Monthly Archives: July 2006

BPMN Diagrams – Introduction To Activities

By Scott Sehlhorst | July 31st, 2006

An introduction to the Activities elements of business process modeling diagrams.

Posted in Business Process Modeling, Requirements, Requirements gathering | Tagged as-is bpmn diagram, as-is business process modeling, bpmn symbols, bpmn tutorial, managing data, to-be bpmn diagrams, to-be business process model | Leave a comment

Agile Argument

By Scott Sehlhorst | July 28th, 2006

Another challenge to a premise of agile comes in a well assembled argument from Tony at Seilevel, in his article, Agile…again.

Posted in Agile, Process Improvement, Requirements gathering, Software development | Tagged Agile, big upfront requirements, feedback, incremental delivery, managing data, software development process | 3 Comments

BPMN Diagrams – How To Use Gateways

By Scott Sehlhorst | July 27th, 2006

Business process modeling examples showing how to use the five different gateways defined in the BPMN specification.

Posted in Business Process Modeling, Requirements, Requirements gathering | Tagged bpmn, bpmn examples, bpmn gateway, bpmn gateway examples, bpmn symbols, bpmn tutorial, Business Process Modeling, business process modeling examples, business process modeling tutorial, managing data | 6 Comments

BPMN Diagrams – How To Use Start Events

By Scott Sehlhorst | July 26th, 2006

Examples showing how and when to use the 6 different types of start events in business process modeling notation (BPMN) diagrams.

Posted in Business Process Modeling, Requirements, Requirements gathering | Tagged bpmn, bpmn diagram examples, bpmn diagrams, bpmn example diagrams, bpmn examples, bpmn start event, bpmn start events, bpmn symbols, bpmn tutorial, business process modeling notation, managing data, start events | Leave a comment

Quick Thoughts on Incremental Project Management

By Scott Sehlhorst | July 25th, 2006

topsyWidgetPreload({ “url”: “http%3A%2F%2Ftynerblain.com%2Fblog%2F2006%2F07%2F25%2Fincremental-project-mgmt%2F”, “style”: “big”, “title”: “Quick Thoughts on Incremental Project Management” }); Incremental delivery planning is not an oxymoron. You just plan the soon-to-happen tasks in detail, and keep the distant tasks more vague. Does this make sense? Rolling-Wave Planning Johanna Rothman has posted an article that provides a good introduction to rolling-wave planning. [...]

Posted in Process Improvement, Project Management | Tagged incremental, incremental delivery, incremental project management, managing data, managing software projects, rolling wave, rolling wave planning, software project management | 4 Comments

The Impact of Change and Use Cases

By Scott Sehlhorst | July 24th, 2006

Market requirements change. These changes impact the use cases that support the changing requirements. Functional requirements change. These changes impact the use cases that they support. How can we leverage use cases to manage these changes? And how can we manage changes to use cases?

Posted in Product Management, Requirements, Requirements Models, Use Cases | Tagged changing requirements, managing changing requirements, managing data, managing requirements, requirements changes, requirements management, software requirements specification, SRS, structured requirements, traceability, use case analysis, use cases | 4 Comments

Business Analyst BOK 1.6 Just Released

By Scott Sehlhorst | July 21st, 2006

The IIBA (International Institute of Business Analysis) has just released version 1.6 of A Guide to the Business Analysis Body of Knowledge, or the BA BOK. This new release adds over 100 pages of content and is the first “essentially complete” version.

Posted in IIBA, Organizations, Process Improvement | Tagged ba bok, bok, Business Analysis, international institute of business analysis, managing data | 3 Comments

Iron Triangle Kills in Boston…

By Scott Sehlhorst | July 20th, 2006

topsyWidgetPreload({ “url”: “http%3A%2F%2Ftynerblain.com%2Fblog%2F2006%2F07%2F20%2Firon-triangle-kills-in-boston%2F”, “style”: “big”, “title”: “Iron Triangle Kills in Boston…” }); … Skyline Unharmed Short-sighted demands on software teams usually don’t kill people. Software development is often described with a construction analogy. The Big Dig construction project was under exactly that kind of pressure. On July 10th, 12 tons of tunnel ceiling collapsed and [...]

Posted in Project Management, ROI, Slightly off-topic | Tagged big dig, iron triangle, managing data, project overruns, timeboxing | 5 Comments

Communicating A Release Schedule With Use Cases

By Scott Sehlhorst | July 19th, 2006

topsyWidgetPreload({ “url”: “http%3A%2F%2Ftynerblain.com%2Fblog%2F2006%2F07%2F19%2Fcommunicating-a-release-schedule-with-use-cases%2F”, “style”: “big”, “title”: “Communicating A Release Schedule With Use Cases” }); We manage release schedules with project management. We manage customer expectations with consulting skills. How do we manage customer expectations about release schedules? With Use Cases. Background We started a series of posts exploring why we apply use cases as part [...]

Posted in Communication, Consulting, Product Management, Project Management, Requirements, Requirements Models, Use Cases | Tagged communicating schedules, customer communication, delivery schedule, managing data, software delivery, use case analysis, use case communication, use cases | 2 Comments

Foundation Series: Business Process Modeling

By Scott Sehlhorst | July 18th, 2006

Business Process Modeling allows us to increase our understanding of business processes and improve communication with stakeholders and implementation teams. Business analysts will create diagrams that represent business processes. These diagrams can be used to elicit requirements, define scope, and improve communication within the team.

Posted in Business Process Modeling, Requirements, Requirements gathering | Tagged bpm, bpm example, bpmn, bpmn example, bpmn symbols, bpmn tutorial, Business Analysis, business analyst, entity-relationship diagrams, er diagram, Foundation series, managing data, requirements elicitation, Requirements gathering | 15 Comments