Making Requirements Reusable

Reuse is an eternal grail for those who seek increased software productivity. Reusing requirements can increase productivity, improve quality, and lead to greater consistency between related systems. Reuse is not free, though. It presents its own risks, both with regard to reusing existing items and to creating items with good reuse potential. It might take more effort to create high-quality reusable requirements than to write requirements you intend to use only on the current project. In this article we describe some approaches an organization could take to maximize the reuse potential of its requirements...

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Automated Analysis For Business Analysts Who Want to Excel

The business case and functional need are the most important aspects of good user stories.  By this we mean “Who, needs to do What and Why”. Who is the user, what is the data handled and moved, and why is what follows the “so that” in a user story.  Focus on these and avoid the How. Become a better BA writing better user stories faster while, at the same time, avoiding ambiguity, duplication, omissions, and inconsistencies.

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Three Modes of Business Analysis Consulting

A business analysis consultant might perform three types of roles when working with clients: expert, pair-of-hands, and collaborator. Each of these represents a different kind of interaction and a different source of satisfaction for the consultant. This article, adapted from Karl Wiegers' book Successful Business Analysis Consulting: Strategies and Tips for Going It Alone, describes these three modes of consulting engagements, which apply both to independent consultants and to internal consultants who work in large organizations...

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Keeping High-Level Requirements High-Level

The objective of this article is to provide business analysts with guidelines for distinguishing between high-level requirements (HLRs) and detail requirements (in IIBA® BABOK® V3 terms – Stakeholder requirements and Solution requirements respectively)...  Stakeholders, as a rule, do not distinguish between high-level and detail requirements. Nor do they appreciate being invited to discuss their [high-level] needs and hearing that some of those needs are ‘too detailed’ - that they will have to participate in yet another [detail requirements] conversation at a later date.

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Challenge Business Rules

Unfortunately, business rules often are a mystery in business. Most of time they are undocumented and worst they are a figment of someone’s imagination - no basis. However, mystery or not, we need them in eliciting stakeholder requirements in order to understand how the business obligations are kept, constraints are enforced and how decisions are made. And just like news reporters, we need to confirm the business rules with a second (hopefully authoritative and documented) source. Furthermore we need business rules to ensure a quality product and/or process through testing...

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Data Modeling for Business Analysts

What if there was a method that could help you communicate effectively about technical concepts like databases without actually knowing how to code?  And what if this set of techniques could also help you learn a new business domain more quickly, by asking super intelligent questions that drill into key misunderstandings before they create issues like missed requirements?

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