Ted Hardy

Requirements Reuse

The BABOK and Requirements Reuse

This post originally appeared April 12, 2011 on BetterProjects.net One of the first things I learned as a BA was how to write requirements. I still remember the subject of my first two business requirements documents (using card payments for the purchase of extended warranties and using card payments

Problem Solving

The Shopping Cart Quandary

This post originally appeared April 7, 2011 on BetterProjects.net Just down the street from my office is a very convenient Sam’s Club that I frequent on a regular basis to pick up those necessary items you just can’t get anywhere else. The most memorable trip I’ve

Humor

I'm taking one of these to my next Requirements Sign-off Meeting

This post originally appeared April 5, 2011 on BetterProjects.net This is, by far, the most useful tool I have ever seen to ‘encourage’ your users to approve a requirements document. Better Projects readers, I give you, the Pillow Mace. No word yet on pricing or availability, but the first

Google

Who approved the requirements for Google +1?

This post originally appeared April 4, 2011 on BetterProjects.net In a short word, no one. Ok, probably not entirely true; someone pretty smart came up with the idea, but it feels to me like no one really looked at how people use a search engine before the first version

Testing

Smoke Test on a Smoke Break

This post originally appeared March 30, 2011 on BetterProjects.net photo © 2006 Photocapy | more info (via: Wylio) A few weeks ago, I made one of those blunders all leaders new to a team makes… I made an assumption, a bad one, about everyone being on the same page regarding our

Demos

An Elevator Pitch for your Project

This post originally appeared March 25, 2011 on BetterProjects.net photo © 2007 Daniel Morrison | more info (via: Wylio)I’ve got a personal elevator pitch. I developed it over the course of a boring, week-long training class that a former employer required me to take. Given the remedial and dull

Business Analysis

It doesn't just apply to startups...

This post originally appeared March 23, 2011 on BetterProjects.net Ever since I read his book, The Inmates are Running the Asylum, I have been following the sage-like advice of Alan Cooper. The man is sheer genius. If you’re a twitter user, I highly recommend that you follow him.

Ideas

Bad Ideas v/s Good Ideas

This post originally appeared March 18, 2011 on BetterProjects.net The proper response to a lousy idea is not to stop thinking. It is to come up with a better idea. Indeed, we should prefer a bad idea to no ideas at all, because a bad idea can at least

Business Analysis

Why I'm a Business Analyst

This post originally appeared March 15, 2011 on BetterProjects.net If you’ve been reading my posts on this blog for long, you know that I tend to focus more on the ‘soft’ side of business analysis than on the hard skills. As passionate as I am about learning and

Decision Making

The HiPPO: A Project Nightmare

This post originally appeared March 3, 2011 on BetterProjects.net photo © 2006 Geof Wilson | more info (via: Wylio)Frankly, Hippos are really very aggressive animals. They’ve got massive jaw pressure, large fang-like teeth and because they are extremely territorial, will attack any human that gets even close to them.

Remix

Everything is Remix

This post originally appeared February 28, 2011 on BetterProjects.net One of my favorite webisodes (episodic web videos) that has come out in the last year is Everything is a Remix. Part 2 was especially inspiring to me… well, it was actually slightly depressing, but it did hit really close

Living Dead

How to Kill a Zombie... Project

This post originally appeared February 11, 2011 on BetterProjects.net I’m not much of a horror movie fan, but I do enjoy a good zombie movie (as long as its one that doesn’t take itself too seriously). If you invite me over for Halloween, make sure you’ve

Ideas

Idea Mutation

This post originally appeared February 8, 2011 on BetterProjects.net photo © 2007 ynse | more info (via: Wylio)If you’ve been reading this blog for the last year, you probably realize by now that I am not a scientist (nor do I play one on TV). There are, however, several

Warning Labels

Stupid Project Labels

This post originally appeared February 3, 2011 on BetterProjects.net We’ve all see product labels that leaving us scratching our heads trying to understand what it was that the authors of the the product descriptions were trying to convey to us, the purchasers. This got me thinking, what if

Recruiting

1.00 FTE - Recruitment Guarantees

This post originally appeared February 2, 2011 on BetterProjects.net Craig and I have both plugged 1.00 FTE on this blog before. Having hired 3 team members in the last quarter, I can completely agree with the point of this comic. Thankfully, all 3 of my hires were internal

Design

Requirement or Design?

This post originally appeared January 31, 2011 on BetterProjects.net photo © 2005 Andrew Kuchling | more info (via: Wylio)The last few years as a BA, I’ve become increasingly convinced of the necessity of mockups, or better yet high-fidelity simulations, in order to effectively elicit requirements. Yes, text based requirements

Quality

BASF: Lessons From German Marketing

This post originally appeared January 27, 2010 on BetterProjects.net Back in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the German chemical company BASF ran an ad campaign with the slogan, “At BASF, we don’t make a lot of the products you buy, we make a lot of the products

Release Management

Google Chrome and the Release Cycle

This post originally appeared January 24, 2010 on BetterProjects.net photo © 2008 Randy Z | more info(via: Wylio)Back when Google Chrome debuted, I thought it an interesting concept, but not something I would ever use. I was a Firefox diehard. I was one of the few who could (or

Disaster Recovery

The Enterprise Reset

This post originally appeared January 18, 2011 on BetterProjects.net photo © 2005 NASA Goddard Space Flight Center | more info(via: Wylio)Imagine if you will a natural disaster, be it earthquake, fire, flood or whatever, hits your company and completely wipes out your enterprise architecture. After everyone sorts out whatever

Communication

Globish: English for the rest of the world?

This post originally appeared January 13, 2010 on BetterProjects.net  I’ve blogged a few times in the past about my very first project, a global CRM implementation that replaced 20 different systems with a single instance of a single application to serve the entire service division of a Fortune

Putting Down The Headset: BA Lessons from Tech Support

This article originally appeared December 13, 2010 on ModernAnalyst.com On January 2, 2002, I took off my headset for the very last time. It was a strange day, leaving technical support, my first post-college job, to head off to be a junior business analyst, supporting the same team which

Release Management

The Checkout Line: Why is it so slow?

This post originally appeared January 10, 2011 on BetterProjects.net photo © 2008 The Consumerist | more info (via: Wylio)My wife and I have a running joke that if you want to spend a long time waiting around to leave the grocery store, you let her pick the line. Its uncanny

Theory Of Knowledge

Knowledge Externalization: BA Friend or Foe?

This post originally appeared January 7, 2010 on BetterProjects.net photo © 2009 Shironeko Euro | more info (via: Wylio)One of the things that I’m known for around the office is using technology in what most people see as ‘novel’ ways. I was one of the first people to cart

Innovation

Thomas Edison and Innovation

This post originally appeared January 4, 2010 on BetterProjects.net The long-lasting light bulb. The phonograph. The motion picture camera. When we think of big successes in innovation, Thomas Edison’s name can’t help but make the list. The man holds 1,093 patents, making him one of the

Requirements Fail

The College 'Common Application'

This post originally appeared December 30, 2010 on BetterProjects.net. I remember filling out my college admissions form, all four pages of it, thinking what a pain it was to hand write out the thing. Looking back on that now, given that I spent half of my day today creating