On adding value
Without the soft skills we never will get beyond the mechanical work of being a BA and move on to adding value. That’s why I stress to the students I’ve taught that there’s far more to being a BA than the techniques, important as they are. You can be a BA without ever employing these techniques. I know, because I’ve done it. It might not be pretty, but we got to where we needed to go. And I’m sure that’s better than designing the best parking meter in the world, for a street that doesn’t need it - Julian Ostling
You no longer have to focus as much on information gathering and sharing or simply being called the bridge. You need to focus on analyzing and being an advisor to your team and organization. If not, your consumers will be looking to someone else.
Early in my career, the view of the BA role was to just focus on the requirements, not the solution. There were BAs that would cringe when discussions of a solution were happening before the requirements were fully vetted. Discussing the solution should be part of your role. Your team and business partners are not looking for analysis, they need solutions. If you are not part of the solution the perception is you add less value.- Kupe Kupersmith
On Mistakes made when writing use cases
1. Using the language of the user interface to talk about the user behavior. For example, instead of saying, ”Actor X selects to create a new account”, you state, “Actor X clicks the new account button (or tab).” 2. The use case is clear about all the steps the user needs to take, but is missing the corresponding system action that needs to happen in response to each user step. 3. Use case includes technical details that are not required to understand how the user interacts with the system. Common examples of technical details include: data elements or data tables, names of system components and system-triggered processes or procedures. - Laura Brandenburg
The quality of the product, and the benefit it brings, will be remembered long after the project budget and deadlines have been forgotten about. - Adrian Reed
So often organisations miss the opportunity to gain insight from their customers. They spend tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars eliciting the views of strangers through market research… and they miss the insight that their own customers are giving them for free! They spend millions on change programs, delivering new IT systems and new processes and ‘bake in’ the inefficiencies in their existing processes, without considering what their existing customers are telling them. - Adrian Reed
