Articles

Any system is can be broken down into smaller chunks, and these in turn broken into yet smaller chunks. However, unless your chunking is done by using some organised theme, there is a risk of ending with lots of random pieces that do not connect well to each other. Business events are the best way…

Despite the technological wizardry we have in our workplaces, humans are still the most important components. Yes, humans, those complex, unpredictable, sometimes irrational but predominantly wonderful beings who are responsible for the success or failure of an organisation. If the humans behave in a manner that is beneficial to the organisation, then the organisation prospers….

Culture determines how people behave. If you want to change behaviour, you have to look to changing the culture. This is the story of how we changed the culture of a team of business analysts.

Whatever it is you are working on, it is almost certainly made up of many, sometimes very many, pieces. Each of the pieces interacts with other pieces to achieve some valuable result. This means that there is a need to organise all the pieces so that you and your colleagues can work on relevant slices…

This article continues the viewpoints series, and looks at the Future-How view. This is the one desaling with the technilogical solution to the business problem. The article discusses how alternative solutiuons are probed and assessed, and one that is the best solution to the real business problem is chosen to be developed.

There are an infinite number of ways of looking at any system. This article examines useful viewpoints that help Business Analysts to understand the real problem and come up with innovative ideas. BusinessAnalysisViewpoints

A short history of software, requirements and the Volere contribution. Updated version.

Innovation triggers are devices to help the creativity process. Triggers are guides to the parts of the business processes where you can make your most useful innovations.  

Today I listened to Adrian Reed’s excellent talk on Systems Thinking at the BA Summit organised by Penny Pullan. Early in the talk Adrian made the point that Systems Thinking is all about interfaces and connections; I was reminded of one of the patterns in our book Adrenaline Junkies & Template Zombies.  Keywords : interfaces. business analysis, integration,…

Business analysis is often seen as a technical skill. But the business analyst has another set of responsibilities — to dig into what the stakeholder’s mind and uncover what is really needed, and not just what they say they want. This requires different skills: knowing what questions to ask, dealing with vagueness, listening and providing feedback, knowing…

There are various ways of becoming certified, and various organisations that offer certification. This summarises the best options, and is intended to be an objective but brief look at certification options.

The user story has some serious problems when it comes to finding the real requirements for the business. Here the authors discuss why the user story has problems, and look at a better way to write stories.

We use meetings as a way of getting a group of people together to share knowledge, information and ideas and to make decisions. However, meetings are often criticised (especially by participants) as a waste of time and a barrier to getting work done. A thinking

The Project Management Institute have recognised the connection between project management and requirements. In May 2014 they published a report “Pulse of the Profession, Requirements Management: A core competency for Project and Program Success”. 

The Project Management Institute have recognised the connection between project management and requirements. In May 2014 they published a report “Pulse of the Profession, Requirements Management: A core competency for Project and Program Success”. 

The Project Management Institute have recognised the connection between project management and requirements. In May 2014 they published a report “Pulse of the Profession, Requirements Management: A core competency for Project and Program Success”. 

The Project Management Institute have recognised the connection between project management and requirements. In May 2014 they published a report “Pulse of the Profession, Requirements Management: A core competency for Project and Program Success”. 

Suzanne Robertson is one of the Agile Experts who discuss the subject of Scrum versus Kanban. The report is published by the Cutter Consortium and they have kindly made it available to readers of our web site

“As we add new technological tools to our development process, our work becomes less, not more, technological in its focus.” Read Tom DeMarco’s article pubished in IEEE Software about requirements and the changes happening in our industry.

This article summarises work that was started in the late 1990’s to explore how to make requirements knowledge reusable. Our growing sophistication with the use of data, process and state models means that reuse of analysis artefacts becomes more possible.

In this podcast James speaks of his experience in the profession of architecture and how it provides inspiration for his work on innovation and creativity. The discussion also covers some requirements techniques and how they can be used in software engineering projects. He also discusses the role of the business analyst in agile teams.  

For many years one common definition of quality has been “conformance to requirements.” However this definition ignores the fact that some requirements are hazardous or “toxic” and should not be included in software applications.

The ninth article in the Volere series looks at pros and cons of different forms of requirements and how to combine them.

An interview of Suzanne and James by Neil Maiden for SE Radio. Please do not listen if you are an Agile “True Believer”, this is for the pragmatic business analyst.  

A new article in Cutter Consortium’s Agile Product & Project Management Advisory Service, by James & Suzanne Robertson. This report courtesy of Cutter Consortium.

Requirements and project management have many connections. In this intervew Suzanne Robertson talks to Penny Pullan about effective collaboration between business analysts and project managers.

In today’s world of system development we are increasingly concerned with being more agile, with having a lean approach, with delivering value more quickly. This involves careful thinking and requirements gathering in order to make the software simple.

The eighth article in the Volere series looks at requirements and the agile world.

This is the seventh article in the series that explains the thinking behind the Volere requirements techniques. This one explores productive ways of using use cases to help you find requirements.

It is common knowledge that software defects, especially in embedded systems, are expensive to repair; less well appreciated is just how very expensive it is, especially for requirements defects. This paper outlines these costs and how they depend on the development process.

This is the sixth article in the series that explains the thinking behind the Volere requirements techniques. This one looks at the most granular level of requirements.

This is the fifth article in a series that explains the thinking behind the Volere requirements techniques. Subsequent articles will explore various aspects of applying these techniques in your environment.

This article was selected by IEEE Software magazine as one of the Top Picks for influential articles over the 25 years of IEEE Software.

This report works through the Volere requirements knowledge model. This illustrates how some degree of formality opens the door to making choices appropriate for each individual project and leads towards the ability to reuse requirements.

This is the third in a series of articles on the Volere requirements techniques and explains how the business analysts translates a business need into a system scenario.

This is the second in a series of articles explaining the Volere requirements techniques.

This is the first article in a series that explains the thinking behind the Volere requirements techniques. Subsequent articles will explore the practicalities of applying these techniques in your environment.

When someone gives you a requirements specification how do you know whether the specification is complete and unambiguous? How do you know whether the specification is fit for its intended purpose? In short, how

Insurance Australia Group (IAG) is Australia’s leading general insurance group. It provides personal, commercial and rural insurance under some of the countries most well-known brands including NRMA Insurance, SGIO, SGIC, CGU and Swann Insurance.

In response to many requests, we felt that it was time to produce a guide to how to make a start using the Volere approach to improving your requirements.

This article summarises experiences in using the Stakeholder, Goal, Scope approach as well as providing some new guidelines for using a variety of business analysis models for discovering requirements.

Some requirements people talk about Goals only in the sense of ‘vague, unachievable, high-level aspirations’; others seem to mean almost the same as requirements, while scenario and Use Case people say that every scenario has a Goal. So it’s understandable that newcomers often get confused and avoid the whole subject. But a Goal has a…