Getting Off to a Good Start When it comes to data, Continuous Integration is one of those things that looks good on paper but is very difficult to implement. As a result, most data professionals conve...
Rising Above The data professionals I've had the honor of working with are some of the most dedicated people I know. There have been several occasions in my life when a hard deadline has been mandate...
This is Flow The first time I found flow is an experience I'll always remember. Just around the turn of the century, I was asked to help Hitachi Data Systems improve the way they track, test, and mana...
Chickens, Pigs, and Goats How's your luck in controlling all the animals on a scrum? If you're familiar with scrum projects, I'm sure you've heard the story of the chicken and the pig who considered ...
How Strong Are Your Relationships? All business analysts are in the relationship business. It may not have been spelled out in your job description or part of your performance review, but your experie...
A Resolution for Business Analysts While many people have resolved this year to lose weight, I encourage you to lose wait! Downtime–waiting for instructions, feedback, and database results–is not goo...
Why BPMN? As you know, a requirements document us not just about new functionality. I'm sure you're familiar with non-functional requirements like performance and usability; however, there's another k...
A Note About Notes As a business analyst, I'm sure you spend a lot of time in meetings, and I'm sure you take a lot of notes. But are you getting the most out of your notes? That depends on what you d...
How do you think companies feel about returned merchandise or a cancellation? I worked with PayPal for a period of time to help them decrease churn (their equivalent of a service cancellation). Trust...
Lessons Learned You may have heard Einstein's definition of insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. I'm constantly surprised at how often companies don't ta...
Iterative and Incremental Delopment Are you challenged with getting your stakeholders to agree on one requirement? If so, don't feel alone. It's not uncommon as a business analyst to be stuck in the i...
Pair Programming Pair programming was another fantastic but contentious idea that emerged from the agile movement of the 1990s. Pair programming is when two developers physically sit and work together...
