Today I’ve published my new guide listing 60 different strategies businesses can employ to increase their profits. Check it out on the Resources page here. The list is intended to act as an inspirational starting point, helping business leaders and change practitioners to think about their business and which areas might have potential for increasing… Read More »60 strategies for boosting profits
It’s a well-worn trope in the world of projects: most projects fail because of poor requirements. This has helped drive massive growth in the use of business analysts – but projects often still fail to deliver the expected value. This might be because your organisation fails to make best use of your business analyst. If… Read More »How to make best use of your business analyst
Lean methodology grew from the world of manufacturing, where processes are nicely repeatable, with few branching paths and where it’s generally obvious if things have gone according to plan. Machinery often handles the complex or fiddly bits. Professional services industries such as law may seem like they have little in common with that world. In… Read More »Identifying waste in professional services processes
In this post, I’ll examine some of the main advantages of using a business analyst consultant, and how this can help your organisation tackle change initiatives more effectively and efficiently. For the last couple of decades, business analysts have typically provided their services through one of two models: as a salaried employee, or as a… Read More »5 key reasons to use a business analyst consultant
If you’re wading through vacancies for business analyst jobs in the search for your next role, you’ll want to separate the “ok” from the “awesome”. Job adverts for business analyst roles can be a minefield. Everyone organisation seems to have its own idea of what the job entails, so it can be a major challenge… Read More »10 things great business analyst jobs will offer
Most people involved in any kind of business change will have heard of SWOT analysis. It’s a technique for eliciting information about a situation or domain, and it is frequently used in strategic planning or business process improvement workshops. SWOT is often seen as being somewhat “basic” – that’s probably in part down to how… Read More »How to get the most from SWOT analysis
Over the last few months, organisations have found themselves putting in place stop-gap and workaround measures to deal with the challenges presented by Covid-19. As leaders look to the future, they will want to design and implement “new normal” ways of doing things. The new world could look very different: Customer behaviours, expectations and demand… Read More »Business analysts can help you build your “new normal”
Business analysts generally have a handful of change initiatives on the go at any one time. If we’re lucky, we’re able to manage the peaks and troughs of demand between them, so we’re neither over-worked nor twiddling our thumbs. To ensure we’re effectively utilised – and so change initiatives are delivered in timely fashion –… Read More »Planning BA activity
Entity Relationship Diagrams (or ERDs) are a way of modelling the connections between different classes of “thing” in a system. They identify a particular type of business rule – how many of one type of thing can be connected to another type of thing. If you’ve ever found yourself in User Acceptance Testing (or worse… Read More »Why I love Entity Relationship Diagrams
It’s now been a full week since Better Business Analysis was registered at Companies House, and I’m just publishing the website. My new desk is due to arrive tomorrow. As a business analyst, this journey has been an eye-opening experience and at times, something of emotional rollercoaster. I’ve been a BA since 2004, and for… Read More »Launching Better Business Analysis