The thinking meeting
We use meetings as a way of getting a group of people together to share knowledge, information and ideas and to make decisions. However, meetings are often criticised (especially by participants) as a waste of time and a barrier to getting work done. You often hear complaints about…
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What does “value” mean to a Business Analyst?
As a Business Analyst I can contribute analytical and systems thinking So that the eventual solution provides business value by exactly matching the real needs of the business. This Business Analyst’s story raises some interesting questions about value, and why the BA is the person to discover…
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6 Things the Agile Business Analyst Should Know
There is a lot of confusion about the role of business analysis in agile development – some people say we don’t need analysts, others tell us “analysis is so important we do it all the time”, others say the Product Owner does all the work of analysis, others suggest that business analysts are part…
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BA top trends
We caught up with Jenny Saunders, SoftEd’s Practice Lead for Business Analysis to talk key trends, hot topics and the future of Business Analysis.
1. What’s the most pervasive trend in the BA space at the moment?
The most important is User Centred Design or Design Thinking. UCD promotes five key…
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The long awaited BABOK® Guide v3 Is here!
SoftEd’s Chief Knowledge Engineer, Shane Hastie is held in high regard around the world and was selected for the lead team on the IIBA’s international committee that developed the BABOK® Guide v3. The Guide to the Business Analysis Body of Knowledge® Version 3 (BABOK® Guide v3) was released in April…
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Knowing when to stop – trim that tail ruthlessly
My friend and collaborator on building our Agile Business Analyst courses (both classroom based and elearning versions) Steve Adolph posted an excellent discussion on the Development Knowledge blog about the importance of leaving decisions in product development projects to the last responsible…
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What has happened to the knowledge areas within the BABOK?
So what has changed regarding the knowledge areas within the BABOK and how will that affect YOU?
We’d got used to version 2. 0 and it felt comfortable but now we’ve got to learn a new BOK and change the way we do things or have we?
The BABOK has changed and I believe that they are great change…
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Trust me, I’m an Architect, Part 2
In my previous post, I proposed a world view for IT architects – an architecture manifesto. I started by laying out five values that should drive our thinking and behaviour. Those values are: the people whose lives are impacted by the architectures we produce; the big picture; humility; teamwork…
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The long awaited BABOK® Guide v3 is nearly here!
So why did the IIBA update the BABOK?We live in a world of fast change, everyone wants things completed yesterday. Digital disruption, the internet of things, micro personalisation; it’s all about data, data & more data …Let’s make things faster, let’s make them cheaper, lets’ make them more…
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An Introduction to the Volere Requirements Techniques
Suzanne and James Robertson are principals and founders of The Atlantic Systems Guild and joint originators of the Volere* requirements techniques. They have written many articles about requirements and we’d like to share one with you. It covers the main principles of the technique and why it i…
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Simplicity and requirements
In today’s world of system development we are increasingly concerned with being more Agile, with having a lean approach, with delivering value more quickly. We are consciously looking for ways of avoiding spending time on anything that is unnecessary. We are looking for simple, elegant, spare…
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Requirements engineering versus Agile
I finally attended this yearly global and prestigious RE’10 event where academics and industry got together to listen and exchange ideas. Much to my surprise, there was a large disconnect between academia’s ideas of requirements engineering with much talk about automation that requires careful…
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