Business Analysis

First off, if you didn’t get a chance to attend the webcast, I understand it will be available via the IIBA website in about 4 business days. Secondly, Kevin and Julian did a nice job with the presentation today and answered a lot of questions. I am glad I attended. Maybe it’s my inner geek coming to the surface, but I was really pretty excited by some of the ideas IIBA is working on and about the new and improved body of knowledge. I have to admit that I had let my membership lapse over the past few months and had to renew just ... Read Full Story

What kind of analytics user are you? Google Analytics Evangelist, Avinash Kaushik, has created a “Nine-Point Checklist of Analytics Awesomeness” to help you find out. Are you an Emperor or a Newbie? You’ll need to have mastered all 9 of the below to call yourself Emperor. If you’re doing less than 3, you’re still a Newbie. 9. Get external context to your performance 8. Internal site search baby! Rock it! 7. Search, organic, get good at it 6. Landing pages, landing pages, landing pages 5. Goal, goals, goals (& goal values) 4. Enable deep e-commerce tracking and analysis 3. Your only true analytics BFF: ... Read Full Story

I’ve always been of the opinion that I’d like to know as much as I can about whatever  I can because you never know when something you learned may come in handy. That said, I do think there are four key knowledge/capability domains that are especially important to the business analyst. I’ll provide a brief description of  each domain and then provide short lists of possible self-check/development questions that you might find useful in determining whether you think you have adequate knowledge in a given domain given your current situation or even your career goals. Business Analysis Skills & Techniques The business analysis domain ... Read Full Story

I’ve been “heads down” on some use case work the past few days, so this is a topic that is fresh in mind. While I’m thinking of it, I thought I’d share just a few guiding principles that I like to use to keep me “out of the weeds” as I identify and document use cases. I hope some of you will benefit from them, and perhaps have other ideas to add and share. Start With a Goal A use case enables the user (actor) to do something that is of value to them. Think of the reasons a user would want to use ... Read Full Story

Sometimes project stakeholders I work for or with aren’t familiar with the role or the value of the business analyst. I’ve posted about Karl Wiegers’ Bills of Rights previously, and think those are a great way to introduce the role to a new business stakeholder who may not be familiar with the types of value a BA can provide, and what he/she should do to help the process along. A few days back, while waiting for a meeting to begin, I jotted down a few quick ideas of my own that I thought I might share with stakeholders with whom I hadn’t previously worked ... Read Full Story