Why aren’t more business analysis professionals using fun and exciting techniques with their stakeholders to drive creative thinking? Is our reliance on a limited range of tools reducing the number and quality of ideas? Are we, to put it bluntly, a bit boring? A few years ago, I stumbled on an image of a workshop… Read More »Creative thinking and having more fun
Stakeholder analysis is a core group of tools in a business analyst’s kit. Applying this toolset effectively can make the difference between success and failure for a project or change programme. In this article, I look at ways of applying stakeholder analysis methodically, with a particular focus on identifying and addressing competing stakeholder viewpoints and… Read More »Stakeholder analysis to address competing perspectives
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
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