Archive of Business Analysis Articles

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March 11th, 2010

One of my colleagues got into a debate with one of his colleagues about the differences between goals and requirements. His opponent fired the following salvo: “[That] is not a business requirement in any company of the world…”
What you call your requirements is less important than how you communicate them.

Posted in Business Analysis, Requirements, Requirements gathering | 1 Comment »

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February 23rd, 2010

You give your requirements to the engineering team, and they look complete. The team builds your product, you launch it and the market soundly rejects it. Why? Because your requirements weren’t complete – they didn’t actually solve the problem that needed to be solved.
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Posted in Business Analysis, Kano Analysis, Product Management, Requirements, Requirements Models | 2 Comments »

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January 5th, 2010

Engagement – that’s what this whole product management blogging thing is about. Check out what Tyner Blain readers found to be the most engaging articles in 2009.

Posted in Administrivia, Agile, Business Analysis, Prioritization, Product Management, Project Management, ROI, Requirements, Requirements Models, Requirements gathering, Software development, Use Cases | 1 Comment »

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December 16th, 2009

Why does cross-selling, the process of selling something additional to someone who is already making a purchase, work? This article explores some of the theory and rationale behind cross-selling – from qualification to motivation and profitability.

Posted in Business Analysis, Product Management, eCommerce | 3 Comments »

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December 7th, 2009

Do you know about substitute goods and complementary goods? If you’re doing any eCommerce, and are thinking about cross-sell and upsell, you should understand the basics about substitutes and complements.
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Posted in Business Analysis, Product Management, eCommerce | 2 Comments »

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November 30th, 2009

Unless you live in a world filled with unicorns and rainbows, writing realistic requirements is critical. When you set unattainable goals, the best result you can hope for is a frustrated engineering team. Write requirements that are attainable, and your team will surprise you with what they can achieve.

Posted in Business Analysis, Ishikawa Diagram, Product Management, ROI, Requirements, Requirements Models | 4 Comments »

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November 10th, 2009

SEO, Search Engine Optimization, is an area that every online website needs to think about. The idea is that the more traffic you can get to your website, the more products you’ll sell. Just because you can lead a horse to water doesn’t mean you can make him drink. What a great opportunity to product manage your website and ask why about SEO.

Posted in Business Analysis, Product Management, eCommerce | 12 Comments »

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November 3rd, 2009

Design-Free requirements are important for two reasons, and hard for two other reasons.
Design-free requirements are hard because you “know what you want” when you should be documenting “why you want it.” Writing design-free requirements can be hard when you don’t trust your development team to “do the right thing” even though it is not your job to design the solution.

Posted in Agile, Business Analysis, Interaction design, Interface Design, Product Management, Requirements, Requirements Models, Software development, UX, Use Cases, User Stories | 11 Comments »

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October 28th, 2009

You have an eCommerce site. You sell products online. Do you cross-sell additional products? Do you upsell to better products? This article explains the difference between cross-sell and upsell, and looks at some real-world data about the effectiveness of both.

Posted in Business Analysis, Foundation series, eCommerce | 1 Comment »

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October 13th, 2009

Perpetually intermediate (competent) users. Users who briefly exist as novice users and never become experts. Most of your users are competent, and you should design for them. Competent users have different needs and different expectations than novice or expert users. How do you know your user’s competency levels, so you can design for them?
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Posted in Business Analysis, Interface Design, Product Management, ROI, Software development, UX, Usability | 10 Comments »