To answer this question we need to understand what business value actually is. As an employee, adding value can translate into improving processes, providing better customer service, reducing time to market, delivering better products/services. However to a shareholder or company owner there’s only one value metric – increased profits. This is achieved by selling more or spending less. It’s not for nothing that most CEOs have a sales or accounting background. That’s not to say that business analysts need sales…
Continue ReadingUser Stories & The Jungle Book
24/04/2015 |
By IRM Training
Back in 1902, a collection of stories and poems for children – the Just So Stories written by Rudyard Kipling – was published. For those of you struggling to place Rudyard Kipling, he was the author of The Jungle Book. Check out the Disney movie of the same name if you’re still not sure – or ask your children! Kipling knew a thing or two about the written language. Tucked away in one of the Just So Stories were a group of words which have…
Continue ReadingHow to Manage Client Expectations
29/07/2014 |
By IRM Training
It’s funny how often things we say can come back and bite us. Has this ever happened to you? We’re all guilty of sometimes hearing what we want to hear – but when it’s a client, is it their fault or ours? Now there’s not a lot you can do to change how other people interpret information, so let’s assume the onus is on us to make sure this doesn’t occur. We need to be crystal clear in our communications…
Continue ReadingThe BA’s Journey – From a Current to a Future State
01/12/2012 |
By IRM Training
Many words have been written about the process of business analysis and how it can be performed on different types of projects. There are a multitude of tools and techniques which can be used plus methodologies and frameworks to suit a wide variety of circumstances. This makes it all too easy to get absorbed in the day-to-day detail and forget about the real purpose of business analysis – to fix a problem or provide the organisation with a new capability….
Continue ReadingHow Clear is Your Writing?
03/08/2012 |
By IRM Training
As communicators, most business analysts will religiously use a spellchecker. After all nothing is less convincing than a misspelt document – it shows a lack of attention to detail. But there’s more to Microsoft Word than just spell-checking. How many people take any notice of the readability statistics? These statistics give an indication of how easy – or difficult – a piece of text is to read. The two Flesch figures at the bottom both measure readability, but in different…
Continue ReadingYour Project Pitch
28/01/2012 |
By IRM Training
Sometimes a salesperson only has once chance to capture a prospect’s attention. That’s why the good ones always have an elevator pitch polished and ready to go. What about you? When your CIO gets into the lift and asks “So what are you working on?” forget about trying to sell your project and concentrate on selling yourself. After all, projects come and go but keeping – and promoting – good staff is what a CIO’s job entails. Putting your work…
Continue ReadingJust Enough Documentation
02/12/2010 |
By IRM Training
Is documentation a blessing or a curse? If you’re working on an agile project does it get in the way? If you’re updating a core system that runs your company’s business, are you cursing the analyst who didn’t adequately document all the business functionality? Is today’s agile project tomorrow’s core system? How much documentation to produce is one of the most troublesome issues facing analysts today. There are no hard and fast rules on this and successful projects define their…
Continue ReadingHow to Deliver a Recommendation
01/08/2010 |
By IRM Training
Like it or not, every business analyst (and usually most project managers and developers) will have to stand up in front of a group and present. The group might be your business clients, the project stakeholders or just your fellow team members but for many people, one of two things will happen: It will frighten the life out of them They’ll umm and ah their way through, sending the audience to sleep Why is this so? As a business analyst…
Continue ReadingWhat is a Business Analyst?
09/03/2010 |
By IRM Training
When this paper was first published in 2003, business analysis was just starting to emerge as a distinct profession in its own right. Prior to this the role was often performed by the systems analyst who would carry out both the analysis and the design on a new system or enhancement. This often meant that a “problem” was made to fit the “solution”. The transition from telling the client what they would be getting – versus analysing their problems and…
Continue ReadingThe Creative Business Analyst
05/02/2009 |
By IRM Training
Many of us are familiar with the process of business analysis – start by gathering requirements from stakeholders then turn them into a specification which developers can understand. These days however, we need to do more than just document the requirements. We need to work with stakeholders and business users to understand their systems and analyse their problems – why do you do it this way, why not that way? This is the real value-add that the analyst brings to…
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