Introduction to Agile (and Scrum) Recorded Webinar Transcript Welcome Hello and welcome to our second webinar, which will be on the topic of Agile as exemplified by the most popular form of Agile, the Scrum methodology. In this webinar we will tackle the popular subject of Agile. This is not a new topic, but it is one which is taken business and information technology by storm. It can no longer be regarded as a temporary trend, but a major change…
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Rich Pictures: Webinar
06/12/2017 |
By IRM Training
Rich Pictures Welcome to Rich Pictures, the first of the IRM webinars dealing with topics that come up in our courses. Watch the webinar above or read the script below. My name is Colin Dent, I’m one of the presenters for IRM. If you’ve attended one of my courses welcome back. If you haven’t, well I’m one of the nicest presenters IRM’s got. So I’ll be doing this, the first of the webinars that IRM’s decided to do, just to…
What’s the Most Popular Form of Elicitation?
30/05/2017 |
By IRM Training
IRM Training has recently conducted research and what we found was that 58% of Business Analysts use interviews as one of their primary methods of elicitation, or, gathering requirements. The real time and direct interactions can make interviews very effective for extracting information, providing that you know how to ask the right questions. When done well, an interview can be used to clarify any ambiguity as well as verifying facts of business background research. It gives a great opportunity to extract…
Download a Requirements Specification Template
29/03/2017 |
By IRM Training
Free 12 page requirements specification template to help business analysts document all the key requirements of a project – business, stakeholder, functional and non-functional. This template from our Writing Better Requirements course serves as a guide for setting out your requirements specification document. When starting a new project, this template can be used as a map to help you approach your business analysis work. Remember, up front planning helps you avoid going off-scope and over time. Our Requirements Specification template…
Jobs Outlook for Business Analysts
13/02/2017 |
By IRM Training
Did you know that the Department of Employment undertakes research into job prospects for business analysts. Their forecast is for continued growth in employment prospects through to 2020. The research also contains useful information on average earnings and typical skills required. The Department has, as you would expect, an in-depth understanding of the Australian business analyst jobs market as well as access to statistics and data not necessarily available to private industry. One of the Department’s initiatives is the…
BPMN vs UML vs DFD – which one is best?
14/11/2016 |
By IRM Training
While many large companies still describe their requirements using the written word, there is a huge amount of evidence that pictures (i.e. modelling languages) are a clearer and more reliable method of communication. A 2016 survey of Australian business analysts across 30 organisations (government, big business, SMEs) found that while 14% used one or more of the popular languages (DFD, UML, BPMN) regularly, the vast majority 76% did not or only very occasionally. This shows that a small number of…
Analysis – the other side of the fence to design
11/10/2016 |
By IRM Training
Analysis is an important part of life here at IRM and we like to help keep our readers up to date. Last month’s IRM newsletter featured an article focusing on the value-add a business analyst can provide by designing business solutions for their clients. But before you can design anything, you need to understand what the problem is. Whatever technique you might use – interviewing, observation, process decomposition, root cause analysis – you have to live up to the…
Business Analyst or Business Solution Designer?
07/09/2016 |
By IRM Training
At IRM we’ve long argued that investigating, eliciting and gathering requirements (i.e. analysing business problems) is only half the job of a business analyst. Sure the business wants you to understand their problems but more importantly they want you to come up with a solution. And not a technical solution but a business solution. As a business analyst you definitely need to understand how technology can be exploited. Just leave the technical (i.e. physical) design to others who specialise in…
Boom in ICT hiring but are your skills falling behind?
09/08/2016 |
By IRM Training
There may be a boom in technology hiring for those with ICT skills but many employees feel let down by the lack of training. A recent (July 2016) article in ITWire – based on research conducted by recruitment company Hudson – throws up some interesting statistics: 31% of Australia companies surveyed plan to increase hiring 44% of employees were actively looking for new jobs So the good news for job seekers with ICT skills is that there are a lot…
Business BA or IT BA – which one are you?
17/05/2016 |
By IRM Training
Like a business analyst, the terms hard and soft skills can be applied to many occupations. Think of a programmer who is predominantly concerned with applying hard skills (writing software) or a social services counsellor who needs to be an expert in people (soft) skills. However there are not may jobs requiring a strong mix of both hard and soft skills, the business analyst being a notable exception. You’ll need people skills to empathise with clients and explore their needs…