Archive for the ‘Idea management’ Category
Posted by James King on May 7, 2012
The goal of your interview is the single most important thing to know before the interview, but it is also useful to know a bit more about what you are hoping to achieve before you start the interview.
So that is where I use the powerful “GRIFT” model to do my preparations.
Actually it is not a very powerful model, it is simply a checklist of things to think about, in some sort of order, before interviewing someone. GRIFT is short for the following headings
- Goal (as defined in my previous article)
- Roles (What is your role in the interview? What about the stakeholder?)
- Issues (What issues to you think you might encounter? What will you do?)
- Focus (What is your focus for the interview?)
- Takeaways (What will you deliver as a result of the interview? Are there any action items?)
Since I explained the goal in my previous article I will explain the remaing items in this one – RIFT, I guess.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Idea management, Investigation | 1 Comment »
Posted by James King on May 7, 2012
You might be surprised to find out that people often turn up to interview a stakeholder with little or no preparation.
You would probably not be surprised to find out though, that when the interviewer is poorly prepared, the interview results in a conversation without a real resolution and the interviewer has missed an opportunity to get off to a clean start.
So I thought I would add a simple (but very long) guide to some ways you can prepare for an interview. This article, and a couple that follow, are based on the “GRIFT” model that I developed while training BA’s.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Idea management, Investigation | Tagged: GRIFT, interview techniques | 2 Comments »
Posted by James King on March 9, 2012
This article is part of a series on making regression testing useful rather than painful. The most recent article was (as you would guess from the title to this one) about day 2 of our regression testing adventure.
So far we have been looking at how to do some testing, and then do some basic scripting and mapping as we do more testing. In doing so we have (hopefully) been learning more about the system we are building but our main focus is on making sure it is still performing the way we want to.
Now we are going to evolve our testing onto a proper OODA loop. I have created another article to explain what an OODA loop is, but for our purposes it means this:
How fast and how well can the team move between the following 4 tasks?
- Observe the world around them – the way users are operating, the way the system is performing and the way things are coming together.
- Orient themselves or make sense of all that data (interpreting, analysing, integrating and assessing).
- Decide what to do next with all that information.
- Act on their decisions as a cohesive group.
To do this we need a little lesson in OODA regression testing theory
Posted in Agile development, Capability growth, Idea management, Implementation | Tagged: agile testing, OODA, regression testing, testing knowledge capture | Leave a Comment »
Posted by James King on February 27, 2012
When I started to learn agile approaches to projects, OODA was all the rage, but it seems to have disappeared from view as modern agilistas move from Scrum to lean to Kanban to ultra-velocitus development.
I guess I am still a bit old school, because I still think the OODA loop is the essence of the agile approach.
So what is an OODA loop?
OODA loops began as an approach for fighter pilots to avoid dying. It is a way to train fighter pilots and also a way to design fighter aircraft, develop tactics for air combat and win wars in the air. It turns out that it is also really useful for agile projects, production support teams and anyone rolling out a product in a competitive market.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Agile development, Idea management, Investigation | Tagged: agile, OODA, success | 1 Comment »
Posted by James King on February 17, 2012
I stumbled on a letter from Mark Twain where he comments on “the interview”:
Inteviews are pure twaddle
Controversially, he claimed that interviews are appalling and should be completely abolished … which would seem to be a strong position for a business analyst to take these days. But then Mark Twain was around at the beginning of last century and we have learned a lot since then. Maybe he just didn’t know any better.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Idea management, Investigation, Observations, Reflection | Tagged: business analysis; interview; agile; requirements | 2 Comments »
Posted by James King on February 14, 2012
A long time ago I used to do production support as part of my role (I was a Unix administrator/DBA/system analyst).
In those days requirements were really easy for me: people would come to my desk and ask for something, or they would email me or maybe even leave a scribbled note on my desk. There were no standard formats, no formality and (usually) no problems.
But even back then I had to work with vendors and sometimes that was when the trouble started. Some were happy with my “give me a call” approach to requirements, while others required a ticket and some even required a complicated work request form.
Now days, some production support teams are more professional that I was and they actually have real requirements or (if they are agile) stories. And most of them seem to be flooded with vendors.
So, do stories work with vendors? The obvious answer is YES. For example, if you receive a story in the following format then it should work for you and also for your vendor:
- As a coffee club member I want to be able to see a list of future coffee appreciation classes so that I can enrol in those that look interesting.
But what about complaints and bugs?
- As a coffee club member I don’t want to have my name spelled incorrectly because it is really annoying me.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Agile development, Idea management, Implementation | Tagged: pieces of the puzzle, system analyst, work request | Leave a Comment »
Posted by James King on February 14, 2012
I have encountered Use Cases on several occasions, sometimes they seem like a simple tool that can be used to better understand how a system behaves from a users perspective, while at other times people describe them as terrifying monsters that have murdered people and led to the destruction of entire projects. So I am going to recommend only using the good kind.
But what is a use case? It is simply an example of how a system (or business service) could be used by someone.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Agile development, Idea management, Implementation | Tagged: agile, regression test, scenario test, use case | 2 Comments »
Posted by James King on February 8, 2012
Before I worked in IT and even knew what testing was, I knew people made mistakes. But I didn’t know there was an international standard you should comply with when you want to make a mistake.
Then I worked on a project with a mining company and one of the consultants explained human factor analysis to me in simple terms. He told me that mine sites can be dangerous and part of his job was to “stop people killing themselves when they are stupid”.
I suggested he stop hiring stupid people but he told me that they tried that and it didn’t work. Apparently you can be really intelligent on a mine site 800 days in a row but then be stupid for 10 minutes one day and be in an accident and then be killed.
“Luckily we have a standard for being stupid though” he said
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Agile development, Idea management, Implementation | Tagged: agile, human factor analysis, regression testing, testing, UAT | 1 Comment »
Posted by James King on February 6, 2012
I have been creating a couple of blogs on context recently. The idea is that if you know a bit about your users and the product that you are building. Both can take months or years, but I like to think we can even spend an hour or less to understand our project.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Agile development, Idea management, Implementation, Leading change | Tagged: agile, managing ideas, project charter, project launch | 5 Comments »
Posted by James King on February 6, 2012
I was speaking to a crew who were struggling with regression testing and after interrogating them they finally admitted that a large part of the reason they were struggling was that they did not really understand what they were testing.
I was shocked and horrified so I wandered off.
Soon after I spoke to some business analysts who were struggling with an agile project. They alleged that the agile approach they were using did not allow enough time to capture the requirements properly. But guess what, they broke down under interrogation and admitted that a large part of the problem they were having was that they did not really understand the product they were building. Apparently the evil agile people had forced them to write stories about the system before they had time to understand it.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Agile development, Idea management, Implementation | Tagged: agile stories, regression testing, requirements | 3 Comments »
