by Karl Wiegers | Jul 21, 2014 | Business Analysis, Uncategorized |
There is no single correct way to document specific requirements information. Every BA needs a rich tool kit of techniques at her disposal so that she can choose the most effective requirements view in each situation. In this article, adapted from my book, More About Software Requirements (Microsoft Press, 2006), I offer some ideas about how to make that choice. Often, it’s valuable to represent information at both high and low levels of abstraction. The high level offers a big-picture perspective, whereas the low level of abstraction presents the nitty-gritty details. Certain audiences only need the high-level view, whereas developers and testers do need to see all those specifics, as well. An effective requirements analysis technique is to create an alternative view of the requirements from the initial set of information and examine it for problems. Here’s an actual example. I once reviewed a requirements specification for a client who was developing the firmware for a device for testing integrated circuit components. The spec contained a long table that listed the various states this device could be in and what behaviors lead to changes from one state to another. Table 1 shows a portion of this table. I needed to know if all possible states were described and that the allowed state changes were all correctly specified. But how could I judge that? Missing requirements are hard to spot precisely because they don’t exist. I decided to draw a state-transition diagram from the information in the original table, which appears in Figure 1. A state-transition diagram is a simple analysis model that provides a high-abstraction view of such a...
by Jenny Boronyak | Jun 9, 2014 | Business Analysis, Project Management, Uncategorized |
With the PMI’s recent release of the new Professional in Business Analysis (PBA) certification, business analysts (BAs) in the community are asking what is the difference between this new PMI-PBA and the IIBA’s existing Certified Business Analysis Professional (CBAP)? Also, if we’re looking into getting certified, which one should we go after? In their announcement to offer the new certification, the PMI quoted a statistic by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics that “business analysis jobs are predicted to increase 19 percent by 2022.” We agree that this is a good reason for more people to get certified in the field of business analysis. We’re looking at this new certification from the PMI as great news; business analysis as a profession needs to break through the lack of recognition and demand more respect from the global community so that we can all be more successful in our jobs. This certification is definitely a step in that direction. But before you go and sign up for the PMI-PBA pilot program, we recommend making sure it’s the right certification for you. After looking at the available literature, including the PMI-PBA Examination Content Outline (ECO), it is apparent that this particular certification is focused on a very specific area of business analysis, and is developed for a very specific subset of business analysts. According to the PMI’s literature on the new certification, “business analysis is a critical function that helps define business requirements in order to shape the output of projects and drive successful business outcomes. In order to ensure the quality of requirements and projects, it is crucial that individuals be...
