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I’ve done work for many software delivery organisations and they all have one thing in common: they think delivery of software to the client is success. I beg to differ. Several years ago, one such organisation delivered a software solution to its client on time and within budget at a cost […] I’ve worked on so many IT projects that this video could almost be an analogy for. Except in an IT project, leave people alone to get on with what they’re good at and everyone wins. Try to win by forcing others to fail and everyone falls over in a heap. In an IT […] Collaboration isn’t some kind of Arthurian round table. It’s not about everyone having their say or having equal weight assigned to their say. I have no time for the old style of business analyst who spends months crafting 3,000 pages of text (but not a single model) to describe requirements and […] I saw a job advert on Jobserve and it’s typical of adverts that fail to grasp what a senior business analyst should be able to do for a client. Click here to read the advert before you proceed. So what’s wrong with it? I’ll go down through it as […] I believe that when when business analysis is limited to (or centred around) the software development lifecycle, it ceases to be about defining the needs of the business and instead supports the main need of the solution provider: deliver software to schedule, which should be a means and not an end in itself. […] I’ve read a lot of CVs (resumés) presented by people who are looking for work as business analysts. It always surprises me (I guess it shouldn’t at this stage) that when they list their skills, they almost never list the kinds of technique you might find in the BABOK; rather, they list the tools they […] It seems nowadays that when anyone in business wants to communicate a lot of detailed information, they gather a bunch of people in a room and read the information to them off Powerpoint slides. And to judge by the number of seasoned business professionals who choose to communicate detail in this […] I am willing to bet that in the business world, at least, everyone puts on their CV (resumé) that they have excellent communication skills. They can’t all be right. If you think you have excellent communication skills but you put your personal details at the top of your CV (resumé), think again. If […] I am frequently contacted by recruitment agents who claim to have read my profile. Today one contacted me with a job which the agent claimed matched my profile. The following are the mandatory skills. I have crossed out the ones I don’t have: Certified System Architect on Pega PRPC V 5.x […] On so many projects, I have seen software developers thrown into meetings with the business SMEs with the task of understanding the “requirements”. On some occasions I have been delighted to see developers with the ability and techniques that truly enable them to think in terms of business needs. Mostly, however, […] |