Mistake proofing your process

Analyzing a process to find where the errors are

Card sorting – agile BA technique 158

Card sorting is a simple and useful way to gather feedback on which features people want in a new system, which problems they want solve or generally speaking, what they want. So I was surprised recently when some business analysts I was working with had not heard of the technique and I thought I would […]

Is it enough to say that the BA is the “universal translator” between business and IT?

I often hear that we need a business analyst to translate what the business people say, so that technical people understand them. Then, I am told we need the BA to then translate what the technical people say, so that the business people understand them. I guess it goes something like this: It sounds good, […]

Can I still use a use case on my agile project – even if the cool kids don’t use them anymore?

I have been told that use cases are very old fashioned now and that all the cool people have moved onto agile user stories. But I am old school and I still like to pull the old approaches out every now and then and take them for a spin. I found myself explaining use cases […]

Using a moments of truth analysis to assess a team’s readiness for change

I have previously blogged about a number of approaches to assessing a team’s readiness for change, including the 7-S framework and the arenas of change approach, but today I thought I would explain a less well known approach – the “moments of truth” assessment. Actually I made it up so it is not too well […]

Preparing for a stakeholder interview part two – using the GRIFT model

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 […]

Preparing for a stakeholder interview part one – setting a clear goal

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 […]