This is a bit of a potpourri post. Found some good stuff out there today, check it out.
The first IIBA Exam just finished in Orlando Florida. Barbara was one of the 16 business analysts who took it. Read about her experience!
Her post has inspired me to crack open my copy of the [...]

Michael Shrivathsan just wrote an article presenting five tips for creating products with great design.
Michael’s List

Start with the user interface. [Roger Cauvin adds, start with a working first iteration]
Work closely with UI designers.
Pay attention to details.
Simpler is better.
Be brave.

Our Thoughts
User centric design is the core of UX and interaction design. It is the most [...]

Roger asked some interesting questions on one of our previous posts about market and product requirements. In a couple recent articles, we presented some specific examples to clarify the semantics and language of different types of requirements. Roger asks six questions about functional and non-functional requirements in the comments on the last article. In this article, we answer them.

Being effective at interviewing is key to gathering requirements effectively. We suggest six tips to make the interviewing process more effective and efficient.

Why Passion is Important
Thanks Kathy for Two Simple Words of Passion…
I distinctly remember some eye-rolls when we posted Writing Passionate Requirements as part of the Big Ten Rules to Writing Good Requirements series.
When we are excited about our product, and believe in the value for our customers, we will write better. When we know that [...]

Understanding someone’s perspective on requirements requires that you appreciate the context in which they’ve formed that perspective. Not everyone is playing the same game on the same field.

What a great way to demonstrate 12 key usability concepts - creating a calendar where each concept is demonstrated. You’ve heard the saying - “If you can’t be a good example, be a horrible warning.” Here is that saying manifested in calendar form.

We looked previously at an example of market analysis, defining first a market opportunity, and then a market requirement. We wrote an article a while ago about how to go from an MRD to a PRD. In this article, we will look at the journey from our market requirement to associated product requirements. And thanks, Roger, for throwing down the gauntlet.

Prioritization can be hard, especially when we’re dealing with a lot of variables. Peter Abilla, at shmula.com takes a fairly esoteric tool (interrelation digraphs) and applies it as a prioritization tool. Opthamologists have learned that they can’t show us a bunch of blurry images and have us tell them which one looks the best, and then prescribe a corrective lense. They have to ask us “Is it better like this? Or better like this?” Peter’s approach does the same thing, but with a quantitative edge.

For your weekend reading pleasure, an interview and an article.