How to Analyze a “To Be” Business Process
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. Is your organization rolling out …
Requirements Models and Specifications
How to Analyze an “As Is” 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 Write User Stories
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 …
How to Draw a Process Map
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 maps is that they are …
What Requirements to Specify for COTS and SaaS Projects
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 …
How to Conduct a Requirements Review
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 Create an Entity Relationship Diagram (ERD)
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 Write a Use Case
As someone with a business background, do you find that many business analyst jobs involve some interaction with the IT team or IT systems? Are you wondering how you’ll fulfill those responsibilities if you don’t …
How to Analyze a Business Process
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 …
22 Visual Models Used by Business Analysts
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 …
3 Diagrams to Add to Your Business Requirements Document
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 …
User Stories Versus Use Cases
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 …
What Goes Into a Functional Specification?
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 …
3 Ways to Write Clearer Requirements
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 Situations that are Absolutely Perfect for Use Cases!
A use case is a type of textual requirements specification that captures how a user will interact with a solution, specifically a software solution, to achieve a specific goal. They are a very common way …
Cloud Implementations: Can You Guess the 3 Types of Requirements that are Still Critical?
As more organizations are working on cloud implementation projects, or leveraging software available in a SaaS (Software as a Service) environment, many business analysts feel that it isn’t necessary to capture requirements at the same …
Cloud Implementations: Can You Guess the 3 Types of Requirements that are Still Critical?
65 Business Analysis Techniques
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 …
7 Mistakes Even the Best Make When Writing Use Cases
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 …
How to Approach the Data Migration for a COTS (or SaaS) Project
When an organization is migrating from a pre-existing system to a new Commercial-Off-The-Shelf (COTS) product, planning the data migration is an important aspect of the project to ensure that the right data ends up in the …
How to Approach the Data Migration for a COTS (or SaaS) Project
3 Reasons to Data Model (Even If You Can Design Databases)
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 …
The Difference Between Data Analysis and Data Modeling
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 …
How to Blend a Data Dictionary with Use Cases, Wireframes, and Workflow Diagrams
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
Getting Started with Data Modeling (10-Part Series)
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.
What Software Tools Business Analysts Use for Data Modeling
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 …
When it Works to Create a Data Map and a Data Dictionary at the Same Time
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
How Data Modeling Fits Into the Business Analysis Process
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 to Data Model Without Getting Too Technical (or the what and the how)
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)
4 Data Modeling Techniques that Solve Tricky Project Challenges
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
The Glossary: A Gateway to Clear Requirements and Communication
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
What is Data Mapping?
A Data Mapping Specification is a special type of data dictionary that shows how data from one information system maps to data from another information system. Creating a data mapping specification helps you and your project team avoid numerous potential issues, …
What is a Data Dictionary?
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 …
How to Use Feedback to Become an Expert in Requirements Documentation
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
3 (and only 3) Reasons to Use BPMN (Business Process Modeling Notation)
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)
3 Signs You Shouldn’t Be Writing a Use Case
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 …
How to Make the Requirements Process Faster With Visual Models
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
5 Effective Diagramming Tools You Can Afford
While we know that “a picture is worth a thousand words,” many BAs feel they don’t have the tools or know the techniques necessary to incorporate diagrams into their requirements process. There are pricey diagramming …
How to Put Some Spunk Into Your Requirements
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 …
What’s the Difference Between a Wireframe, Mock-Up, and Prototype?
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?
Make Your Requirements Atomic!
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 …
3 Shortcuts to Create Wireframes in Record Time
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 …
What Requirements Documents Does A Business Analyst Create?
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.
How to Present Yourself as Capable of Doing Requirements Specifications (Even If You’ve Only Created Informal Documentation)
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 …
5 Ways to End Analysis Paralysis on Your Next Business Process Model
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
How to Validate Requirements (BABOK 6.6)
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 Do Business Analysts Verify Requirements? (BABOK 6.5)
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 …
Oh Where, Oh Where Does This Requirement Belong? (BABOK 7.2)
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)
Good Things Come in Nice Packages (BABOK 4.4)
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 …
It’s Not “All Requirements” – Assumptions and Constraints Matter Too! (BABOK 6.4)
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)
How Do I Extract Business Rules from Legacy Systems?
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 …
Why Terminology is Important
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 …
Why Writing a Software Requirements Specification is a Valuable Analyst Skill
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
How Do I Approach Requirements for a Business Intelligence Project?
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?
6 Tips to Keep Writing UAT Scripts Fun
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. …
How Do You Collect Requirements for a Reporting 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 …
I’m Letting Go of the Big Thick Requirements Document. Are You?
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?
Akk! The Developers Won’t Use My Requirements Specs!
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 …
Use Cases: A Personal History (and a bit of a love affair)
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 …
Technical Specifications and System Documentation Can Take Different Forms
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
Requirements Templates: What To Do When You Must Start From Scratch
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
Using Wireframes or Prototypes to Elicit, Analyze, and Validate Software Requirements
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
How to Create a User Interface Specification
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 Define Scope in an Epic
Agile teams typically differentiate between “epics” and “user stories.” In most cases epics are just really large stories that sit far down on your product backlog until the team is ready to flesh them out …
How to Get Meaningful Sign-Off on Requirements Without a Walk-Through
While requirements walk-throughs can be a useful technique to get sign-off on requirements, they are not always appropriate. Before exploring some alternative approaches, let’s take a step back and think about what problem we’re trying to solve …
How to Get Meaningful Sign-Off on Requirements Without a Walk-Through
How to Create a Business Domain Model
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 Prepare a Requirements Document in 4 Steps
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 Keep a Big Picture Perspective on an Agile Project
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 …
Data Feed Requirements – A Template
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 …
How to Create a Product Backlog: An Agile Experience
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 …
When are you “done” with requirements?
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 …