Business Analyst Archives - EBG Consulting

Cure Your Agile Planning and Analysis Blues: The Top 9 Pain Points

If you’re on a team that’s transitioning to lean/agile, have you experienced troubling truths, baffling barriers, and veritable vexations around planning and analysis? We work with many lean/agile teams, and we’ve noted certain recurring planning and analysis pain points.

Mary Gorman and I shared our top observations in a recent webinar. Our hostess, Maureen McVey, IIBA’s Head of Learning and Development, prompted us to begin by sharing why we wrote the book Discover to Deliver: Agile Product Planning and Analysis and then explaining the essential practices you can learn by reading the book.

A Visual Language for Product Teams

In October, we wrote about big concepts for delivering an ever-evolving, high-value product. These Agile/Lean concepts are used in your daily work to rapidly discover product needs and deliver valued products:

* The Product, and the 7 Product Dimensions
* The Structured Conversation metaphor (explore-evaluate-confirm)
* Value
* Product Partners
* Planning Views

Experiencing Agile: 6 Agile Planning and Analysis Practices to Try

What practices can you adopt to help your team experience Agile?

This question was raised by a listener to the podcast we recorded on agile analysis practices with BA coach Yamo. (Find the podcast here.) The specific question that Katie Metcalf asked us was this:

“What Agile techniques would you suggest introducing to a software development team that is currently not using the Agile approach but would like to get a flavor for the methodology?”

Business Analysis for Business Intelligence

Over the past few years, I’ve spoken to user groups to share my experiences working with use cases, scenarios, and user acceptance tests in support of data warehousing and Business Intelligence (BI) BI analysis. Afterwards, many people ask me to summarize my recommendations. In response, I wrote a short article – Requirements Tips for Data Centric Projects. You can access it here (note: you may have to register).

In my article, I focus on analyzing the context of usage. In addition, remember this: to elicit, analyze, and specify requirements in this space, almost all of the time-tested data-centric techniques are still necessary.

People often asked me for additional tips and advice. What additional considerations for business analysis for BI?

Tips on Software Security Requirements

Security requirements are a difficult quality attribute to elicit and specify. (Quality attributes are one the three types of nonfunctional requirements—along with interfaces, and design & implementation constraints*). Distinguishing can help. So too, it helps to

Sue Burk distinguishes between security requirements and security controls, shares four categories of security requirements, provides suggestions for eliciting security requirements, and explains why making them testable is important in her expert response.

Collaboration Works: Ingredients for Successful Workshops

I’m honored to share my podcast with Yaaqub (Yamo) Mohamed of The BACoach. We discuss ingredients for effective requirements workshops described in my first book, Requirements by Collaboration: Workshops for Defining Needs.

Agile Requirements Exploration with Tester Collaboration

I’m thrilled to be collaborating with Janet Gregory, co-author with Lisa Crispin of Agile Testing, on a workshop entitled “Agile Requirements Exploration with Tester Collaboration” at Agile 2011 Conference and STARWEST.

I believe that there is a lot of cross-fertilization benefit to be gained when people with skills in different disciplines collaborate closely toward shared ends. This is very true for the disciplines of testing and business analysis. The tester mind-set is crucial for verifying requirements. The business analysis mind-set is crucial for validating requirements.

Requirements Tips for Data Centric Projects

Are you working on data-centric software products? For example, ones that involves building a data warehouse, using extract-transform-load (ETL) and getting the gold—delivering business intelligence and analytic reports and queries for business decision makers?

Sue Burk shares the value of scenarios to define acceptance tests, and other practical techniques to improve your success with these data-centric projects in her expert response.

This Week’s Business Analysis and Requirements Workshop: 2 Days of Learning in Las Vegas

I was recently interviewed by SearchSoftwareQuality editor Yvette Francino about this week’s Business Analysis and Requirements Workshop at the Better Conference/Development Conference this week in Las Vegas, Nevada (6-7 June, 2011).

Yvette asked me to explain the logistics, if we would be emulating gathering requirements for a particular project and if the workshop be relevant regardless of domain area. Here are my answers: As conference chair,

Ways to Understanding Product Functionality in the Absence of Documentation

Have you been in a situation where there’s no documentation, yet you’re expected to understand functionality? Trial transactions and observing behavior is one answer. But understanding context is also important. Sue Burk suggests creative solutions in her expert response.

Posts tagged Business Analyst

Cure Your Agile Planning and Analysis Blues: The Top 9 Pain Points

A Visual Language for Product Teams

Experiencing Agile: 6 Agile Planning and Analysis Practices to Try

Business Analysis for Business Intelligence

Tips on Software Security Requirements

Collaboration Works: Ingredients for Successful Workshops

Agile Requirements Exploration with Tester Collaboration

Requirements Tips for Data Centric Projects

This Week’s Business Analysis and Requirements Workshop: 2 Days of Learning in Las Vegas

Ways to Understanding Product Functionality in the Absence of Documentation

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