Business Analyst Interviews Welcome to another of our webinars in which we delve into some of the techniques we teach in the course in more detail or discuss some of the issues that affect business analysts. In this session we will go more deeply into the most common technique used by any business analyst, that of the stakeholder interview. This can be one of the most difficult techniques to use, and there is always something new to learn…
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 ReadingWho Reads Your Stuff Anyway?
09/09/2015 |
By IRM Training
If you’re a business analyst then producing written communications goes with the territory. It might be workshop notes to team members – or a report that lands on the desk of the CEO. Whoever you’re writing for, they’ll only read it if there’s something they want or need to know. So as writers we need to put ourselves in the reader’s shoes if we want our written communications to be effective. Fortunately, writing skills are like any other job skills,…
Continue ReadingWhat Are Good Business Analysis Questions?
25/02/2015 |
By IRM Training
One question we often hear is, what are some good business analyst interview questions? Another is, how do you tell whether you are asking good business analysis questions? As a company focused on training our attendees to think for themselves, we normally say to start by first identifying how someone looks when you’re asking the wrong questions. For example, you know it’s a bad question when the person you are interviewing is either: Totally baffled (doesn’t understand what you mean) or…
Continue ReadingRequirements & Big Data Projects
31/01/2014 |
By IRM Training
With big data projects rapidly becoming mainstream for even medium-sized organisations, more and more business analysts need to understand the business drivers that underpin business analytics projects. This recent paper, Forward Thinking for Tomorrow’s Projects – Requirements for Business Analytics, by Joy Beatty and Karl Wiegers of Seilevel Inc. avoids most of the technology jargon and instead focuses on what’s important for the business analyst. It’s an excellent paper resource, which we recommend you read in order to keep up…
Continue ReadingWriting Better Requirements
07/11/2013 |
By IRM Training
There’s little argument that investigating and identifying business needs (i.e. requirements) is a critical task of business analysis. However it’s of little use correctly identifying business needs if we can’t then effectively document them – to the clients who will be paying for the solution and to the developers who will be building it. In today’s time poor world we need to address both audiences in a single document. This paper – based on IRM’s Writing Better Requirements workshop –…
Continue ReadingSolution Mode Thinking
30/10/2010 |
By IRM Training
One of the biggest mistakes made by business analysts is going into “solution mode” before they’ve fully analysed a problem. They either approach a client meeting with pre-conceived ideas on what will fix the problem or jump to conclusions during the investigation phase without understanding all the underlying issues. We can all be guilty of this and sometimes the more experienced the analyst, the more prone they are to fall into this trap. Why is this so? Problem Solving When you…
Continue ReadingMind Mapping Requirements
10/06/2010 |
By IRM Training
Mind mapping was popularised by Tony Buzan and is one way to assist in the problem of: Keeping up with meetings because you can’t take notes as fast as the speaker talks Making sense of your notes at a later time (many people say they can go back to a mind map months later and understand the flow and intent of the meeting – and its outcomes) There is no right or wrong way to create a mind map. Some…
Continue ReadingHow to Interview Your Boss
28/01/2010 |
By IRM Training
Ever had to interview your boss – or a divisional general manager – or the managing director of a key customer? What about a politician or a senior executive in a government department? All these scenarios can be nerve racking, yet they’re something a business analyst may be required to do on a regular basis. Face-to-face contact remains one of the most effective methods for gathering information, but it’s all too easy to get it wrong. We ask the wrong…
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