Better Projects

Google books has the BABOK available for free online reading.I think this is a great idea from the guys at the IIBA.  Congratulations IIBA on sharing knowledge rather than restricting it to those that can afford to join the club.  It highlights the altruistic nature of the organisation.BABOK 2.0 on Google books...

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Listen to this story and think about how and why project stakeholders react to your project outcomes.Experience is only part of the story.  Memory, and it's related but different perceptions of what really happened is another - even more important - part....

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On Tuesday I start another semester of teaching PM to a bunch of students enrolled in a Masters of IT.  I've been doing it for two years so far.  This is my third.Teaching is an interesting job.  It's tiring lecturing and delivering all the time.  I am still working on...

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By now we should all have an idea what Kano analysis looks like. There are basic, performance and excitement classes of requirements. You generally have to work your way through the basic ones before you can start to address the other categories.I have been reading Daniel Kahneman’s work on decision...

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In Jan and Derek's article I linked to yesterday there is a set of statistics from the IIBA 'Practices survey" from 2008."Whilst the most regularly used diagramming technique was flowcharting (63%), when it came to formal diagramming notations, use case led the way (55%) followed by data flow diagrams (42%),...

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Everyone that writes on the role of the business analyst eventually has to cover their take on what the role actually is about.One of the best articles I read when doing research for my own position was by Jan Kusiak and Derek Brown. Last year I met Jan at...

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These points lifted from an article by Gary Hamel from late last year;In every industry, there are huge swathes of critical knowledge that have been commoditized—and what hasn’t yet been commoditized soon will be.Given that, we have to wave goodbye to the “knowledge economy” and say hello to the “creative economy.”What matters...

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This is the start of an irregular (in more ways than one) series that we're calling 'You Make the Call!' The idea is that we'll present a situation that you might find in any given project. These situations will come from real projects but with the names and details changed...

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When I started this blog there were only a couple of dozen project blogs around. Now it seems like I discover a couple of dozen a day!And many of us are talking around the same themes and ideas. For example, many of us rail against bureaucracy or bloated control processes...

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One of the things that I really love about most technology is how relatively easy it is to upgrade it. A little searching online for the correct part, loosening a few screws, swapping out a few circuits and, presto!, a machine that is new again! Wouldn't it be just as...

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One of my favorite writers and all around commentators on life, John Scalzi, just did an interesting thing over at his blog, Whatever. You see, Scalzi has been nominated for two Nebula awards this year, but as he is a regular guy, he doesn't really let it inflate his ego...

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In a CIO article, Michael Hugos nominates 4 core skills for business analysts:Group facilitationprocess mappinglogical data modeling and system UI design.Kevin Brennan adds five more:task analysis (including use cases)decision analysisdesigning metrics and KPIsbusiness case development and role analysisThat's nine so far.  Do you want to add any to the list?...

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eSome mornings you just wonder why you even get out of bed. A recent morning was no exception as my usual 45 minute commute stretched out to 1:45 minutes due to snow and ice. During those brief times I wasn't in fear of my life from all the crazies out...

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Here is a short essay on "Environmental Degradation and the Tyranny of Small Decisions." The article is in the context of environmental issues, but the principles here directly apply to our job.  How do we get past committee decisions and compromises and deliver valuable outcomes to our project sponsors?...

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While reading one of Craig's recent posts, I couldn't help but think about how differently labor has been accounted for on the different projects I've been involved with over my career.  Line items such as license fees and server hardware are usually easily attributed to the project budget, but once...

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How far do you go in planning your project's requirements?In an agile 21st century full of social media commentary you are finding it hard to work out how much of your old planning and requirements management practices to abandon and how much you need to keep?For example, you probably need...

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As regular readers will know I have been using the scrum-xp combo to manage a project over the last year.  The project is continuing this year and is for the most part doing better than some of it's predecessors.This week we ran a little activity called the 2009 retrospective.  I...

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I considered using Yammer (a twitter for project teams) and even put it to a couple of developer team members that they should try it and see how it could be useful. They told me that no, it was a waste of time.And after reflection I agree.This, of course...

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Arguments for how to manage software requirements tend to be polemic, because it's easier to argue against something than for something.Waterfall development manages requirements from an up front plan that is fixed in scope, schedule and budget. Planned up front requirements (and projects) doesn't work because the plan doesn't...

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An estimate can be generated in number of ways.One way is for all the work to be planned up front in sufficient detail to be able to know that you can assemble the target 'end-product.' Another way is for you to use analogy, such as using your experience to...

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I recently saw an email from a project sponsor that simply replied "SCOPE CREEP!" in response to the BA's concerns about whether the report being made as part of the project was going to adequately cover the business needs of the client. The BA had suggested a few additional requirements,...

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The video below has a running time of 26 minutes and is incredibly fascinating. I can normally watch about 2-3 minutes of a video before boredom sets in, yet this one hooked me and held me all the way through. One of my biggest annoyances is touched on in this...

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As a business analyst, I spend a lot of time focusing on gathering good requirements.  Once I have a high level set of requirements, I work to refine the requirements to the point where the developers will have enough information for design and implementation of the application.  Everyone has a...

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Net Objectives conducts a series of webinars on Business Driven Software Development: This series provides an introduction on how to achieve Business Agility. Business Agility enables an organization to respond quickly to external forces (such as new market opportunities and competitive forces) as well as to...

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Early last year Nick Malik of Microsoft posted decision tree analysis of Requirements Failure modes. I thought I'd take a run through some of his points and offer them to you for discussion.It's a long list so I'll break this up over several posts across the next few weeks/months. Jump...

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