The Business Analysts Handbook has been launched by myself and a handful of friends and colleagues. From it's homepage; "This is a wiki for busness analysts to post thir knowledge. It is designed to be an evolving repository of knowledge for and about business analysts, or BAs." This site can be viewed as a business analysts body of knowledge, although rather that a formal and rigidly version controlled document such as PMIs PMBOK (or the proposed BABOK) my hope is that the wiki format will enable a broader contribution from practitioners and be a (cliché warning) live document, that evolves as the knowledge base grows.

Why do some products and companies fail, where others succeed. Based on surveys spanning 3,000 companies, 40,000 individuals and one-on-one interviews with 30 technology CEOs, Pragmatic Marketing found seven consistent success factors related to company culture, management style, and product & marketing strategies that propelled the winners. And also the seven fatal flaws that derail market laggards.

Good article by Jeff Lash about how product managers should keep an open mind about agile development practices and how to adopt them as part of their product management approach.

Good case study / anecdote about how a company responds to competitive pressures in the agile vs. waterfall world.

From the article:

Two years ago, in response to emerging customer needs and a surge of new entries into the network monitoring market, Ipswitch realized it had to pick up the pace of its product development strategy. Although the company's software had been widely regarded as among the best and easiest to use, the game had changed. Overseas companies had started to become serious price competitors. And a number of domestic startup firms, armed with marketing tactics fortified by strong venture funding, had also aggressively entered its space. As a result, unless the company could deliver its products to new and frequently inexperienced customers in ways that would work right the first time, Ipswitch's managers knew their market edge risked being lost for good.

Seth Godin provides us with guidance about the importance of revolutionary change, not just evolutionary change.

In the world of cognitive psychology, there’s something known as an affordance. Affordances are clues that communicate to a user how they should use an object.

For example, assuming you’re familiar with the convention, a type-in box communicates to the user that they should click within the box and start typing if they want to enter data.

Good article in a Q&A format.

The Question: Are there any usability issues with using drag and drop controls in a web application?

The Answer: Good discussion - links to examples and other discussions

Great article about the expected, yet unaccounted-for things that impact project schedules - vacations, sick time, productivity levels, etc.  An occasional must-read reminder of the things to think about. 

Chris Hawkins definitely has a handle on the real world

Solid explanation of the principals behind, definition of, and ways to create and apply PERT estimates for project planning.

More great real-world insight from Chris Hawkins about the mistakes you can make when estimating a project.  Touches on quality and source of estimates, requirements, unrealistic expectations of design and debug time, and properly sizing the scope of a release.