of capturing requirements that are commonly used on agile software development teams. The cornerstone of a user story is a single statement in the following syntax: “As a [user], I
A process map is a visual model that shows how a collection of activities are sequenced together to accomplish work in an organization. One of the great things about process mapping is that they are
With the vast majority of projects being delivered using pre-built solutions, it is important to understand how to specify requirements for COTS (commercial-off-the-shelf) software and SaaS (software-as-a-service) projects. In this video, I am going to
What Requirements to Specify for COTS and SaaS Projects
Stakeholder engagement is critical to success as a business analyst. Yet, often BAs will face challenges getting stakeholders engaged on their projects. They don’t show up to meetings or don’t provide the input you need
10 Tips to Engage Stakeholders
Elicitation is the process of discovering the requirements. In particular, elicitation often refers to engaging with stakeholders to understand their needs and expectations when it comes to the scope and detailed requirements of the project.
The Top 5 Elicitation Techniques Used By Business Analysts
Ask your stakeholders to prioritize requirements and you are likely to hear groans. While conceptually we understand that project budgets are limited, and requirements prioritization helps us receive the most possible value for our investments
Requirements Prioritization Made Simple
Here’s a scenario you may have run into: You receive a short request from a stakeholder about a new project. It’s been given top priority by your manager and so it’s the next project
Requirements Estimation: How to Create a Business Analyst Timeline
As business analysts improving business processes, it’s not uncommon for us to encounter stakeholders with a deep-rooted suspicion of IT and the belief that no matter what, the solution is not going to work for
Dealing with Difficult Stakeholders Who Are Resistant to Change
A requirements review or walk-through is a meeting where you gather all of your stakeholders together and walk-through the requirements documentation, page-by-page, line-by-line, to ensure that the document represents everyone’s complete understanding of what is
How to Conduct a Requirements Review
Many business analysts feel like their role is not needed in agile. We hear that agile teams don’t want “requirements” and so we assume they don’t want business analysts! Nothing could be further from the
The Agile Business Analyst: 4 Crucial Strategies for Success
One of the most common challenges I see in the business analysis profession is a struggle to help stakeholders understand the value of the business analysis process framework on any type of project, and, quite
Business Analysis Process Framework: Step-By-Step Guide
An Entity Relationship Diagram (ERD) is a data model describing how entities (or concepts or things) relate to one another. When created by business analysts or business users, ERDs can be used to understand the
How to Create an Entity Relationship Diagram (ERD)
A use case is a powerful tool to both analyze and communication the software requirements. If you have a business background, a use case will help you define what the software needs to do, even
How to Write a Use Case: Template + Tutorial
When you are trying to figure out what problem to actually solve before you dive deep into the software requirements, you’ll want to analyze the business process. And to do that, you create both a
How to Analyze a Business Process
Today we’re going to go through 22 different models BAs use in their work. You may not be aware of all 22 of them, so even if you’re familiar with a few, keep your eyes
22 Visual Models Used by Business Analysts
Do you create a traditional Business Requirements Document to capture your business and/or functional requirements? Adding a few diagrams to your BRD can make it more impactful and easier to understand. In this video, I
3 Diagrams to Add to Your Business Requirements Document
Have you been told that you are “too business oriented?” How could that be? As business analysts, we are supposed to figure out what the business wants and needs, right? Yes…and, well, no. Watch this
Can you really be too business oriented?
If you are on an agile team, do you write user stories, use cases, or both? My take is that until you know how to think in use cases, you need to write them to
Do you have an introverted personality as a business analyst and you are wondering how to best leverage your personality to excel at your work? Or perhaps you think because you are introverted, you are
How to Excel as an Introverted Business Analyst
If you find yourself in a business analyst role on an IT project, it’s likely that at some point you’ll need to create a functional specification – and these can take many different forms depending
What Goes Into a Functional Specification?
Clarity is one of the most fundamental attributes of writing good requirements. Clear requirements are less likely to be misunderstood by business stakeholders and technical implementers. Clear requirements require fewer review cycles to confirm and
3 Ways to Write Clearer Requirements
Stakeholder engagement is incredibly important to successful business analysis. Without engaged stakeholders who care about the project and understand the work you do as a business analyst, you will work harder to discover the right
How to Build Engagement with Stakeholders
Many business analysts are finding themselves working from home right now and needing to elicit requirements and conduct virtual meetings. If you’ve been historically used to working in-person, this can be a huge shift. In
3 Tips for Effective Virtual Meetings
Are you looking for a simple way to get more out of your requirements elicitation sessions? Would you like to make better use of yours and your stakeholder’s time? Would you be interested in learning
What Questions Do I Ask During Requirements Elicitation?
Hundreds of business analysts have learned and applied the Bridging the Gap Business Analysis Process Framework to make their BA work more effective and successful. And I’ve been receiving lots of questions about how this
The Origin of the Bridging the Gap Business Analysis Process Framework
Running an effective meeting is a critical skill for business analysts to master. You’ll facilitate all kinds of meetings with all different levels of stakeholders as a business analyst – discovery meetings, requirements review meetings,
Super Effective Meetings: 5 Quick and Easy Tips
Confidence is a belief – it is a belief in yourself and your ability to achieve a specific result in your life and your career. In my work helping business analysts, I see a lot
One way BAs add value is to find more cost-effective solutions to business problems, saving company time and resources in big projects where small changes might be just as effective. And even for larger projects,
3 Ways to Find Cost-Effective Solutions to Business Problems
We know that one of the ways we add value as a business analyst is through reducing rework and requirements churn. We get everyone on the same page about what DONE means, and minimize unnecessary
3 Tips for Minimizing Requirements Changes
If you’re writing software or functional requirements and you are not leveraging use case thinking skills then you are missing requirements. And missed requirements cause unnecessary rework on software development projects. While use cases aren’t
3 Situations that are Absolutely Perfect for Use Cases!
We’re going to the dark side of business analysis and agile requirements today, and looking at how we really help out end users who still have a waterfall mindset get clear about their requirements. This
Getting Clear Requirements in Agile from Waterfall Stakeholders
So, you’ve heard the news – your organization is going agile. Or you are looking for jobs, and every single one requires agile experience. What does this mean for you, your career, and business analysis?
How to Transition to Agile as a Waterfall Business Analyst
There are 2 primary reasons that business analysts miss requirements and I cover them in this video. Want to learn more? Watch this short video! And then register here for the free 3-part video training.
How to Avoid Missing Software Requirements
Trick or Treat! It’s Halloween here in the United States and so I decided to have a little fun with this week’s video. We’re looking at 3 “tricks” or issues that can trip us up
There are many reasons that BAs end up producing incomplete requirements, and this can have an extremely negative impact on our job performance. Today we’re taking a question from one Bridging the Gap community member,
How to Avoid Incomplete Business Requirements
As more organizations are working on cloud implementation projects, or leveraging software available in a SaaS (Software as a Service) environment, like Salesforce.com or ServiceNow, many business analysts feel that it isn’t necessary to capture
Cloud Implementations: 3 Essential Types of Requirements
Today we’re talking about an issue that’s more common for business analysts than you might expect. And that’s how to handle the situation when your project manager insists on an unrealistic requirements deadline, even after
Requirements Deadlines Unrealistic? – Here’s How to Respond
Congratulations – you’ve been asked to start a new project as a business analyst! While it can feel quick and effective to jump right in and start requirements documentation, this habit is likely to lead
How to Start a New Project as a Business Analyst
Today we’re talking about a problem all business analysts face – what to do when the developers push back on your requirements. Here are a few key points: Re-frame what the developer means by “that’s
How to Handle Push Back from Your Technology Team
The business analyst’s toolbox is chock full of dozens of business analysis techniques. Here is a list of 65 business analysis techniques that are useful to know about. Not that you would use every technique
65 Business Analysis Techniques
If you are relatively new to the business analyst profession, you might be wondering if you are actually doing things correctly. The business analysis process appears to be so nice and neat and linear until you
Here’s a scenario you might face as a business analyst. The head of the customer service team, we’ll call her Joy, has submitted a project proposal to get a new field added to the contract
How to Resolve Feature Battles
Project Portfolio Management is a term that’s used to describe how project managers and business analysts organize, prioritize, and show relationships between multiple active and proposed projects for their organizations. Sound portfolio management enables key
How to Manage a Project Portfolio (And Get Past Barely Managed Chaos)
Do you find your developers have one follow-up question after another about how the system is really supposed to work, even though you documented the functionality in a use case? Worse yet, did your development team
7 Mistakes Even the Best Make When Writing Use Cases
Author: Adriana Beal Some time ago, I received a call from an IT manager from a large NY-based company. This manager (let’s call him John) wanted my help in Phase 2 of a project whose
Missed requirements: how to avoid this BA nightmare
Today we’re wrapping up our series going into a little more detail on the things I would have liked to have known before I started my business analyst career with an article about how to
Quick tips for managing requirements issues
One of the things that I wish I’d known when I started out as a business analyst was I would need to take deliberate steps to ensure my stakeholders truly got what they wanted and
4 steps to finalize a requirements document
If you’ve ever been told that you aren’t pushy enough to be a business analyst, you are going to want to read today’s article. Pushy isn’t easy, and it isn’t in our DNA as business
How to get the information you need from your stakeholders
If you like the hit comedy show The Office (American version), you might remember when the new boss asks Jim to complete a “rundown.” Not knowing what a rundown is, Jim spends a lot of
4 ways to set clearer expectations
Welcome to part 4 of our 5-part Behind-the-Scenes in Business Analysis series where I’ll walk you through how I’ve handled some of my most interesting business analysis projects using the business analysis process. Part 5
Welcome to part 4 of our 5-part Behind-the-Scenes in Business Analysis series where I’ll walk you through how I’ve handled some of my most interesting business analysis projects using the business analysis process. Part 4
Welcome to part 3 of our 5-part Behind-the-Scenes in Business Analysis series where I’ll walk you through how I’ve handled some of my most interesting business analysis projects using the business analysis process. Part 3 –
Behind-the-Scenes in Business Analysis, Part 3: How to Survive a Project When Everything Goes Wrong
Welcome to part 2 of our 5-part Behind-the-Scenes in Business Analysis series where I’ll walk you through how I’ve handled some of my most interesting business analysis projects using the business analysis process. Part 2 – where
Behind-the-Scenes in Business Analysis, Part 2: How to Recover from Newbie Mistakes
Welcome to the 5-part Behind-the-Scenes in Business Analysis series where I’ll walk you through how I’ve handled some of my most interesting business analysis projects using the business analysis process.
Behind-the-Scenes in Business Analysis (5-Part Series)
Welcome to part 1 of our 5-part Behind-the-Scenes in Business Analysis series where I’ll walk you through how I’ve handled some of my most interesting business analysis projects using the business analysis process. Part 1
Behind-the-Scenes in Business Analysis, Part 1: The Project Where I Didn’t Get My Way
When an organization is planning to move data from one system to another, planning the data migration is an important aspect of the project to ensure that the right data ends up in the right
How to Approach a Data Migration Project
If you come from a technical background, you might be wondering if you can skip data modeling and go right to designing and implementing the database. While you could theoretically bypass any of the data
3 Reasons to Data Model (Even If You Can Design Databases)
In today’s information-rich world, we are seeing more and more data-related analysis skills in business analysis jobs. We’ve been asked several times whether business intelligence and business analysis roles are really different roles, and how
The Difference Between Data Analysis and Data Modeling
As a business analyst, it would be rare for you to complete a data dictionary on its own. Rather, it’s likely that you’ll be analyzing data requirements in combination with other business analysis techniques. In this
How to Blend a Data Dictionary with Use Cases, Wireframes, and Workflow Diagrams
Here are 10 articles to help you get started with data modeling. These are perfect if you want to brush up on data modeling or get fresh ideas to improve your business analyst work.
Getting Started with Data Modeling (10-Part Series)
Are you ready to get started with data modeling, but wondering what software tools you’ll need? Have you seen some of the more complicated-looking models and wonder how you can create these with your business
What Software Tools Business Analysts Use for Data Modeling
You might be wondering if you need both a data dictionary and a data mapping, or you might want to make these two deliverables part of one simultaneous analysis activity. Data mapping is a special kind
When it Works to Create a Data Map and a Data Dictionary at the Same Time
Part of the value the business analyst provides is selecting techniques to ensure the requirements for a project are fully analyzed and understood. Data modeling can be a significant part of the project requirements to rightfully non-existent, even
How Data Modeling Fits Into the Business Analysis Process
Although data modeling techniques can look technical, you don’t need to know database programming to complete useful versions of the models from a business-facing perspective. Instead, business analysts create data models that describe the what (of
How to Data Model Without Getting Too Technical (or the what and the how)
Business analysts solve tricky, icky, sticky project challenges using data modeling techniques. There are 4 data modeling techniques you should get to know as a business analyst, so they can become part of your BA
4 Data Modeling Techniques that Solve Tricky Project Challenges
A Glossary is a deliverable that documents terms that are unique to the business or technical domain. A glossary is used to ensure that all stakeholders (business and technical) understand what is meant by the terminology,
The Glossary: A Gateway to Clear Requirements and Communication
A Data Dictionary, also called a Data Definition Matrix, provides detailed information about the business data, such as standard definitions of data elements, their meanings, and allowable values. While a conceptual or logical Entity Relationship
Today let’s talk about email, specifically emailing to discover information related to requirements questions. You as the business analyst sit down and write a carefully crafted email with a very thoughtful question and send it
When to Use Email to Answer Requirements Questions
Author: Adriana Beal Participants who complete Crafting Better Requirements may have very different educational and professional backgrounds, but they all have one thing in common: they leave the course with a unique set of strategies
How to Use Feedback to Become an Expert in Requirements Documentation
Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN) is a standardized notation for creating visual models of business or organizational processes. Those new to BPMN understandably find it overwhelming. There are flow objects, connecting objects, swim lanes, and artifacts.
3 (and only 3) Reasons to Use BPMN (Business Process Modeling Notation)
With all the craze about use cases lately, you’d think that no collection of requirements documentation would be complete without at least one, and perhaps several, use cases. The reality is that while use cases
3 Signs You Shouldn’t Be Writing a Use Case
Many business analysts mistakenly believe that adding a visual model to a specification – or preparing one specifically for a requirements meeting – means significant extra work. But in reality, using the right visual modeling
How to Make the Requirements Process Faster With Visual Models
In a new business analyst position, it can be a challenge to figure out how to learn everything you need to know to be successful. Knowledge about the business and industry can be acquired over
How to Learn About a New Business Domain
Are you wondering what concrete steps you can take to make sure you don’t overlook requirements on your next project? In business analysis, the set of techniques used to discover the requirements is called elicitation. For the most
53 Tips For Discovering All the Requirements
Imagine the scene: A significant project is underway, and you are leading the detailed analysis. You create your business analysis work-plan, and decide to start the initial requirements elicitation by meeting and interviewing a few
3 Elicitation Techniques You Can Do Without Stakeholder Access
Picture me: young, fresh, and disciplined…leading a very boring requirements meeting where we’re poring over a very laborious requirements document. This was way back when I was too new, too green, to know better. I
How to Put Some Spunk Into Your Requirements
Have you ever wondered how a business analyst approaches a software project? Would you be interested in the general phases of work a business analyst completes and what activities are included in each phase? Well,
What’s the Business Analyst Role on a Software Project?
Would you be interested in learning more about how to visually represent your requirements, even if you have little to no technology skills? Have you been seeing the terms “wireframe”, “mock-up”, and “prototype” in BA
What’s the Difference Between a Wireframe, Mock-Up, and Prototype?
We put a lot of burden on ourselves as business analysts to get as much information as possible as early as possible in the process. The questions we think to ask are critical to getting
7 Questions That Will Get Even More Information Out of Your Stakeholders
Do you find yourself thinking up questions after a requirements meeting that you wish you would have thought to ask? Are your stakeholders frustrated because you come back again and again with more questions? Would
8 Ways to Be Less Irritating and Minimize Follow-Up Questions After Requirements Meetings
Business process maps are a growing area within business analysis. But many BAs are cut out from the business process. Others of you aren’t yet in a business analyst role, but would like to get
I have to admit that I have a rather eclectic music collection, with tracks covering almost every conceivable genre. Every time I hit the “Shuffle” button on my MP3 player, there’s a tense moment of
Make Your Requirements Atomic!
While I find that wireframes help me elicit the right requirements and shorten requirements review cycles by giving my stakeholders a visual point of reference, many business analysts resist creating wireframes because they take can
3 Shortcuts to Create Wireframes in Record Time
Are you exploring a business analysis career in an agile software development environment? Are you concerned about keeping your business analysis skills relevant in an increasingly agile world? Would you be interested in learning how
Secrets of Successful Agile Analysis: How to Make Your Business Analysis Skills Indispensable
A well facilitated workshop can be an extremely good opportunity to bring stakeholders together, brainstorm and discuss potential ideas and requirements. Great workshops are often creative, high-energy and fun. They should provide stakeholders with equal
Help Your Stakeholders Leave Their Rank at the Door: 6 Workshop Levelers
Picture yourself leading a requirements meeting early in the project. You show up 5 minutes early, get yourself settled, spread out your notes, and fire up your laptop. You review your agenda so it’s top
How to Keep Your Elicitation Session From Going Off Track
Do you ever feel like your stakeholders keep repeating themselves? Would you like certain aspects of the elicitation process to go a little faster? In this post, we’ll look at why even when we’re listening
How to Get Your Stakeholders to Stop Repeating Themselves
Elicitation can be a tricky activity. Often when needing to understand the requirements for a particular project, the temptation is to jump straight into facilitating a requirements workshop or holding stakeholder interviews. The challenge, of
The Forgotten Art of Document Analysis: 8 Documents That Can Help You Ask All the Right Questions
I’ve always been a big proponent of relationships and relationship building as the number one factor, at least in my view, for a successful analyst. They are critical to the work we do and require
The Second Ingredient That All Successful Business Analysts Possess
Do you refer to some of your business analysis activity as “requirements gathering”? Are you looking at BA jobs and seeing “requirements gathering” responsibilities and wondering what that looks like? And how do you reconcile
Requirements Gathering vs. Elicitation
Many new business analysts are confident in their communication and problem-solving skills but feel held back because they’ve only ever created informal documentation to serve a specific audience or project need. Are you confident in
Like writers complain of “writers block,” modelers often find themselves in “analysis paralysis.” When modeling a business process, analysis paralysis occurs when we get stuck on a model and are not able to finish it,
5 Ways to End Analysis Paralysis on Your Next Business Process Model
You might not think that Michael Scott of NBC’s The Office has much to teach you about facilitating a meeting. But I disagree! If you’ll take a closer look with me, you’ll discover that Michael does just
Michael Scott’s Guide to Facilitating a Meeting
Did you know that requirements can be perfectly well documented and verified, but completely useless? This is why business analysts not only verify requirements, but also validation them. In the BABOK Guide, the purpose of Requirements
How to Validate Requirements (BABOK 6.6)
OK – I admit it. One of my favourite parts of the BA role is facilitating workshops. I love being able to coax ideas out of people’s unconscious mind and I love the co-operation, creativity
How to Avoid 7 Common Workshop Pitfalls
Our grocer recently introduced pasture-fresh eggs from a local farm and I’ve been eating a lot of eggs lately. Fresher eggs than I’ve ever had on a regular basis in my life. The kind you’d
How to Expand Your BA Experience Even if You Aren’t a Business Analyst
You might not think you have much to learn from Dwight Shrute from The Office. Why, with the fact that he’s been given a dizzying array of job titles, never with the accompanying salary or
The Dwight Schrute School of Business Process Improvement
A reader asks: I am awaiting feedback from a client on a Requirements document. It has been 3 weeks and I haven’t gotten any response. I have already sent an email reminding them. How do I
How Do I Get Feedback on a Requirements Document Without Sounding Too Demanding?
Requirements verification ensures the intrinsic quality of the requirements. Although it would be a significant waste of time outside academic circles, I could verify requirements for a solution that had zero business value and that
How Do Business Analysts Verify Requirements? (BABOK 6.5)
While we’ve already talked about the importance of Preparing for Elicitation and Conducting Elicitation Activities, it’s not enough to stop there. The next two (and IMHO, critical) tasks in the Elicitation Knowledge area are Document Elicitation
Let Your Stakeholders Know You Heard Them (BABOK 3.3, 3.4)
When I first started my consulting business, I intended to focus solely on understanding the capabilities of legacy systems. Unearthing requirements had become a bit of a pet passion of mine and I realized that
BA Stories: The Value of Reusable Requirements (BABOK 4.3)
Do you think that you as the business analyst should be involved in figuring out how the solution is put together, even though you are not responsible for designing it or implementing it? Do you
Oh Where, Oh Where Does This Requirement Belong? (BABOK 7.2)
There is a distinction between the project requirements and the requirements package.Requirements can be organized, sliced and diced, torn apart, allocated, put back together, assigned attributes, etc. Packages are finely wrapped presentations of requirements in
Good Things Come in Nice Packages (BABOK 4.4)
I am a planner. I like to see what’s in front of me and understand what it will take to accomplish my objectives. I’d expect this is true of many business analysts. Our requirements are,
BA Stories: Business Analysts Plan to Plan (BABOK 2.3)
Are you responsible for the solution? If you read the BABOK closely, you might be surprised to learn that the answer is a resounding “yes.” Of course, the BA is not responsible for delivering the solution
The Business Analyst’s Role in Designing the Solution (BABOK 7.1)
Assess Capability Gaps is one of those tasks that we almost all do, but when we read about it in the BABOK we might wrinkle our brow. It seems so obvious that we may not
BA Stories: Mind the Gap – The Capability Gap (BABOK 5.2)
As BAs we very easily get wrapped up in our requirements. That is the bulk of our work – business requirements, stakeholder requirements, solution requirements, etc. Everywhere we look, requirements, requirements, requirements! However, in the
It’s Not “All Requirements” – Assumptions and Constraints Matter Too! (BABOK 6.4)
Perhaps even more than planning for elicitation, planning the business analysis approach will set a mature business analyst apart from the crowd. The purpose of ‘Plan the Business Analysis Approach’ is to select an approach
The BABOK Might Not Be a Methodology, But the BA Still Needs One (BABOK 2.1)
It’s difficult to even think about being a business analyst without elicitation. Yet, it’s so core, it’s often difficult to abstract from the other BA tasks as well. It seems we are almost always eliciting
3 Steps to Preparing for an Elicitation Session
The business need is one of the most fundamental aspects of business analysis. Yet, I know many BAs do not consider themselves part of defining the business need. Today, I’d like to challenge your assumptions. According
Do You Define the Business Need? (BABOK 5.1)
The purpose of this Evaluate Solution Performance (BABOK 7.6 – the last task included in the BABOK Guide) is: “Evaluate functioning solutions to understand the value they deliver and identify opportunities for improvement.” This task
BA Stories: Evaluate Solution Performance (BABOK 7.6)
We have two readers ask similar questions of our Help A BA! staff concerning extracting business rules from legacy systems; so let’s help them both out. Reader 1: As rules are mostly hardcoded and code
How Do I Extract Business Rules from Legacy Systems?
This journey has had its ups and downs. Like any new venture, it started with buoyancy – or maybe better, that feeling you get when you are heading up the first big hill of a
Laura’s CBAP Journey: Settling into a Study Rhythm (Weeks 6/7)
We ask the questions that people having been avoiding for years while they were trying to look smart. I read an article today from our respected colleague, Yaaqub Mohamed about the importance of data analysis
One often-overlooked aspect to avoiding missing requirements is stakeholder analysis. Stakeholder analysis ensures you have the right people involved in the requirements process. Often, requirements are missed simply because stakeholders are missed – and so
Investing Some Time in Stakeholder Analysis
Author: Adriana Beal If you are a BA working on the IT space, you may be responsible for creating multiple deliverables, many of them intermediate documents such as meeting minutes and as-is/to be business models.
Why Writing a Software Requirements Specification is a Valuable Analyst Skill
Reader Question: The organization I work for is expanding its Business Intelligence capabilities, introducing a new Enterprise Data Warehouse for management reporting. This is based on the concept of OLAP Data Cubes – permitting greater
How Do I Approach Requirements for a Business Intelligence Project?
I am sure that any business analyst who has written user acceptance scripting can confirm that script writing is super detailed, critically important and mind numbingly boring. But is it important – yes it is.
6 Tips to Keep Writing UAT Scripts Fun
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
Identifying Hidden Project Stakeholders by Connecting the Relationships
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
How Do I Get Stakeholders to Come to My Meetings?
We are looking for possibilities through the lens of the user. Editor’s Note: This relationship started when I queried on Twitter for some help planning a usability study. Leslie Shearer led me to Patrick Quattlebaum,
What a BA Should Know About the UX Profession: Interview with Patrick Quattlebaum
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 especially true when defining a problem or strategy or eliciting
8 Provocative Questions that Encourage Lateral Thinking
When I began my latest consulting job, one of my first deliverables was to assist the stakeholders with a process walk through. The purpose of the walk through was to identify gaps in the ‘to”
How to Use a Process Walk-through to Validate Requirements for a New System
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
How Do You Collect Requirements for a Reporting System?
In my last article 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
How to Elicit Requirements from Distributed Teams? Virtual Brainstorming!
As you begin eliciting information about the requirements, it’s very likely that you’ll discover information that’s not quite a requirement and not quite a business need either but is important information that has relevant project
How to Capture Stakeholder Concerns
Anne, a young business analyst for a financial company in New York, arrived late for the meeting. I had been at the company for two days of a week long engagement and had been attending
Attending the Right Meetings and Avoiding Unnecessary Ones
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
I’m Letting Go of the Big Thick Requirements Document. Are You?
Let me share one of my more humbling experiences as a business analyst. To be perfectly blunt, the developers did not like my requirements specifications. It was hard to realize that I had failed to
Akk! The Developers Won’t Use My Requirements Specs!
Can you really have a love affair with a document? Don’t tell my husband, but the answer is “yes”. For me, the love of my business analysis professional life has been use cases. In what
Use Cases: A Personal History (and a bit of a love affair)
Author: Adriana Beal Among the many competencies that business analysts need to develop in order to advance their careers, the ability to manage ambiguity is undoubtedly a critical one. The rapid changes that happen internally
Managing ambiguity – a key business analyst competency
Do you demand that your documentation serve double duty as a technical specification and a system document? While in the past I’ve done exactly that, my recent forays into more agile practices forced me to
Technical Specifications and System Documentation Can Take Different Forms
Great business analysts are great communicators. We communicate in meetings, through elicitation, via email, and through our requirements documentation. Verbal and written communication are key competencies for the successful business analyst. I’ve collected together some
10 Ways to Communicate More Effectively on IT Projects
In an agile environment your week-to-week and day-to-day focus quickly can become integrated with what the development team was working on each sprint. If you go into a sprint planning session without a properly-groomed backlog, the
How to Groom the Product Backlog for Improved Sprint Planning
The initial meetings with a stakeholder can be nerve-wracking. Oftentimes projects come to us for “analysis” with very little detail. It can feel like everyone else knows more and is better prepared. Yet we, the
How to Become More Confident in Requirements Elicitation
Oftentimes a business analyst gets involved in a project with multiple different business stakeholders with competing views. Before jumping into the analysis of the project or even defining scope, it can be helpful to pull
How to a Use a Stakeholder Request List to Facilitate Scope Definition
Have you ever been holding your breath waiting not-so-patiently to get a word in edgewise while one participant dominated the discussion? You see one stakeholder after another begin to check out while “that” person drones
How to Interrupt Someone in a Meeting
If customers are not receiving what they ask for in a project deliverable, what causes that? Where would everything fall apart to the point that requirements were not being carried out through implementation? Chances are
Do You Have the Key Business Stakeholders Involved in Your Project?
In many organizations, the leader of the meeting must fill multiple roles. You probably created the agenda, are guiding the discussion, and also responsible for taking the notes. Over the years I’ve developed some habits
How I Take Meeting Notes and Facilitate the Discussion Without Driving Myself Crazy
Reader question: “If a project is approved, do I still need to do enterprise analysis as defined in the BABOK? Do I need to do a business case?” This question got me thinking about the
If a Project is Approved, Do You Need To Do a Business Case?
While you may have a formalized processes and sets of documentation requirements for your software projects (this can be helpful or hurtful), you might be starting with no process or set way of specifying requirements.
Requirements Templates: What To Do When You Must Start From Scratch
Imagine you are running a meeting, probably about software requirements for a project, and someone in the room gets squirmy. Maybe they are shuffling their papers. Maybe they are bored and checking their emails. Or
STOP! You Are Being Too Detail-Oriented!
Whether an analyst resides on the business or IT side, he or she is ALWAYS in the middle. For a Business-side analyst to be effective, there must be an understanding of how to interact with
How to Reach Across Organizational Boundaries to Create a More Successful Project
We’ve all heard that a “picture is worth a thousand words”. It’s absolutely true when it comes to building good software requirements. In the case of building a software application, even the most rudimentary prototypes
Using Wireframes or Prototypes to Elicit, Analyze, and Validate Software Requirements
As long as customers have been seeking solutions from the computing industry, there has existed a barrier between those who need a technological solution and those who provide one. That barrier has morphed from basic
A long, long time ago while working on a web-based product, a colleague of mine came up with this idea of writing a user interface or screen specification. The purpose of this requirements specification is
How to Create a User Interface Specification
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
What To Do When a Developer Says “That’s Impossible”
Agile teams typically differentiate between “epics” and “user stories.” As an agile business analyst, epics is a key technique to be aware of, as they are one way to look at the bigger picture before
Epics in Agile – A Template to Scope a New Feature
When you reach that point of the project where your head simply hurts from how hard you are thinking, you’ve spent hours in meetings rehashing the same concepts, and yet you and your team members
How to Create a Business Domain Model
So, you’ve met with your stakeholders and elicited information about their business processes, business needs, or how the system works today. How do you actually turn this into requirements documentation? In what follows, I’ll share
How to Prepare a Requirements Document in 4 Steps
Based on my experience analyzing requirements in user stories, I’m convinced that a fundamental challenge for the agile business analyst or product owner is to maintain and communicate the “big picture” while also detailing out requirements in
How to Keep a Big Picture Perspective on an Agile Project
Let’s assume you’ve done your homework and scoped a project that meets specific business needs or objectives. It’s easy to take a deep breath, kick back, and relax…waiting for the implementation of these great ideas
Your Technical Team Needs Business Context Too
When trying to uncover the functionality of an existing system or discover what a new or updated system needs to do to meet the business need, the most critical activity you will perform is interviewing
How to Interview a Subject Matter Expert
In today’s climate of content exchanges and web APIs, it’s often necessary for someone with both business and technical knowledge to participate in data modeling activities or building data specifications. Dumping data into your organization’s
Data Feed Requirements – A Template
The product backlog is really the core deliverable that maintains and evolves the requirements in an agile environment. Ownership by the agile business analyst (or a product owner with BA responsibilities) is critical. A product
How to Create a Product Backlog: An Agile Experience
When you are discovering the current capabilities of a software system, it’s critical that you take time early on to explore the system as fully as possible. Of course, you’ll also need input from stakeholders,
How to Explore the System to Discover Requirements
One of my pet peeves is attending a “mystery meeting”. You know the type, vague subject line and no agenda. Maybe you get a brief sentence in the invite saying “let’s meet to discuss XYZ”.
How to Create Quick and Effective Meeting Agenda
You’ve been there. A question sits on the tip of your tongue but you just can’t, no you won’t, ask it. Pushing back questions that surface in your consciousness is equivalent to painting over mildew.
“The Only Stupid Question is the One You Don’t Ask”
A clear sign of a poorly identified the problem is irrational disagreement. You’ve been in these meetings: one person brings up a great idea, another shoots it down immediately, and participants voice conflicting opinions about
10 Ways to Discover What the Problem Really Is
Many times we are so excited to implement a new idea or solve a recently elevated business problem that we forget to stop for a moment and reflect on the direction we are taking. I
5 Questions to Ask Before Starting a Technology Project
I have asked this question in nearly every business analyst job interview I’ve conducted and rarely heard the answer I was looking for. The most common (and wrong) answer is “never”. Let’s just be clear
When are you “done” with requirements?
It was an eye-opening moment for me. Gordon Ellison stood up and said to a bunch of business analysts “You and I are difficult people to someone.” I had an immediate attack of self-realization when
BAs are Difficult People (And So Is Everyone Else)
The Issues List is one of the most simple and most effective tools you’ll ever use as a business analyst. The list itself is simple. The ability to maximize its impact is the sign of
An Issue Tracking Template for Requirements Issues
