A Promise to have a Conversation I’ve been writing user stories for a couple of years now, and the best way I’ve heard how to describe them is that they are a promise to have a conversation.  Enough information should be written down to give the reader an idea of what the gist of the [...]

Number 7 in the series, “How to Shoot Yourself in the Foot: 7 ways to do software requirements poorly to set your project up for failure and what to do instead.” Short-change Time Spent on Software Requirements or Don’t do Them at All Don’t Listen to Your Customer’s Needs Don’t use Models Use Weasel Words [...]

Thanks to everyone who attended our presentation on business objectives at PS& BA World in Vancouver. For those of you who missed the handout.  Here it is, Seilevel’s ROM Defined Guide. For those of you who missed out on our lanyards with handy models, requirements gathering and use case cheat sheets– catch us at Casino [...]

We’ve done a bit of writing on the use of requirements models, but there is much less information out there about using requirements models together. Klaas Sikkel presented a paper on this topic, “Teaching consistency of UML specifications” at REET10 that inspired me to do some writing on the topic. Klaas’s paper was more focused [...]

My fellow Seilevel bloggers have written about the many virtues of Org Charts and their relationship to requirements elicitation and management.  In case you missed it, here is a good summary of an org chart and how to use one in requirements gathering.  To help catch you up to speed, an org chart is one [...]

Are you attending Project World/ Business Analyst World in Vancouver? Don’t miss our presentation: ‘If You Build It, Will They Use It? Leveraging Business Objectives to Deliver Successful Projects’ presented by Seilevel Inc’s Principal Analyst, Anthony Chen. Overview: Business Objectives are the measurable results a business desires to achieve when executing a project. They can [...]

We are delivering train-the-trainers sessions to one of our customers. In these sessions, we are training some of their senior Business Analysts (BAs) on how to give our Requirements Elicitation course to other BAs in their organization. Well, this week I was working with two people in Houston, two in London, and one in the [...]

Join us at Project Summit and BA World in Boston October 26th Joy Beatty is presenting: ‘If You Build It, Will They Use It? Leveraging Business Objectives to Deliver Successful Projects’ Overview: Business Objectives are the measurable results a business desires to achieve when executing a project. They can be used to ensure that everything [...]

In the 1970’s, a car company marketed their new hot vehicle, called the Nova, in Spanish speaking countries. Widely successful in other regions, the Nova was expected to do equally as well. Unfortunately, sales tanked and the Nova became a disaster. Why didn’t anyone from Spanish speaking countries jump at the chance to buy a [...]

Join us as International Institute of Business Analysis (IIBA) gathers for its first conference on October 17 to 22, 2010 in Washington, DC. IIBA® is partnering with Business Rules Forum and Business Process Forum to bring together an unsurpassed group of professionals tasked with building a more capable organization. The BBC 2010 conference will provide business [...]