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Instantly usable and helpful information for project management, agile/SCRUM, business analysis, IT strategy and compliance and lean – six sigma.
Green Project Management – PMI Minnesota – 2011
Good morning PMI Minnesota! in an effort to go green and to help your mobile access I’ve translated the Green Project Management presentation into a highlights post! Here’s a Link to the USGBC’s & LEED as well – http://www.usgbc.org/DisplayPage.aspx?CMSPageID=1988 Slide 2 — Why “Think Green”? •All systems (economic, social, etc.) depend on the link to living systems •Our natural resources are […]
Posted in: Green Project Management
Business Analysis Technique #2 – Benchmarking
May 27, 2011
by Dave Kohrell
Benchmarking is a valid, powerful and concrete way to compare a new system or process to the current, “as-is” state OR to compare multiple systems in a vendor selection process. To ensure each of those adjectives (valid, powerful and concrete) are met here’s some suggestions: Valid – ensure a level playing field in all systems […]
Posted in: Business Analysis Techniques
Celebration! 100,000 readers!
May 17, 2011
by Dave Kohrell
Time for a little celebration. Today the TAPUniversity blog surpassed 100,000 visits or reads. Over the last two years our blog readership and contributions have grown steadily. Several hundred professionals check in each day and explore over 400 articles and growing. We’ll continue to publish and hope you’ll share in our exploration of the Management […]
Posted in: TAPUniversity
Pragnalysis team announce launch of free Requirements Management Software Tool – “ReqLine”
May 16, 2011
by Adrian Reed (UKAdrianReed)
On medium and large scale projects, requirements management can become a difficult overhead. Teams that rely on spreadsheet and word-processing software to create and manage requirements documents often find it difficult to maintain the traceability and inter-dependencies between requirements. We all know the value of tracing, tracking and maintaining our requirements documents, but until now […]
Business Analysis Technique #5 – Data Dictionary and Glossary
May 11, 2011
by Dave Kohrell
Equally at home with Use Case creation, or the earlier generation’s database analysis, Data Dictionaries and Glossaries provide a common place to store and retrieve definitions. They’re used by business and technical roles. The premise is to understand what is needed for a field of data or an entire table or record of data (aka […]
Posted in: Business Analysis Techniques, CBAP Exam
Business Analysis Technique #4 – Business Rules Analysis
April 29, 2011
by Dave Kohrell
Business Rules. Universal definitions or process descriptions that transcend a single use case or process flow. A little bit bigger than a glossary definition (such as income range, gender, ethnicity) but not quite a usage scenario in its own right. Business rules as they’re refined, adapted and updated are invaluable requirements assets – they really […]
Posted in: Business Analysis Techniques, CBAP Exam
Business Analysis Technique #20 – Problem Tracking
April 21, 2011
by Dave Kohrell
Problems, issues, bugs, defects, action items, punch list, clean up tables – so many synonymous terms for the same underlying concept – tracking known “stuff” and making sure it gets resolved before a product or service is released. While risk management concerns the known- unknown, management reserves address unknown -unknown, problem tracking is smack dab […]
How to Find Where New Process is Really Needed
March 31, 2011
by Michiko Quinones
It’s great to learn new models. I LOVE models. I like to think about how they can be applied, and I get excited about both the predictive ability of models and the capacity for goodness that exists when a model is well executed. But I’ve learned that the reality is that you will never be […]
Posted in: Project Management
Business Analysis Technique #11 – Focus Groups
March 31, 2011
by Dave Kohrell
Focus Groups – the 11th Technique listed in the Business Analysis Body of Knowledge employ a skilled facilitator(s) and a small group of prospective or current customers to seek out and understand what the customer or user wants and/or how they use a product or service. The information gathered from a focus group is powerful. […]
Business Analysis Technique #32 SWOT Analysis
March 22, 2011
by Dave Kohrell
SWOT Analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats) is a venerable mainstay of management and MBA curriculum. While it’s typically applied at the organization level for strategic management, SWOT analysis can be a helpful technique for understanding the business perspective for a set of requirements or a project. It’s described in 9.32 of the BABOK™ A […]
Project Health Check : 5 serious project warning signs
March 19, 2011
by Adrian Reed (UKAdrianReed)
As experienced change practitioners, I’m sure we’ve all worked on projects that have been difficult. The unfortunate truth is that some projects gain so much momentum, they become “too big to fail”. These projects steamroll their way through organizations, and have a tendency to displace anyone that dares to challenge them. Sometimes when working closely […]
Posted in: Business Analysis, Project Management
Business Analysis Technique #31 Surveys and Questionnaires.
March 11, 2011
by Dave Kohrell
Polls, surveys, questionnaires are synonymous terms for the same thing – asking people for their opinion on a topic. Chapter Nine of the Business Analysis Body of Knowledge (BABOK®), Second Edition includes Surveys and Questionnaires as the 31st technique. Surveys help teams understand what customers want. They will differ depending on whether they will […]
Business Analysis Technique #26 – Scenarios and Use Cases
March 2, 2011
by Dave Kohrell
Several years ago I shared a series of articles in the Rational Edge for IBM that showcased real life applications of use cases and incremental development. Two of those articles focused on replacing a legacy unemployment insurance system. The entire article provides a much more thorough introduction from that example – so take a quick […]
Business Analysis Technique #3 – Brainstorming
March 1, 2011
by Dave Kohrell
The whiteboard. The dry eraser. The multi-color pens. The overbearing meeting participant. Those four things often come together when thinking of brainstorming. It’s a technique among multiple management nexus disciplines and at the heart of agile, business analysis and project management. It can produce great results from a team. The Business Analysis Body of Knowledge […]
34 Business Analysis Techniques from The IIBA
February 25, 2011
by Dave Kohrell
Chapter Nine of the Business Analysis Body of Knowledge (BABOK®), Second Edition provides a concluding overview of thirty-four techinques used throughout business analysis and the six processes defined within the BABOK®). I’ll highlight the most frequently used ones in my career over the next several weeks. If one of the following techniques does not make […]
Lean Startup (for product and software development)
February 21, 2011
by Dave Kohrell
The tenth anniversary of Agile is upon us. We just concluded a 12 part review of the Agile Manifesto. Agile was a software development out to business, innovation. Or it could have been called “geeks to execs”. Now for a fast forward, to today. Emerging trends and practices include those that fuse business, design and […]
Execution – The Art of Getting Things Done, Bossidy and Charan
February 17, 2011
by Dave Kohrell
According to Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan – Execution is the ability to mesh strategy with reality, align people with goals to achieve the promised results. I was looking at an article I wrote a few summers ago about “Execution, the Discipline of Getting Things Done”. I was trying to convey two tangible sets of […]
Posted in: Management, TAPUniversity
Time for a quick celebration – 400 posts!
February 16, 2011
by Dave Kohrell
I wanted to share a little milestone. We reached 400 posts yesterday. Our blog is primarily targeted for education, learning and conversation. While we do need some money to keep the lights on, we try to keep the commercial pitches and “monentization” to a minimum. Thank you everyone who has participated, read and engaged with […]
Posted in: TAPUniversity
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September 29, 2011
by Dave Kohrell
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