How to Improve Your Requirements Gathering Techniques
Elicitation is one of the most basic tasks of a business analysis professional. Unfortunately, choosing from the vast list of requirements gathering techniques and performing good elicitation that yields value isn’t as easy as you might initially think. There is a lot of planning and thought that needs to go into performing successful elicitation. We put […]
How to Improve Remote Facilitation and Collaboration
As co-located teams are becoming more and more of the norm, virtual collaboration can be a challenge. Remote facilitation has nuances that require additional preparation and setup to be successful. As virtual training facilitators, we have encountered many of these problems first hand and have experienced what is needed to improve remote facilitation. Our experts have compiled […]
How to Create a High Performing Team
Most of your work life is likely spent in a team environment. Think about it. When was the last time you actually sat in your office and worked alone to complete a project from start to finish? As the pace of work continues to quicken, it’s apparent now more than ever that a fluid, high performing […]
How to Improve Your Stakeholder Engagement
You could know all the elicitation analysis techniques in the book, but if you don’t have the right people, engaged at the right time, providing the right input – you won’t get very far. Making an effort to improve stakeholder engagement can significantly impact your effectiveness as a business analyst. We put our experts’ heads […]
How to Successfully Prioritize Requirements
It can be difficult to get stakeholders to define priorities for requirements. It’s all important, right? But if everything is urgent, then nothing is urgent. Effective priorities are critical for making the best use of your stakeholders’ time and the organizations resources. There are lots of approaches to prioritization, and many different factors must be […]
Potential Areas for Process Improvement
Why is process improvement so difficult sometimes? Shouldn’t it be easy to recognize the best way to restructure or reengineer a process? No, it can be challenging to determine the best approach and know how to get started. Fortunately, there are several common problems that can exist in any process. We put our experts’ heads […]
Potential First Questions to Ask When Starting a Project
Ever been assigned to a project and not sure where to start? Don’t worry, you are not alone. Our experts and other business analysts have been in that position too. One key is not to assume anything. There is no question to ask when starting a project that is too small. By asking, you’re not […]
How to Think Like an Agile Analyst
One of our instructors once told her class, “We can’t just open a box, add water, and poof — we’re agile and all our problems are solved!” There’s a difference between “doing agile” and “being agile”. Following an approach like DevOps, Scrum or Kanban can help us “do agile”. In order to “be agile” we […]
Ensuring Quality in the Context Diagram
It’s challenging to make sure that your team all understand the scope of your project. Visualizations such as the context diagram can be powerful tools for creating and confirming a shared understanding of the scope of a work effort. Before sharing a context diagram with stakeholders, use our tips to verify that it’s ready […]
Jakob’s Ten Usability Heuristics
Twenty-five years ago, Jakob Nielsen created a timeless set of 10 usability heuristics. His heuristics are based on an understanding of human behavior, psychology, and information technology. Usability testing should always be performed with actual users of a solution. Before we get those end users involved, Jakob’s heuristics can be used to perform an initial […]