IIBA®’s salary survey has recently become available to members and today we’re sharing some of its most valuable insights on the business analyst role in 2018 and what to expect in 2019 and beyond. The majority of Australian business analysts have less than one year experience, with the second largest group having 3-5 years experience. Future career paths for business analysts include: Consultant Management Data Analytics Business Architecture Product Owner Project Manager Product Manager In terms of salary, IIBA® recorded…
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Business Analyst Interviews
06/03/2019 |
By IRM Training
Business Analyst Interviews Why Should a Business Analyst Hold an Interview? The first purpose for an interview would have course be to explore the existing system. This is usually the first thing we have to do when beginning a new project, that is to understand the existing system which will be replaced by a new one or enhanced in some way. Other contexts may be to define the business goals and objectives of the project, or to drill down…
Continue ReadingIntroduction to Agile (and Scrum)
20/03/2018 |
By IRM Training
Introduction to Agile (and Scrum) What Is Agile? There are many definitions given for Agile. The one we have selected, is the one provided in Wikipedia. “Agile software development describes a set of values and principles for software development under which requirements and solutions evolve through the collaborative effort of self-organising cross functional teams”. Notice first of all that it is concerned with values and principles, rather than a new technique which we can learn from a textbook. We must…
Continue ReadingRich Pictures: Webinar
06/12/2017 |
By IRM Training
Rich Pictures Background Rich Pictures is a technique developed by Peter Checkland and others when they wrote the soft systems methodology. It was deliberately designed to help with requirements which are not easy to understand. They realised that there are some circumstances where the problems are ill structured and messy and there is no clear view of what constitutes the problem itself. If we talk to different stakeholders, we get different answers as to what they believe the issue actually…
Continue ReadingWhat’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…
Continue ReadingDownload 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…
Continue ReadingMost Popular Business Analysis Techniques
17/02/2017 |
By IRM Training
It can be difficult to keep up with the most popular business analysis techniques. Do you know which methodology analysts have the most experience using? How about diagramming techniques? We conducted a survey of over 1,100 business analysts (68% with over 5 years experience) which gave some interesting results as to what business analysis techniques are the most popular. Methodologies When it comes to software development methodologies, 68% said they had experience with waterfall development, 46% said iterative whilst object-oriented…
Continue ReadingJobs 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…
Continue ReadingBPMN 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…
Continue ReadingAnalysis – 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…
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