Business transformation might be a new term, but the idea behind it isn’t. Businesses have always had to evolve to survive. As “transformation” has become a buzzword in recent years, …
Harnessing Emotional Intelligence to Perform Business Analysis
Back during the industrial revolution, the focus was on “output” – everything made by machines and people working like machines too. They clocked in hours to create quantity all day …
7 Ways to Improve Your Listening Skills
How can listening be a leadership skill? It doesn’t seem to make sense does it? Leadership is all about action and listening sounds so passive. That is why leaders need …
The Golden Age of Innovation and the Dark Age of Information Privacy
At election time, surveillance and anti-terrorism are quite rightly high on the political agenda. The EU Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is not. However, for readers of this IRM blog, the …
Unlock your BA potential – Grow Your Career
Great Business Analysts ask great questions. When applying the skill, discipline, art and science of asking the great questions, how often – if ever – do you apply these skills …
Master Data: The Building Blocks of Business
Skyscrapers are built with huge concrete slabs and the most rigid girders around; granted, you can build an enormous office without much foundation and flimsy beams, but realistically, how long …
The Art of Collaboration
For the last five years I have traveled this wonderful journey of learning Ryukyu Kempo Martial Arts. It’s an Okinawan, Japanese style of martial arts with a focus on self …
Interview with Gero Decker, CEO of Signavio
Gero Decker, co-founder & CEO of Signavio, tells us about his experience as entrepreneur founding a BPM start-up and shares a piece of advice he received early in his career. …
Changing the Way We Do Things Around Here
In Data Management, designing the required controls and processes are not enough. There has to be an absolute focus on bringing people along with you from day one! Setting up this …
Strategy: Crucial Enabler or Tired Cliché?
Say the word ‘strategy’, and many people will respond with a glazed look and a sigh. Seen as a Dilbert-esque ‘corporate’ buzzword, people throughout organisations often disengage, seeing strategic thinking as something …
Fake News – a Data Perspective
The past year has witnessed a seismic shift in the global political landscape. Just a few short months ago, even the legendary seer Nostradamus would have had problems predicting that …
Business Analysts Can Enable Innovation
“If I had asked my clients what they wanted, they probably would have said a faster horse.” Henry Ford, Founder of the Ford Motor Company This infamous Henry Ford quote …
MDM Market 2017-18: Facts vs. Beliefs (with apologies to current political affairs fans!)
As the “godfather of the MDM market”, and a regular sanguine commentator on the market’s solutions, my analyst career has often had to “call out” the hypsters on numerous occasions. …
Rules Of Work
I have a piece of card on my desk with the following words on it: Think without any dishonesty Forge yourself in the way Touch upon all of the arts …
The Third Generation CDO
We’ve talked about the first and second generation CDO’s so what next? We have all heard that the CDO role is just a gimmick that companies are being sold, that …
Is the Car Instrument Panel the Most Underrated Bit of Data Governance Ever?
I’ve used a car instrument panel pretty much every day of my adult life, and not ever given it a second thought. That is until this one went wrong and at …
Patterns of Strategy
Enterprise Architecture has always had a slightly unbalanced relationship with strategy. Often the line taken by EA is that its job is to follow strategy, to design, redesign or reconfigure …
Business is a Relationship – Using Business Relationship Managers to Converge the Business and IT
Many of my consulting clients have expressed their challenges regarding business-IT alignment. However, there are many that believe the word “alignment” should be replaced with the word “convergence.” What does …
Business Analysis: Turning Gloop into Concrete
Business analysis is often seen as a technical skill. The business analyst builds process and data models, writes precise requirements, makes requirements traceable, estimates the effort involved, and so on. …