When performing requirements validation activities, you need to know: That the requirements you’ve documented are accurate. That the requirements you’ve documented are complete. Only your stakeholders can help you be sure of this. Circulating a 100-page document, asking for their feedback, and then waiting for the helpful responses to flood in is not an effective… Read More »Improving requirements validation
Most experienced business analysts come equipped with skills in strategy analysis – but are rarely invited to use them! In this post, I look at how BAs can apply these tools and techniques to add value at all stages of a project by establishing a ‘golden thread’ from the organisation’s highest-level goals down to the… Read More »Strategy analysis – the BA’s under-used talent
You could be forgiven for thinking there is no such thing as business analysis in the legal sector. While there are now many BAs working in the industry, you won’t often hear them spoken about. The BA role rarely gets a mention in the Legal industry press, is often narrowly limited in its remit and… Read More »Business analysis in the legal sector
In any process improvement initiative, it can be difficult to know where to begin. Targeting your efforts based on process performance helps you understand what’s working, what needs addressing, and what themes and common issues are at play. Measuring process performance has grown over the years into an entire industry and field of study –… Read More »Process performance scoring
I’d been a longstanding but quite unengaged member of IIBA (the International Institute of Business Analysis) but never really felt I got much out of it. In 12 months, all that changed. I’ve been a member of IIBA for around a decade, both the global organisation and the UK chapter. In that time, I received… Read More »IIBA UK – why I can’t recommend it enough!
I’ve been using the BPMN modelling standard for about a decade now, and I’ve yet to find a better method for mapping business processes! Since stumbling upon it, I’ve grown to become a huge fan! In this article, I explain why I think it’s such a useful framework and language. What is BPMN and where… Read More »BPMN: why I love it for process modelling!
Better Business Analysis has now been up and running as a limited company for half a year! I have an accountant, a logo, and a website. 2020 has been a rollercoaster, particularly in the uncertainty that a global pandemic and an economic downturn bring. There have of course been numerous highs and lows along the… Read More »2020: analysing my year
Pursuing the wrong projects can be disastrous for an organisation. In the first half of this article, I looked at the various reasons that organisations end up pursuing change initiatives that should never have been started, or that should have been abandoned in favour of other ideas. These reasons were grouped under the following three… Read More »Stop doing the wrong projects (part two)
Like most business analysts, I’ve worked on plenty of projects in my career that should probably not have been given a green light. Some of these went on for many, many months, with all those involved feeling powerless to stop them. In this post, I’ll look at how organisations end up pursuing the wrong projects… Read More »Stop doing the wrong projects (part one)
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