Outsourcing is gaining momentum not only as a way to reduce costs, but as a way to create global teams. This trend is driving an increase in demand for business analysts. The change in perspective is driving companies to think about how they manage their business in new ways, and driving interest in new tools for business analysts to achieve these goals.

A look back at the best from a year ago.

You knew it would happen eventually, the big ten rules of writing requirements has become the big twelve rules. Maybe scope creep isn’t such a bad thing after all. Writing style plays an important role in writing requirements too.

Johanna Rothman recently wrote an article with a poignant introduction: “A project team focuses on an interim milestone, works like the devil to meet that milestone. They meet the milestone, look up, and realize they’re not at the end of the project–they still have to finish the darn thing. They’re living the Crossing the Desert syndrome.” Fixing it isn’t enough - how do we prevent it from happening?

This concludes and summarizes our winter-holiday series on the 10 common mistakes of going agile. The ten mistakes that Levent Gurses identified in the Dec 2006 edition of Dr. Dobb’s journal. Here are links to the ten previous articles, and a summary of the mistakes.

Don’t over-hype the approach. Don’t be one-dimensional in your message. You will lose credibility. And if you over-promise, you risk making agile the scapegoat.

Agile projects succeed or fail largely on the strength of the team. Don’t pick people based on experience or cost. The former is backward-looking and the latter is unrelated (or inversely related) to potential. Make staffing decisions based upon the likelihood of the team succeeding.