BA Collective v.2.0 in mid July 2007

Stay tuned for the launch of the new BA Collective with great new features including monthly contributor articles and new cool functionality. Another source to give you additional knowledge-share for the ever evolving Business Analyst!

New BA Collective Format and Distribution

We are very excited with our up and coming new BA Collective format and selected contributors. Our contributors will have the opportunity to provide content around Business Analysis and have the opportunity to discuss developing trends, best practices, and their own thoughts / experiences with our local community of business analysts and share this with our currently growing Business Analysis distribution of over 1,000 local MN business analysts.

Our selected contributors will have the opportunity to provide two of twenty four articles for the BA Collective that will be published over the next twelve months. Each of these monthly articles will be displayed and archived in the BA Collective. In addition to having the articles online we will also be distributing the articles via email distribution to our Business Analyst community.

We are looking for great contributors that have great BA experiences, passion about the role of the BA, and would like to provide great input, and show BA thought leadership in the Twin Cities. The contributor role is a volunteer role because we are truly seeking people that would like to contribute out of passion for the development of the Business Analysis profession and make an impact on our professional community.

Over the month of May we will be receiving applications from interested contributors and will be announcing our final contributors on June 1st, 2007. If you are interested in becoming a contributor please follow the following directions in How to apply to become a BA Collective Contributor 2007 -2008 to apply.

- The BA Collective Team

How to apply to become a BA Collective Contributor 2007 -2008

We have prepared the following information to provide the information you will need to apply to become a contributor to the BA Collective. To apply please provide all of the following information and submit via email to info@collective-genius.com by 9:00 PM on May 25th, 2007. Label the email in the subject line: BA Collective Contributor Application.

Please provide the following elements for your application:

Contact Information: Full Name, Phone Number, Mailing Address, and Email Address

Most Recent Resume: This can simply be your professional resume

Reason for Applying: Please provide a short description why you would like to become a contributor to the BA Collective.

Article Ideas: Provide two or more potential ideas you would like to write about for your contributions to the BA Collective

Writing Example: Please provide an example of your writing. Provide a two paragraph example of your writing for the BA Collective around one of your potential article ideas. If you have other relevant previous writings you would like to submit as well feel free to provide those examples as well.

Once we have received all of the submissions on May 25th we will review these submissions and will make our selections. We will contact everyone who applied for the role the week of June 1st to announce our selected contributors.

Thanks again for your interest in becoming a selected writer for the BA Collective. We look forward a fun year on great Business Analysis Thought Leadership!

- The BA Collective Team

Debug your Requirements

I'm an old school data flow diagrammer from the CASE methodology days, but I learned a few tricks with DFD's that make them a tool I can't be without on large projects. I use them to debug my flow of data. You can do this during any of the phases that add more information to the process.

If you use bubbles (circles) to indicate a process, anything going into the process is an input and anything going out is an output. Pull on the outputs by asking yourself "Can I produce this output with the inputs that are feeding this process?" Sometimes I'll ask the business users "If I put you in a room with just __(the inputs mentioned in the process)__ would you be able to produce ___(the output)__?"

Jim Furey
Senior Business Analyst

Don't discount the process of learning the process

Sometimes it's not how good the process is, but how the team gets to the solution.

When introducing new process, like tracking defects or managing resources I've found that sometimes the business and the development team need to have some room to work their way through it. For example I've Introduced Issue/Fix/Bug tracking to several clients over the years; along with managing assignments of these to resources. I know of a couple of ways that are very effective, but the client is rarely ready to just use the solution in it's entirety right away. Over time the process eventually becomes what it needs to be, but the team feels like they brought it to where it needed to be.

Jim Furey
Senior Business Analyst

Data Flow Diagrams

I ran into a web site that shows a good data flow diagram that seems fairly simple to follow. I prefer using simpler flow lines (e.g., visio DFD makes this easy)

http://www.umsl.edu/~sauter/analysis/dfd/dfd.htm

It also goes into the gory detail behind the diagram.

Jim Furey
Senior Business Analyst

What's the big deal about Business Analysts?

I've run into people that have done various tasks over their career that could be a bit of business analysis, and project management. They seem frustrated with the Project Managment assignments and would like to get into more BA work. What gives?

I personally think that most seasoned project managers have 80% of the skills needed for BA tasks. If they've ever completed a complex project charter, they've used most of the skills required for gathering requirements and specifications.

I know I end up doing project management on most of my assignments. Usually the Project Manager is too busy, or the project is too small to warrent a PM.

Jim Furey
Senior Business Analyst