ProjectBrief Blog
For Business Analysts and Project Managers
What do you need to make your projects a success? Read, share, interact, and learn tips and ideas. Our goal is to help you extend and reinforce your project management and business analysis training and skills.
Posted: May 5th, 2010 by RichLarson. Comments »
(In my continuing coverage of BABOK® techniques, I plan to comment on all of the general and task-specific techniques. This week’s entry is about observation, a likely source of CBAP® (Certified Business Analysis Professional) exam questions and also a valuable requirements elicitation technique.)
I attended an IIBA Professional Development Day in the Twin Cities recently, and a panelist mentioned what he thought was a cool, new concept. He was describing what an agile development team did on a successful project, and called what they did “high-tech anthropology.” My ears perked up when I heard the term, and thought they were onto something new and inventive.
Posted: April 27th, 2010 by RichLarson. Comments »
I mentioned in a previous blog post that certain techniques in the BABOK® (Business Analysis Body of Knowledge) only apply to one BABOK task. That may seem like they are not as important or not as likely to be tested on the CBAP® (Certified Business Analysis Professional) exam. My guess, though, is that you’ll get questions on some of the 15 task-specific techniques in the BABOK.
You’ll probably also get tested on some of the 34 general techniques, too. That means there are 49 various techniques in the BABOK you could be tested on during your CBAP exam. That’s a lot to study!
Posted: April 22nd, 2010 by Bob Prentiss. 2 Comments »
Hello to all you crazy passionate practitioners and supporters of business analysis! Welcome to Bob The BA’s slightly askew, often strange but 
true and informative business analysis planetoid (a bit cramped but I can’t afford a large planet). No matter what I write, perspicacious or preposterous (two words one should never use in a requirements specification) I want to hear from you; your opinions, your experience, your insights. Why? Because we all learn from the collective whole – the different knowledge, behaviors and experience each of us brings to the table makes us stronger.
Posted: April 14th, 2010 by Andrea Brockmeier. Comments »
In a recent project management class, we were discussing meeting effectiveness, and a student asked if it was ever appropriate to flat out excuse someone from a meeting for being rude or obnoxious?
Fortunately, I have not been in a situation in which I wondered if I should do that. Unfortunately, I think this student had a specific situation in mind. It’s a tough question, especially if the person who is being difficult is a peer or more senior than you.
Posted: April 8th, 2010 by ElizabethLarson. Comments »
During a recent client visit I encouraged the use of modeling as a way to uncover hidden requirements and expectations. One of my clients expressed her rather strong opinion that modeling requirements was not and should not be a part of business analysis work. Oh, she could accept the fact that uncovering gaps between the “as-is” and “to-be” using process models made some sense, but she was adamant that this gap analysis should be done by a business Subject Matter Expert (SME), not by a business analyst (BA). As to data modeling, well that was technical in nature and if done at all, she said, it should be done by the technical IT staff. Use cases were helpful to the testing staff, but were clearly technical and were not to be done by BAs. Prototyping? This should be done by developers—no question about that one!
Posted: March 31st, 2010 by RichLarson. 2 Comments »
So, you wanted to get your CBAP certification, right? It is a significant accomplishment, to be sure. As soon as you achieve it, though, you will face a new challenge: maintaining it! Every three years, you must earn 60 CDUs (Continuing Development Units) to keep your certification active. And, as you might expect, the IIBA has another challenging application for you to complete. Just when you thought the CBAP® application was behind you!
Here are some basic facts about re-certification:
• Your CBAP® status must be renewed every 3 years from the anniversary date of earning your initial CBAP®.
Posted: March 22nd, 2010 by Andrea Brockmeier. Comments »
Projects cross cultural boundaries probably as often as not anymore. How many people either go to other countries to work on projects, find themselves working with team member from other countries here in the US, or work with virtual teams that include people from other places?
Of course, you don’t have to cross an ocean to experience cultural differences. Cultural differences here in the US can even breed culture clash.
I was reading about someone from the Deep South who was communicating with a team member in the northeast part of the country. The northern team member was offended that the southerner had called her “Ma’am.” The southerner was completely flabbergasted that this could be considered an offense.
Posted: March 10th, 2010 by ElizabethLarson. Comments »
At a recent conference I sat next to a project manager who observed, “My organization hired a new consulting company to do business analysis work. They’ve completely taken over. Now they do a lot of the project management work that I used to do, such as meeting with the sponsor to uncover the business problems, determining what we’re going to do on the project…I can’t believe it! I feel like I’m being treated like a second-class citizen!”
Posted: March 1st, 2010 by RichLarson. 2 Comments »
Lately I’ve been immersed in the Business Analysis Body of Knowledge (BABOK®). Why, you might ask? No, it’s not because of insomnia. I’ve been finishing up our CBAP® sample exam question bank for our just-launched online study exam.
The actual CBAP exam is based primarily on the BABOK. I recall studying this guide a lot when preparing for my exam. Now that we are helping others prepare to pass the exam, I realize just how hard it is to write good questions. My hat is off to the test designers and exam writers!
Posted: February 22nd, 2010 by Andrea Brockmeier. Comments »
As project managers and business analysts, you are undoubtedly familiar with the misery of poorly planned and poorly run meetings. It’s a long list of things that drive meeting madness: unclear purpose, wrong people in attendance, lack of ground rules, inadequate preparation, poor time management, etc.
Thought given to key elements of the meeting ahead of time can make for a more effective meeting. Communication of those things insures that everyone arrives at the meeting with a shared understanding of why they are there and what they need to accomplish.
