Summer is always a good time of the year for my blog. Since I have more free time (thanks to kids homeworks-free evenings and weekends, plus vacations), I like to spend some time writing interesting content just for you, as well as spend some time improving Eric the BA publishing platform.
This led me to implement a new newsletter management system to improve communications with my readers (hello MailChimp!), as well as a premium content gateway for my subscribers. Premium content is mostly hidden in various posts for now (maybe at the bottom of this one 😉 ), but expect to see more of it in the upcoming months.
Let’s not waste more time, here is the 14th edition of Eric’s Business Analysis Reading List!
Too busy to crawl the web for interesting Business Analysis content? Not interested by social networks noise? Once a month in a while, Eric’s Business Analysis Reading List brings you a review of some of the best Business Analysis articles and websites.
From Eric the BA.com
In case you missed them, here are the most recent and most popular posts since the last edition of Eric’s Business Analysis Reading List:
- Starting a Business Analysis Community of practice: tips from the community
- Get a free assessment of your Business Analysis practices!
- Series: Taking your Business Analysis deliverables to the next level
From the Web
1 Being a good Business Analyst requires both hard & soft skills. Hard skills are usually easy to get, which is not the case for soft skills. Brad Egeland goes through 5 of the most important soft skills for a BA, and illustrates how they can help you and your project team. If you encounter one of these situations one day, you’ll know how to react to make the most of it (and build a little more of this precious soft skill).
2 Starting a Business Analyst career is not easy, yet you have to express confidence fast if you want to gain respect from your stakeholders. The Junior Business Analyst Manifesto could be a life saver, but the suggestions on how to handle your first days as a BA prepared by Racquel Ellis might also help you to become an expert sooner than you think.
3 When eliciting requirements, stakeholders often express their information needs for the new process/system based on how the organization works. This might mean fetching personal information about your customers (which could be essential for parts of your business processes). However, dealing with such information comes with additional responsibilities that are often neglected by organizations. On the other side, customers are often willing to share personal information if they can get benefits from it. An interesting article from the Harvard Business Review goes in depth on the subject.
4 Defining the Business Analyst role is not an easy task, since there are probably as many definitions as there are organizations employing BAs. The omnipresence of technology in organizations also bring some noise in this definition, since it’s harder than ever to define Business Analysis without talking about technology at some point. In a great post, Perry McLeod brings interesting thoughts about the differences & similarities between the Business Analyst and Business-Systems Analyst roles.
5 Trends on the Business Analysis profession are always interesting to read for junior BAs, since they provide great insight on where we could be in a few years as a senior BA. In the last few years, many observers agree that BAs are moving from a documenting role to a more strategic one, involved in more critical decisions and playing an increased role as a communication facilitator, and giving exciting perspectives for all BAs. Joseph Czarnecki describes new trends for 2016 in this excellent post on ModernAnalyst.com.
Do you like what you’re reading?
Did you come across other interesting business analysis content recently? Share it with us in the comments below!
