June 2010
20 posts
You Need a Static Organizational Model →
Okay… I want to make an assertion here. In order for agile to work, you’ve got to understand the static organizational model for your company. Why? If you are organizing around things that…
the key to success: get it wrong →
It’s hard to write academic pieces well. Getting the evidence right takes skill, time and patience. Making sure I have the literature down and accounted for means revisiting notes taken years ago…
The inner life of failed IT projects →
Courtesy of Naomi Bloom’s HR strategy and technology blog, this drawing illustrates the inner workings of failed IT projects.
Study the picture closely, and you’ll see the following:
…
Is has value… but do you need it? →
Recently, Chris Potts threw this nugget out on Twitter: chrisdpotts Instead of ‘demand-managing’ to fit an arbitrary IT budget, challenge whether your strategy needs the value an…
Business Analysis Is All In the Questions →
A question that often comes up when hiring business analysts or assigning them to specific projects is whether a business analyst has to be a subject matter expert in the domain of the project. I…
Are You the Victim of an Invisible Promotion? →
Everyone is familiar with the Peter Principle — the idea first described by Laurence J. Peter that people rise to their highest level of incompetence. And we’ve all seen examples of people who were…
What’s different about requirements for a COTS or... →
The business analyst in world of COTS projects
The number COTS or Commercial-off-the-shelf-software options have increased exponentially in recent years. A sister of COTS, the “SaaS” or…
Test Ideas for Documentation →
Most people who bother with the matter at all would admit that the English language is in a bad way, but it is generally assumed that we cannot by conscious action do anything about it. Our…
BA & PM Personalities →
Bear with me on this one…It occurred recently to me (and it jives with personal experience) that: A PM should be pushy in order to get things moving and done
A BA should be inquisitive and…
The Value of Ideas →
My Google Alert recently picked up a lot of chatter on the Internet about a rumored Dilbert movie in the works. The rumor is ahead of the reality, as the project hasn’t been funded, and there isn’t…
A Revamped Business Model for a Government Context →
It has been about two weeks since I did my last post on business models and thanks to a significant amount of feedback from my colleagues, the business model canvas we’re using, has evolved. Now,…
Marin County sues Deloitte: Alleges fraud on SAP... →
In a case that has the potential to reshape important aspects of the systems integration business, Marin County, California filed a complaint against Deloitte Consulting for its role in an…
PRINCE2 Product Based Planning for Business... →
In the past I’ve very clearly wanted to separate my work as a business analyst from that of the project manager. I thought that by not writing product descriptions the project manager was being…
Preparing Undergraduates as Business Professionals →
(Editor’s note: This post is part of a six-week blog series on how leadership might look in the future. The conversations generated by these posts will help shape the agenda of a symposium on the…
Finding a New Job →
Andrew Sullivan posts a letter today from a reader in England who was laid off a year ago and hasn’t had much luck finding a job since. Here’s the concluding paragraph:
Several things I’ve…
AntiClue: Five reasons projects fail →
A wise old soothsayer once said: “The reasons for project failure are more numerous than grains of sand in the desert.”
The diversity of failure reflects the prominent role played by the…
Kent Beck's new manifesto? →
Team vision and discipline over individuals and interactions (or processes and tools)
Validated learning over working software (or comprehensive documentation)
Customer discovery…
How to get beyond a limited business analyst role →
It’s common for me to receive emails from business analysts who are feeling frustrated with their current situation at work, all related to the same theme: the limited business analyst role they…
Moving From Strategic Planning to Story Telling →
Corporate strategists often struggle with strategic options. First, there’s a lot of worrying about what they have to come up with to make the proposed option credible: they spend hours on SWOT…
Business Analysis Scenarios; Understanding the... →
In previous articles we examined the use of a business context model, and which concepts exist and what is true, using a business domain model.
This article discusses the role of Business…
May 2010
20 posts
Three Popular Misconceptions about IT Investment →
I was interviewed recently about IT trends in the air transport indutry.
The inevitable question came up as to levels of spending – are they going up or down in the Recession? are they enough? –…
Three Popular Misconceptions about IT Investment →
I was interviewed recently about IT trends in the air transport indutry.
The inevitable question came up as to levels of spending – are they going up or down in the Recession? are they enough? –…
Making Decisions on Values, Not Biases →
(Editor’s note: This post is part of a six-week blog series on how leadership might look in the future. The conversations generated by these posts will help shape the agenda of a symposium on the…
Why Lawyers Don’t Run Startups →
Startups need to have a great lawyer, accountant, patent attorney, etc. But founders need to know how to ask for their advice and when to ignore it.
Why Entrepreneurs Hate Lawyers I was having…
Changing Enterprise Through Projects. Are Projects... →
Many organisations use “Projects” as the tool for enabling change and realising benefits within their Organisation.
It seems to be the “silver bullet” that will solve all of the organisation’s…
Goodheart's Law and Projects →
An interesting phenomenon I’ve noticed during testing phases of projects is that the number of defect reasons tracked grows the longer the project drags on. It is as if in order to shift blame away…
A Fool with a Tool is still a Fool →
Today I was asked a series interesting questions in regards to why architects are so insistent on collecting models. He asked with passion, why there was a need to capture information…
Ravin’ About RAVEN Cloud: Generate Process... →
David Ruiz, who founded ViewStar (an early document imaging and workflow package from the 1980’s that I remember well, and was eventually absorbed by Global360) is now with Ravenflow,…
'Wicked problems': collaboration, risk, and... →
Achieving project goals requires that IT work with lines of business, external vendors, and so on. As a result, virtually every major enterprise IT initiative crosses organizational boundaries….
The Future of IT & the CIO – Redux of the... →
Image by kevinzim via Flickr
The future of the information technology group has been determined…and it doesn’t look good.
See that bird over there? That’s the Dodo. He’s…
Leaning Your Way to Disaster →
What do Toyota’s sudden-acceleration woes and the disastrous oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico have in common? Both are examples of a type of organizational breakdown that is destined, absent some…
What is the essence of business analysis?... →
I became a business analyst when I no longer saw technology as the only solution.
It seems that every week I learn something new about our profession and business change in…
Who's the Real Boss of IT? Probably the CFO →
CFOs continue to have major reporting power on the org chart and your IT department. CIOs who thought they had a direct line to the CEO have watched CFOs gain more influence over technology…
When Testers Are Asked For A Ship/No-Ship Opinion →
In response to my post, Testers: Get Out of the Quality Assurance Business, my colleague Adam White writes,
I want ask for your experience when you’ve your first 3 points for managers:
…
The Nonsense of Leadership (Princes and Priests) →
Leadership is a term used by many, but sometimes understood by only a few. Again and again I feel compelled to question ideas about leadership that seem to be based on beliefs, rather than science. In my opinion, there are two groups of people misinterpreting the term
Testers: Get Out of the Quality Assurance... →
The other day, Cory Foy tweeted a challenge: “Having a QA department is a sign of incompetency in your Development department. Discuss.”
Here’s what I think: I’m a tester, and it’s time for our…
What does the future IT department look like? Some... →
It’s a perennial topic for sure, but it usually focuses on how well aligned IT operations are to the business, or changes in skills, delivery methods, outsourcing, and so on. In short, all…
Iterative and Incremental Development →
One of the key parts of Agile Software Development is the concept of iterative and incremental development (IID). I here people say this frequently – but when I ask more specific questions I hear…
Where Do Requirements Come From →
Craig Brown is starting a series written by Nilesh Raje, titled “Who Decides the Project’s Requirements?” This is an age old question in the development of software. Nilesh writes for …
Why We Do Scenario Testing →
Last night I booked a hotel room using a Web-based discount travel service. The service’s particular shtick is that, in exchange for a heavy discount, you don’t get to know the name of the airline,…
The vanishing IT department →
By 2015, many IT departments will only be a quarter of their current size, and eight out of ten IT dollars going to outside service providers.
April 2010
55 posts
Craft vs. Cross Functional Teams →
I have an interesting paradox I have been listening to in the Agile community. On the one hand the craftsmanship discussions resonate with me. After years of experience, apprenticeship, and study…
The real reason why Steve Jobs hates Flash →
There has been some … interesting news from the tech sector this week. Firstly, the Apple vs. Adobe vendetta gets even nastier, with a public letter from Steve Jobs explaining why Adobe’s…
Drawing Effective Technical Diagrams →
As architects, we spend a good bit of time trying to get a very complicated set of ideas communicated in a clear, consistent, and understandable manner. A simple diagram with a clear story can be…
Can BPM be ‘Rearchitected’ into to ACM? →
I am just now getting around to a post by Alxander Samarin called “Let us architect the use of existing technologies instead of blaming them for bringing complexity/inflexibility/etc. in…
IT Is Everywhere. Why? →
IT is deployed everywhere, and I mean that literally. I struggle to think of corners of the global economy that have not been affected by digitization, and I can think of many that have been…
Business Analyst Rights and Empowerment →
I was surprised again recently when a group of business analysts complained to me that the project manager was upset with them for spending extra time defining the business processes they were…
Design by Doing vs. Doing by Design →
Jim Sinur wrote a couple of interesting blog posts recently mentioning two distinct approached for supporting work processes:
Doing by Design is the pre-planned definition of a predictable,…
What Does the Future Hold for IT? →
Nobody knows how technology will be managed or consumed in 5, 10, or 15 years, but we do know that change is coming. A recent report from the Corporate Executive Board provided a bold and…
Should We Redefine BPM? →
Now that we have determined that BPM is not Dead, discussion has turned in a big way to whether BPM should be redefined. Steve Towers hosted a very long discussion of this on his BP Group on…