The importance of active listening in the role of a Business Analyst
The International Institute of Business Analysis (IIBA) defines business analysis as “the practice of enabling change in the context of an enterprise by defining needs and …
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Classical requirements and test analysis a discontinued model?
In times of increasing "agilization", the question arises as to whether classic requirements engineering and test analysis are still relevant at all. Since the IT of banks and …
Requirements Engineering and Domain Knowledge
1 Introduction The IREB [1] Foundation Level courses emphasize the fact that a requirements engineer is expected to familiarize himself with the application domain of the …
Data Science – the expanding frontier for Business Analysts
Prelude As Business Analysts our profession is constantly evolving over time. As our roles mature, our experience, expertise, and skills gradually move us from informants to …
What is a Useful Perspective in Considering Requirements Engineering Relative to Systems Engineering?
Many organizations take their product development seriously. Those that do usually also practice requirements engineering (RE), amongst a host of other disciplines. Some also …
NLP for Requirements Engineers, Part 2
Unquestionably, being a good communicator helps in achieving greater impact and efficiency in the requirements engineering line of work. NLP comes from the study of how people get …
NLP for Requirements Engineers, Part 1
Unquestionably, being a good communicator helps in achieving greater impact and efficiency in the requirements engineering line of work. NLP comes from the study of how people get …
The Genius Toddler Challenge
“How hard can it be?” is a question posed by virtually everybody at one point or another regarding a line of work they are currently not involved in. We all know how hard it is to …
What makes Women Better BAs
“Whatever women do they must do twice as well as men to be thought half as good. Luckily, this is not difficult.” (Charlotte Whitton, Canadian feminist and mayor of Ottawa) What …
Stable? Fragile? Agile! Attractive but reasonable
Classical process models have come closer to agile values in IT-projects over the last years, and thus a new project reality has been created. This new reality brings along …
Survival Kit for the RE Guy
In the context of that ubiquitous, all-situations-encompassing real world, the Requirements Engineer might move in and out of several concurrent projects, work across different …
The Business Analysis Center of Excellence
Usually, the disciplines of business analysis and requirements engineering start somewhat hidden inside companies: A customer service specialist supports the analysis and design …
Bridging communication gaps with a Feature Tree
We are in the machine industry. A company was willing to change the working mode of the software development department as part of a huge Research and Development (R&D) …
Gender Studies
Are there many women Requirements Engineers? It is almost impossible to get reliable numbers on that question. Studies like [CAN12] don’t give any statistics, but present concrete …
Five Questions
I was recently speaking to a large group of BAs about some of the lessons learned picked up over my years in the profession. I had a fairly large sample – a few hundred people in …