“There should be a place where only the things you want to happen, happen”Maurice Sendak, Where the Wild Things Are My two-year-old son is a big fan of Maurice Sendak’s …
Building Your BA Career
The world of work is becoming more and more competitive, and much of the work that specialist technical professionals do is continually being assessed for either automation or the application …
Unaccustomed as I am to Public Speaking….. Part 3
We are now at the stage where we have provided our one page synopsis and are now creating the deck that will deliver it. As a reference point, here is …
Death of Attention – No time to think.
YOUR ATTENTION PLEASE!!Look around you and everywhere you go; restaurants, the subway or even a walk in the park, people are staring intently at the small screen in their hands. …
Business Analyst & Product Owner – How Mindfulness helps you keep the Balance
“Be mindful, even if your mind is full” – James De La Vega (artist). Today’s BA is a chameleon, adapting to circumstances and fulfilling many roles in any project or …
The Business Analysis Conference Europe 2018 and Empathy
Following on from my earlier posts about Convergence, Creativity and Customer Focus, today’s article looks at another of the themes which were prevalent throughout the Business Analysis Europe Conference 2018. Rachel Drinkwater, Senior Business …
Making Workshops More Engaging and Interesting Using Design Thinking Techniques
Design thinking is a customer centric approach putting the customer at the heart of the analysis to understand what they really need and uses techniques that focus on understanding them. …
Starting a Quality Program from Scratch
Small to medium-sized companies must continuously improve or die. Approximately 84% of all American companies have less than 50 employees. There must be more focus on helping the entrepreneurial organizations …
Reflections on IRM UK’s Business Change & Transformation Conference Europe 2019 (BCT2019)
My recent London visit was because I was speaking at the Business Change & Transformation Conference run by IRM. This was my third year and the event is certainly growing …
Unaccustomed As I Am To Public Speaking Part 2
How’s your submission coming along? If you are intending to speak at this year’s BA Euro conference in September you’re running out of time to put your submission in to …
Using Emotional Intelligence to Build an Influential BA Community of Practice
Business Analysts work with facts. It’s probably fair to say that our whole lives are dedicated to finding them out, whether it’s researching requirements, scoping problems or designing solutions (that …
Unaccustomed as I am to Public Speaking…
For the last seven years I have spoken at the BA Europe Conference in London and it’s fair to say it has changed my life. It has provided me with …
Advanced Portfolio Management: Goals-Driven Investment in Change
The world of business change just keeps on changing. Turning goals into outcomes at market-speed, through dynamic and co-ordinated investments, is now core to every enterprise’s choices and results. Change …
Conversation #17 — David Beckham, Senior Business Analyst, Aviva
I met David at the IRM Innovation, Business Change & Transformation Conference Europe last year and was intrigued by his unique combination of experience — not only is he a veteran of a great many …
Innovation Triggers
This article discusses a checklist of triggers we have developed for Business Analysts to help to inspire innovation. James Robertson & Suzanne Robertson, Atlantic Systems Guild, http://www.systemsguild.com/ James and Suzanne …
How to Invest in Agility
How agile your enterprise needs to be (meaning how quickly and easily it can do things) depends on what you want it to achieve. For some of your goals, you’re probably agile enough. For any …
Embrace Gamestorming
First of all, let’s get this out of the way. Gamestorming is not new. Gamestorming is a collection of ‘games’ put together under the banner of ‘gamestorming’. As a business …
The Digital Business Analyst
At the IRM Business Analysis Conference Europe in September 2018, I conducted an interactive session about the business analyst (BA) in the digital enterprise. The main point of exploration was the change …
Forming a Business Analyst Community at AO — Part I
We’ve been on a journey for the past few years as a business and as a Business Analysis function. As a BA function we’ve grown from a team of 2 …
Exciting Times
It’s that time of year when a lot of my time is dedicated to the Business Analysis Conference Europe in London. For the last two years I have been privileged …