Stand up. Sit down. Which is better for the team, productivity, your company? The trend is stand up for a short burst of action and accountability among all types of business teams. A hall-mark of rapid software development (1990′s) and Agile (manifesto in 2001 onward) the stand up meeting has progressed rapidly beyond software, to… [Read more…]
November 12, 2011
Two years ago I entered the fray of open networker, or “LION‘s” in LinkedInjargon, for a two-week test before a series of presentations concerning pro-social networking to management and project management audiences. My networked ballooned from a rather healthy 750 to over 3,000. While generally innocuous, I soon found out that not having a “fake”… [Read more…]
November 6, 2011
In the midst of some infrastructure / application remediation work for a great client in Omaha (insurance company) the concept of YAGNI came to mind. There’s a couple of quick reads for you. First a sort of “anti hero” opinion piece from one of the early members of Borland (Mike Rozlog) who apparently still holds… [Read more…]
October 8, 2011
Exciting news. TAPUniversity has partnered with gnomio to launch its learning management system ahead. Additional must-have features include test bank expansion and knowledge sharing tools. An innovator in online project management training since 2006, this partnership ensures our delivery keeps paced with your learning needs! Just click on the TAPUniversity LMS* on the menu to… [Read more…]
September 29, 2011
Good morning PMI Minnesota! in an effort to go green and to help your mobile access I’ve translated the Green Project Management presentation into a highlights post! Here’s a Link to the USGBC’s & LEED as well – http://www.usgbc.org/DisplayPage.aspx?CMSPageID=1988 Slide 2 — Why “Think Green”? •All systems (economic, social, etc.) depend on the link to living systems •Our natural resources are… [Read more…]
May 27, 2011
Benchmarking is a valid, powerful and concrete way to compare a new system or process to the current, “as-is” state OR to compare multiple systems in a vendor selection process. To ensure each of those adjectives (valid, powerful and concrete) are met here’s some suggestions: Valid – ensure a level playing field in all systems… [Read more…]
May 17, 2011
Time for a little celebration. Today the TAPUniversity blog surpassed 100,000 visits or reads. Over the last two years our blog readership and contributions have grown steadily. Several hundred professionals check in each day and explore over 400 articles and growing. We’ll continue to publish and hope you’ll share in our exploration of the Management… [Read more…]
May 11, 2011
Equally at home with Use Case creation, or the earlier generation’s database analysis, Data Dictionaries and Glossaries provide a common place to store and retrieve definitions. They’re used by business and technical roles. The premise is to understand what is needed for a field of data or an entire table or record of data (aka… [Read more…]
April 29, 2011
Business Rules. Universal definitions or process descriptions that transcend a single use case or process flow. A little bit bigger than a glossary definition (such as income range, gender, ethnicity) but not quite a usage scenario in its own right. Business rules as they’re refined, adapted and updated are invaluable requirements assets – they really… [Read more…]
April 21, 2011
Problems, issues, bugs, defects, action items, punch list, clean up tables – so many synonymous terms for the same underlying concept – tracking known “stuff” and making sure it gets resolved before a product or service is released. While risk management concerns the known- unknown, management reserves address unknown -unknown, problem tracking is smack dab… [Read more…]
March 31, 2011
Focus Groups – the 11th Technique listed in the Business Analysis Body of Knowledge employ a skilled facilitator(s) and a small group of prospective or current customers to seek out and understand what the customer or user wants and/or how they use a product or service. The information gathered from a focus group is powerful. … [Read more…]
March 22, 2011
SWOT Analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats) is a venerable mainstay of management and MBA curriculum. While it’s typically applied at the organization level for strategic management, SWOT analysis can be a helpful technique for understanding the business perspective for a set of requirements or a project. It’s described in 9.32 of the BABOK™ A… [Read more…]
March 11, 2011
Polls, surveys, questionnaires are synonymous terms for the same thing – asking people for their opinion on a topic. Chapter Nine of the Business Analysis Body of Knowledge (BABOK®), Second Edition includes Surveys and Questionnaires as the 31st technique. Surveys help teams understand what customers want. They will differ depending on whether they will… [Read more…]
March 2, 2011
Several years ago I shared a series of articles in the Rational Edge for IBM that showcased real life applications of use cases and incremental development. Two of those articles focused on replacing a legacy unemployment insurance system. The entire article provides a much more thorough introduction from that example – so take a quick… [Read more…]
March 1, 2011
The whiteboard. The dry eraser. The multi-color pens. The overbearing meeting participant. Those four things often come together when thinking of brainstorming. It’s a technique among multiple management nexus disciplines and at the heart of agile, business analysis and project management. It can produce great results from a team. The Business Analysis Body of Knowledge… [Read more…]
February 25, 2011
Chapter Nine of the Business Analysis Body of Knowledge (BABOK®), Second Edition provides a concluding overview of thirty-four techinques used throughout business analysis and the six processes defined within the BABOK®). I’ll highlight the most frequently used ones in my career over the next several weeks. If one of the following techniques does not make… [Read more…]
February 21, 2011
The tenth anniversary of Agile is upon us. We just concluded a 12 part review of the Agile Manifesto. Agile was a software development out to business, innovation. Or it could have been called “geeks to execs”. Now for a fast forward, to today. Emerging trends and practices include those that fuse business, design and… [Read more…]
February 17, 2011
According to Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan – Execution is the ability to mesh strategy with reality, align people with goals to achieve the promised results. I was looking at an article I wrote a few summers ago about “Execution, the Discipline of Getting Things Done”. I was trying to convey two tangible sets of… [Read more…]
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February 20, 2012
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