Learn how a business analyst can help sales managers close sales gaps, improve lead nurturing and optimize your team’s overall performance.
The Skeptical Business Analyst – 9 Tools to Build a Baloney Detection Kit
Skeptical is a highly-charged word. Are you skeptical? In business being skeptical is akin to being a nay-sayer, difficult to work with, not being a team player or a trouble maker. Skeptical does not need to be destructive or negative. You do not have to be a jerk to be skeptical. Skeptical can mean looking at things with a critical eye respectfully and politely to create thoughtful and meaningful discussions to elicit business requirements and build business solutions.
Spring Has Sprung
March 16th is Freedom of Information Day
Watch Bob's TED Talk
Bob's "TED Talk" from IIBA Minneapolis - St Paul Chapter's Professional Development Day on September 2016. Find out how Blooms, Balloons, and Beatles work to make you a better business analyst in a career that is constantly under siege and changing. Bob is a highly respected business analysis and leadership speaker at North American conferences and this video shows you why. Watch it today to Think, Learn and Work Differently.
Stop Apologizing for Your Questions
6 Ways to Make Organizational Changes Easier
8 Ways to Be a Badass Business Analyst Employee
You Suck – And That’s Good
No one wins a gold medal without practice. You don’t just pop out of the womb with the ability to throw a discus or javelin to new world record lengths. Of course a natural talent in that DNA of yours helps, but in the end, it takes practice and time. The same applies to business analysis or any other skill. It takes time, experience and practice to be the brightest bulb on the Christmas tree. Nobody created a perfect context diagram or process flow the first time they did it. We all started from the place of not knowing and started learning.
Check out Bob's Newest Video
Check out Bob the BA's latest video on YouTube! Learn more about how Bob the BA can help your organization to think, learn and work differently today!
Scope Visualization and Pablo Picasso
Scope – the last frontier. We are on a mission where no business analyst has gone before. To explore strange new diagrams and to have the project scope clearly understood. Extra credit to those who remember which TV show that was from! Scope and context are the number one reason business expectations about a project are not met and projects fail. The business wanted a global CRM solution but all they got were pigeons and index cards. Yeah that is why context is important.
Adaptability: Creating Transforming Understanding
Adaptability: Walking in Someone Else’s Shoes
To learn more about someone, you need to walk in a mile in their shoes. Or so the old proverb goes. Well hopefully not literally walking in someone’s shoes. I know there are a few pairs of shoes I wouldn’t want to walk in like Bomb Disposal, Neuro Surgery or Manure Spreader. Walking in the shoes of Broadway Singer, Best Selling Author, and Sci-Fi Geek is more my style. What that proverb is really saying is that if you really want to know and understand someone you need to walk in their shoes or at least follow them around in a non-stalker this-won’t-get-a-restraining-order-put-on-me sort of way.
Mastering Business Analysis - Interview with Bob the BA
Bob sits down with Dave Saboe to discuss how to be a badass business analyst and about his book "Little Slices of BIG Truths". Bob shares some hard truths about what we must be to achieve success in business analysis and other endeavors. Bob also talks about how to overcome discomfort and have crucial conversations, why it’s important to be intelligently disobedient and why knowing yourself is the first step in building a relationship with others.
Scope Visualization: Moving to the Same Beat
That beautiful context diagram you created is truly a work of art. The color, shapes and words all carefully chosen and displayed like the Mona Lisa in Louvre Museum in Paris. As the old story goes, “You’ll have to forgive me I’m in a hurry – I’m double parked outside the Louvre”. If you are the least bit French, you’ll get it. It’s always faster, faster and even faster these days. So how do you communicate project scope or context in a world where everyone has a 3 second attention span?