8 Requirements Elicitation Tips You Should Know

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8 Requirements Elicitation Tips You Should Know

Business analysts often have to deal with the volatile nature of requirements, scope creep and the difficulties inherent in ensuring that stakeholder groups have a common understanding of requirements. Requirements elicitation at its core is difficult to accomplish, due to the nature of requirements. This post is a compilation of 8 tips you can apply to improve the outcome of your requirements elicitation effort. Guest Post By Melisa Marzett.

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Lean Principles & Business Process Improvement

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Lean Principles & Business Process Improvement

Peter F. Drucker once stated:

There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.

If you understand lean principles and are able to examine the business from the customer’s perspective, you start to understand what adds value, what doesn’t add value and can discuss along these lines with stakeholders on how improvements can be made.

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3 Quick Tips for Requirements Sign-off

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3 Quick Tips for Requirements Sign-off

When sign-offs are sought without political undertones and with the right intentions, there are certainly benefits to be had. The sign-off process should be approached as an opportunity for discovery that allows stakeholders to ask questions and get clarification on their areas of concern. A huge benefit of obtaining sign-off on requirements is that it indicates stakeholders are aware of, and are committed to seeing the solution live and in action.

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7 Practical Ways To Persuade Stakeholders

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7 Practical Ways To Persuade Stakeholders

Personally I am very fond of strawberries and cream, but I have found that for some strange reason, fish prefer worms. So when I went fishing, I didn’t think about what I wanted. I thought about what the fish wanted. I didn't bait the hook with strawberries and cream. Rather, I dangled a worm or grasshopper in front of the fish and said: "Wouldn't you like to have that?" Why not use the same approach when fishing for people? ― Dale Carnegie, How to Win Friends & Influence People. Guest Post By Nicola Joseph.

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Effective Requirements Review Sessions: Before, During & After

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Effective Requirements Review Sessions: Before, During & After

Requirements Review Sessions or Structured Walkthroughs are designed to communicate, check and confirm requirements with stakeholders. During these sessions, participants are expected to ask and respond to questions, proffer suggestions and provide comments on the solution that is about to be implemented. To maximize the limited time you have with stakeholders, follow these key steps to ensure you get it right the first time.

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Managing Analysis Paralysis

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Managing Analysis Paralysis

Analysis Paralysis is based on the premise that by delaying decisions or committing to a particular direction, there's more time to gather new information, conduct analysis and present recommendations to the business. This premise only holds true for a while though. At some point, the law of diminishing returns sets in – the extra information collected and the extra time devoted to analysis no longer add any significant value to the project.

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How to Improve Your Domain Knowledge

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How to Improve Your Domain Knowledge

There's no easier time to feel uncomfortable than at the start of a project in a new domain. Yes, the journey ahead may seem challenging and interesting, but anxiety quickly builds up when you think of how little you know and how much groundwork there is to be done before you can add value to the project.

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10 Tips for Improving Your Communication Skills

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10 Tips for Improving Your Communication Skills

Communication, simple as it sounds in theory, can be quite complex in practice. In addition to knowing when to communicate is the additional challenge of knowing how to communicate. Writing and speaking are two essential forms of communication and the underlying rules and styles should be mastered. Understanding this will ensure that communication with stakeholders is effective enough to save you from potentially embarrassing situations - Guest Post By Rhys Bates.

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Organizing Business Analysts: Should Business Analysts Be Attached to Business Units or the IT Unit?

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Organizing Business Analysts: Should Business Analysts Be Attached to Business Units or the IT Unit?

One question that has been on my mind is whether analysts are better off attached to business units or the IT unit. While there are many benefits to working closely with the IT unit, it is pretty clear that business analysts who spend most of their time in IT would not have many opportunities to get a full grasp of how the business works.

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5 Common Requirements Mistakes to Avoid

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5 Common Requirements Mistakes to Avoid

This post was inspired by Donald Firesmith’s piece on Requirements Mistakes where he discussed the common mistakes that occur in requirements engineering. Keeping these mistakes in mind can help business analysts (regardless of their domain) develop improved requirements management processes that ensure the delivery of high quality requirements.

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A Whole New Mind For Business Analysts

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A Whole New Mind For Business Analysts

This post is based on Daniel Pink’s bestseller, “A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future”, which contains interesting insights on how to achieve professional and personal success. According to Pink, we are living in a new age termed the conceptual age, where those who think differently (right-brain thinkers) will be valued above others. He describes the conceptual age as one in which innovators, big-picture thinkers, artists, empathizers, pattern recognizers and “meaning makers” will be the lead agents in society. 

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6 Cool Steps to Improved Software Testing

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6 Cool Steps to Improved Software Testing

You've probably heard the saying: “Beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder”; software developers should always keep this in mind. Once an application or solution is released, it is used by millions of customers. Therefore, its beauty should appeal to the needs of the “beholders”. The challenge often lies in the fact that everyone has different expectations and tastes. Consequently, if a system fails to satisfy the majority of users, all the time, money and effort spent on its development would have been in vain. The onus is therefore on testers and analysts who validate solutions, to ensure that the solution satisfies the needs and desires of the targeted users - Guest Post By Prashant Chambakara.

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How to Discover Missing Requirements

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How to Discover Missing Requirements

Non-functional requirements are easy to overlook. This is most likely because stakeholders often assume that these requirements are given and go without saying. Missing requirements are harder to spot during requirements evaluation than poorly specified requirements and are usually detected further down the line when the system is in the testing phase or has already been deployed to thousands of users. They become even more expensive to fix if they are architecturally significant. For example, It is often difficult to include performance, safety and security features to an existing architecture - Donald Firesmith, Software Engineering Institute, U.S.A.

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The 3-Step Guide to Documenting Requirements with Use Cases

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The 3-Step Guide to Documenting Requirements with Use Cases

I was once part of a project team that employed use cases to identify which developer was working on the different software modules. We had different colour codes for each developer, so we could easily see at a glance who was working on what functionality and what level they had reached. Most analysts see the use case as a communication tool in holding discussions with stakeholders and for validating requirements. Here are the 3 major steps to applying the use case technique to your project.

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