Monthly Archives: March 2022

Mind Mapping

A mind map is a particular type of diagram used for taking notes, organizing thoughts, and understanding hierarchies. Business analysts can use any type of diagram that aids understanding and communication between participants in any engagement. (My website is littered … Continue reading

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Functional Decomposition

My first engineering job was as a process engineer in the paper industry, where I designed and analyzed large industrial systems that ran this… through this… to make this… We can break the system down (or build it up) like … Continue reading

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Data Modeling

From the BABOK: A data model describes the entities, classes or data objects relevant to a domain, the attributes that are used to describe them, and the relationships among them to provide a common set of semantics for analysis and … Continue reading

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Prototyping

This BABOK technique involves creating something that allows investigation of one or more aspects of the solution being developed. This creation can be physical, in the case of mock-ups meant to illustrate a concept or explore ergonomics or test a … Continue reading

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Scope Modeling

I think an argument can be made that this technique should more properly be called “scope determination” or “scope identification.” I also observe that determinations of scope happen during the conceptual modeling phase, when you discover what’s happening in an … Continue reading

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Data Dictionary

Maintaining a dictionary of data items is a very good idea for engagements of sufficiently wide scope and involving enough participants. This greatly simplifies and clarifies communication and mutual understanding among all participants, and should fall out of the work … Continue reading

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Financial Analysis

Financial analysis comprises a number of considerations and methods. They all begin by assigning costs to all germane capital, fixed, and variable items in the existing state and in the future state, and also considering expected revenues. Some of the … Continue reading

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Lessons Learned

I’ve touched on the idea of lessons learned a few times previously, but here I’d like to address the idea directly and explicitly, as part of the Tampa IIBA’s ongoing review of the BABOK, specifically the techniques listed in chapter … Continue reading

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Non-Functional Requirements Analysis

Functional requirements relate what a solution DOES. They describe components, behaviors, entities, actions, inputs, and outputs. They contain the details of the design the user sees and the mechanisms that generate results. Non-Functional requirements relate to what a system IS. … Continue reading

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