I had a great time at the European Business Analysis Conference the other week. I wrote an article a few weeks ago about what I was looking forward to and why. These are my notes on the following talks that I thought you might find useful. They are on the following subject areas: Solution design Managing agile backlogs… Read More »
The European Business Analysis Conference is on for 3 days from the 23rd to the 25th September in London. It is hosted by the IIBA UK chapter (International Institute of Business Analysis), BCS – the Charted Institute of IT (British Computing Society) and AssistKD. I’ve been going for several years and it’s so great to have so many… Read More »
Much has changed since I started writing articles for Business Bullet. I have a book deal from a global publisher, Kogan Page to write a book on Business analysis. See the book page – The Business analysis handbook for more details on the book and reviews of it. This is available worldwide from September but can be pre-ordered.… Read More »
Introduction Design thinking is a customer centric approach putting the customer at the heart of the analysis to understand what they really need and uses techniques that focus on understanding them. This helps to innovate and generate new ideas. Your customers may well be the people in your workshop. Customer can mean the people who are benefitting from… Read More »
Planning and estimating a project can be difficult because it involves so many unknowns particularly near the beginning of a project. There are several Business Analysis tools that can help. This article is to provide an overview of some of these and an explanation of: Why they are useful for estimating; When best to use them; and How… Read More »
Introduction This article is about the collaboration required between the project manager and business analyst. They both contribute to project delivery but from different perspectives. Summary of the different responsibilities. A project manager has the overall responsibility for the successful initiation, planning, design, execution, monitoring, controlling and closure of a project. Their focus is on delivery within scope, budget, timescales and… Read More »
Introduction There are some projects where data may play an important part and hence the elicitation of data requirements and understanding the techniques to use as a result are necessary. This article aims to cover these techniques and to provide a guide of how to use them. Examples of data centric projects could include: Bringing data together into… Read More »
Introduction It is important to understand the problems to be resolved and opportunities at the early stages of a project. These will build the foundations for understanding and prioritising requirements, design and implementation. If requirements do not relate back to a problem or opportunity, then the objectives of the project may not be realised. It is the responsibility… Read More »
This article is about providing some guidelines for writing good business requirements. Consequences for not getting this right could lead to the project failing as the solution provided will be dependent on this being correct and interpreted in the right way. Resist temptation to write down the requirements in narrative form too early Techniques such as using diagrams… Read More »
There are many reasons why Business Analyst involvement doesn’t happen until much later on in a project. Examples are: The business often feels they can sort out the early stages on their own. Not enough known about how a business analyst can help. There isn’t the money to fund the resource if additional cost. Not always possible to… Read More »