How do you prevent analysis paralysis? That’s the question Barbara opens up for discussion on the Business Analyst Blog. The answer is somewhat simple. You stop as soon as you believe you have something that reasonably covers the goals (or use cases) that you are trying to address. When you […]
Communication / Consulting / Lists / Requirements / Requirements gathering
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Ten Supercharged Active Listening Skills To Make You More Successful
Active listening is about more than gaining understanding. Active listening is about giving. Giving assurance that you understand someone’s needs. Giving confidence that you will address those needs. Giving feedback and acknowledgement that someone’s input is valuable. If you haven’t tried active listening, you may think it is a passive, receptive activity. Active listening skills will help you guide your customers and your team to do the right thing, and enjoy the experience.
Design / Prioritization / Product Management / Requirements / Requirements gathering
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The Wisdom of Crowds Prevents People’s Passions
The wisdom of crowds helps us avoid stupid decisions. Unfortunately, it also prevents innovative, passionate, fantastic decisions. Collective Intelligence is collective insipidness. We need to keep the inputs of individuals in the mix.
Requirements / Requirements gathering / Software development
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Prototype Fidelity
Prototyping is invaluable for getting feedback on a design. It is also great for getting validation of requirements. It can even be used as a means to document the requirements. What level of fidelity should be used when getting feedback? Jan Miksovsky provides some guidance from the real world.
Business Analysis / Requirements / Requirements gathering
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Idea Seeding Better Than Brainstorming
Kevin Cheng and Tom Chi, at OK/Cancel have written an article sharing the creative process they use for creating their awesome strips. Idea seeding is the process where they use time constraints and design/refine cycles to improve their ability to create quality “product.” They also wonder about extending this approach to other areas where brainstorming is normally used.
Business Analysis / IIBA / Lists / Organizations / Requirements / Requirements gathering
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Ten Requirements Gathering Techniques
The BABoK (Business Analyst Body of Knowledge) lists 10 techniques for gathering requirements. Here’s an overview of each one. For more details, check out the latest Guide to the BABoK.
Business Process Modeling / Product Management / Requirements / Requirements gathering
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Business Rules And Requirements
What is the difference between a business rule and a business requirement? Does the difference matter? A business requirement is something that is multi-customer, and a business rule represents a single customer’s approach to meeting that requirement. Product managers and analysts care about both, but product managers emphasize requirements, and analysts focus more on rules.
Requirements / Requirements gathering
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Nice To Have
Gathering requirements isn’t like asking kids what they want for their birthday. We aren’t giving our customers carte blanche, we are trying to identify the valuable requirements – things that solve problems and achieve value in a significant way. Needs and Wants Our customers usually know what they want. There’s […]
Business Analysis / Requirements / Requirements gathering
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Estimating the Effort of Documenting an As-Is Process
Estimating the gathering of requirements is hard. Not as hard as scheduling innovation, but easier than estimating implementation effort. One step in gathering requirements is often the documentation of the “as-is” process – how things exist today. We provide a framework for building those estimates – making the job a little bit easier.