About Us

Be Practical. Make It Work.

We at EBG Consulting have our eye on your bottom line. We help your business and technical teams get product requirements right so your projects start smart and deliver the right product at the right time.

Based on many years of experience in a variety of domains, we specialize in calibrating your current practices to help you produce timely, quality results. EBG is a leader in helping traditional business and IT teams incorporate collaborative requirements practices into agile planning. We help you learn and leverage industry-proven practices. We closely follow the latest industry trends and research, and we adapt those that provide clear benefits. EBG's practical, integrated approach improves your teams' productivity.

How Is EBG Different?

Expertise. Partnership. Credibility, Quality. Read more.

Ellen Gottesdiener

Ellen Gottesdiener, founder and Principal with EBG Consulting, is an internationally recognized facilitator, coach, trainer, and speaker. She is an expert in Agile product and project management practices, product envisioning and roadmapping, business analysis and requirements, retrospectives, and collaboration. Ellen works with global clients and speaks at numerous industry conferences. Her first book, Requirements by Collaboration: Workshops for Defining Needs (Addison-Wesley, 2002) describes how to use multiple models to elicit requirements in collaborative. Her second book, The Software Requirements Memory Jogger (GOAL/QPC, 2005) is the "go to" industry guide for requirements good practices. Her third book, co-authored with Mary Gorman, Discover to Deliver: Agile Product Planning and Analysis provides the essentials planning and analysis practices you need to deliver high-value products.

Ellen is a Certified Professional Facilitator (CPF) and has extensive experience as a professional workshop facilitator, focusing on helping projects start smart through facilitated workshops.

Ellen is a Certified Scrum Master (CSM), an agile coach, and agile trainer with a passion about agile requirements. She works with large, complex products and helps teams elicit just enough requirements to achieve iteration and product goals.

She is an expert reviewer for the International Institute of Business Analysis (IIBA) Business Analysis Body of Knowledge® (BABOK®), a member of the committee building the Agile Extension of the BABOK, and a member of the IIBA® Endorsed Education Provider committee, contributor to numerous Project Management Institute and Pcamp events, and advisor for several industry conferences.

(For more on how EBG Consulting contributes to the IIBA, click here).

Ellen writes articles for numerous online and print journals, has contributed to chapters to several books and speaks at a variety of conferences (e.g., Agile 20xx, Agile Development Practices, IEEE Requirements Engineering, ProjectSummit/Business Analysis World, Project World & World Congress for Business Analysis, Software Development Best Practices).

Ellen is a practitioner who works on client projects and also delivers training seminars.

Ellen also writes a free monthly eNewsletter, "Success with Requirements".

Before founding EBG, Ellen spent 13 years as a manager, team leader, developer, and trainer with a major insurance and financial services organization.

You can email Ellen at: ellen@ebgconsulting.com.

Mary Gorman

Mary Gorman, Vice President of Quality & Delivery with EBG Consulting, is an expert business analyst, facilitator, coach and trainer. She has deep expertise in business systems, product development, and agile analysis. She is co-author with Ellen Gottesdiener of Discover to Deliver: Agile Product Planning and Analysis, which provides a powerful framework for collaboratively discovering the right product needs so you can delight your customers. Mary works with global clients, speaks at industry conferences, and writes on requirements topics for the Agile and business analysis community. She is a CBAP™ (Certified Business Analysis Professional™) and Certified Scrum Master. Mary was instrumental in developing the IIBA® Business Analysis Body of Knowledge® and the IIBA® certification exam.

Mary is a frequent and popular speaker at numerous conferences (e.g., ProjectSummit/Business Analysis World, Project World & World Congress for Business Analysis, Software Development Best Practices) as well as at IIBA chapters. She writes regularly on requirements topics for StickyMinds.com, RequirementsNetwork.com, and other resources and sites for the business analysis community.

Mary serves on the Body of Knowledge® (BABOK®) Committee of the International Institute of Business Analysis (IIBA) and is leader of the Elicitation subcommittee. She also serves on the team responsible for creating the certification exam for the Certified Business Analysis Professional ™(CBAP™) .

(For more on how EBG Consulting contributes to the IIBA, click here)

You can email Mary at: mary@ebgconsulting.com.

Susan Burk

Sue Burk, senior associate at EBG Consulting, enables business and technical organizations to meet business needs better through excellence in requirements analysis. She has more than twenty-five years of experience in working with business, application development, data management, and business intelligence teams—and with centers of excellence and competency centers—as a practitioner, trainer, mentor, modeler, and facilitator.

She specializes in working with organizations whose information and application assets are manifested in a combination of contemporary, legacy, and purchased implementations. She enables them to achieve a more uniform and integrated approach to problem definition and solution. She focuses on helping them overcome the fear-uncertainty-doubt factors associated with making changes in their practices. She enables teams to take a more iterative, risk-driven approach to their initiatives. She is also a Certified Scrum Master and supports teams adopting agile and lean practices.

Sue’s presentations on analysis, modeling, and facilitation topics have been featured for more than seventeen years at user groups throughout the United States, including the Data Management Association (DAMA) and the International Institute of Business Analysis (IIBA). She also shares her knowledge and experience on requirements topics as part of Tech Target’s “Ask The Expert” series.

You can email Sue at: sue (at) ebgconsulting.com.

Paul R. Reed, Jr.

Paul R. Reed, Senior Associate with EBG Consulting, has led Agile teams working on complex products in companies of all sizes. He excels at helping companies transition to Agile by leveraging an adaptive rollout strategy. Paul is author of two books with Addison-Wesley, Developing Applications with Java and UML and Developing Applications with Visual Basic and UML, and speaks at a variety of industry conferences. A practicing Certified Scrum Master, Paul offers hands-on experience in bringing real-world, sound architecture into the product life cycle. He is also highly sought-after to troubleshoot projects that are struggling to adopt Agile practices. Paul’s workaday experience, coupled with his talents in business analysis and design using a variety of application life cycle approaches, contributes to his ability to get projects back on track to deliver business value.

You can email Paul at: paul@ebgconsulting.com.

EBG's Clients

For over 17 years, EBG has served clients in a wide variety of industries including banking, financial services, government, healthcare, insurance, media, office equipment and services, pharmaceuticals, and publishing .

Here are some of our clients:

Abbott Labs, Aera Energy, AFLAC, Allegis Group, Allstate, American Financial Group, Ameritrade, Armstrong Industries, Appro Systems, Atos, Blue Cross/Blue Shield of Florida, Blue Cross/Blue Shield of Minnesota, Broad Institute, Cambridge Interactive Development Corporation, Cegeka, Chevron, Chicago Mercantile Exchange, Chubb & Sons, City of Seattle, Cisco Systems, Digineer, Discount Tires, Eli Lilly and Company, E BSCO Publishing, Elsevier, Emerson Climate Technologies, ESPN, Farmer's Insurance, Galyan's, Gardner Group, GE Energy, Great American Financial Resources, GSI Commerce, Harley Davidson Credit, Harvard Pilgrim Health Care, Health Dialog, HealthStream, Insperity, JP Morgan Chase, Kemper Insurance, Lexmark International, Mayo Clinic, MedPlus, Microsoft, National Institute of Health, NCAA, Northwestern Mutual, OGIS-RI Japan, Omgeo, PepsiCo, Pitney Bowes, Roche Diagnostics, RSM McGladrey, Inc., Sallie Mae, Schlumberger, Sealed Air, Shoplocal, St. Jude Hospital, State of Indiana Department of Corrections, Standard & Poors, State of Washington Department of Transportation, Telecom New Zealand, TexelTek, The TJX Companies, Thrivent Financial for Lutherans, Unum, Ultimate Software, U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, Vanderbilt University Medical Center, The Vanguard Group, Inc., Verizon, Vertex Pharmaceuticals, Wendy's, Wolters Kluwer

How We Help You Deliver the Right Product at the Right Time

Skills acquisition. Collaboration. Application and Adaptation. Read how we help you get results.

**What our clients say before working with us**

Trouble delivering ROI. Struggles with business analysis and requirements exploration. Strained business IT relationships. Sound familiar? Read our client comments

What our clients say after working with us

Our clients share their outcomes with you. Read more