Do you ever wonder why some people absolutely love their work, get all the interesting projects, and are consistently being rewarded for their efforts, while others seem stuck and never get a break? Which side of the pendulum would you like to be on? There is a success path for business analysts. And getting on it is easier than you think. It’s not about working harder or spending countless hours perfecting documentation. It is about applying tried and true laws of success, to show up with confidence and earn the respect you deserve. In this podcast – we’ll sit down with industry expert Laura ..read more

In this podcast, I sit down with Business Analyst Specialist Sohail Chatha to talk about the very timely topic of digital transformations. Often these transformations have meager success rates, but Sohail explains how to achieve success and explains why the business analyst role is significant on these journeys. Sohail shares how the rapid transformation of products and services is actually transforming us into the fourth industrial revolution. The speed, breadth and depth of the revolution is forcing enterprises to rethink how products are developed and how organizations create value. To get ..read more

In this episode – we speak with Product Management professional Susan Moore to explore how to address the business analysis activities on a Commercial Off-The-Shelf (COTS) project. Many business analysts make the BIG mistake of applying the same approach, practices and analysis techniques from custom built solutions to COTS solutions – but there are many differences to understand. Join us as we address these differences by walking through each of the 6 business analysis knowledge areas while discussing how your role and work needs to be tailored to support a COTS implementation.    S ..read more

In this episode – Tianua Ross discusses the power of business analysis – regardless of job title or discipline.  We explore why it’s a hidden gem of competencies – yet so many still fail to recognize its value. Tiauna Ross is a Michigan-based project leader, career and empowerment coach, author, speaker and trainer who actively works with individuals and groups to improve personal effectiveness through career coaching, mentoring, seminars, training and personal development. Tiauna has achieved great success in the areas of accounting, technology, project management and business analy ..read more

Product focused roles are in high-demand – but can a traditional business analyst successfully transition into one of these sought after positions? What skills are needed to make this transition? Should a business analyst target a position as a product owner or a product manager and what is the difference between these two roles any way? Are these positions part of the business analyst career path? In this podcast, I sit down with Product Management Consultant - Kevin Brennan to answer these questions and a host of others as he presents “From Business Analysis to Product Management— A Look at ..read more

John A. Zachman is the originator of the “Framework for Enterprise Architecture” (The Zachman Framework™) which has received broad acceptance around the world as an integrative framework, an ontology for descriptive representations of Enterprises. Mr. Zachman is not only known for his work on Enterprise Architecture, but is also known for his early contributions to IBM’s Information Strategy methodology (Business Systems Planning) as well as to their Executive team planning techniques (Intensive Planning). Mr. Zachman retired from IBM in 1990, having served them for 26 years. He is Chief Execu ..read more

Gladys S.W. Lam is a world-renowned authority on business design. She is Principal and Co-Founder of Business Rule Solutions, LLC (www.BRSolutions.com), the most recognized company world-wide in developing business capabilities based on business architecture and business rules. Based upon her experiences consulting to over two hundred organizations, Ms. Lam developed the landmark BRS methodology with Ronald G. Ross featuring numerous innovative techniques including the popular ConceptSpeak™ and RuleSpeak™. She co-authored Building Business Solutions: Business Analysis with Business Rules (2nd ..read more

Relationship building is critical for all members of a product development team – but it’s especially important for project managers and business analysts because their work requires the ability to lead resources without necessarily having the positional authority over those they lead. In this podcast, I sit down with Dave Mantica VP and General Manager for Soft Ed US to talk about the intriguing concept of ‘likenomics’. Dave teaches us about the importance of being likeable and its direct connection to helping us successfully build relationships, influence, and communicate. He walks us throug ..read more

Listen in on my conversation with Camille Spruill as she educates us about the business analysis skills Agile teams desperately need. Camille helps us understand how the role of the traditional waterfall analyst is changing. She highlights how traditional analysts need to ‘step up their game’ in order to compete in this more-fast paced evolving project space. If you are working in waterfall and desire the opportunity to advance your skills – Camille shares her experience on how you must own your career path and begin your professional development journey with the one skill money can’t buy - se ..read more

Modeling is a very important activity for any product development team – yet this important work is often overlooked. Even the teams who embrace modeling don’t always understand how best to leverage its value, choose which models are appropriate, or pair models for obtaining the greatest impacts. Join me as I have the opportunity to interview Greta Blash – a longtime community contributor in the project/program management space - as we discuss using models to create group memory. Greta shares with us how product development teams are changing up how they use modeling or should be. Where once m ..read more