Category Archives: Uncategorized

I just saw Noah Dawson’s blog on WizIQ that professors should be SMART. Now as a professor, I was immediately intrigued. After all, I think of myself as being “smart”. Then, the capitalization of SMART got my BA side going: … Continue reading →

Understanding and managing the stakeholders is a critical activity in successful project implementations and other initiatives. It is performed as soon as a business need has been recognized. It is a continuous effort that occurs throughout the initiative’s lifecycle. Definition … Continue reading →

In this blog we’ll take a look at requirements, particularly the different types of requirements described in the BABOK(r), and how to write them to be effective for implementation and testing. Let’s start by defining what a requirement is. Simply … Continue reading →

Love that quote in Bart Cleveland’s blog about how to keep creativity flowing: ” He said that when he lived up north, he learned quickly that a faucet that was not dripping was the sign of a frozen pipe in … Continue reading →

As BAs we need to know where projects originate so that we can pick the right techniques to apply to analysis and documentation. So, where do projects come from? Projects originate from many sources. They can come top-down, bottom-up, from … Continue reading →

There is an issue that I’ve heard from my clients consistently over the past few years. It’s that too many Business Analysts (BAs) simply act as “order takers”. They go to the business to get requirements and simply write down … Continue reading →

When I teach my courses on requirements elicitation, I’m always asked what tools business analysts should use. My answer surprises many people (after all, I’m a trained Computer Scientist and Software Engineer): don’t use computer-based tools during elicitation sessions. Why … Continue reading →