Archive for August, 2009

Women In information and Communication (WIC) Events 09/10

Published by
Maria (Murphy) Horrigan
at 30 August, 2009 in Women in ICT and inspire. 0 Comments

I have been involved in WIC for awhile and this year am Vice President of the Board so have a huge and challenging job ahead of me.

I am passionate about mentoring and i think that is why i love being involved in WIC. When i was starting out in ICT, there were few female role models for me to identify with or confide in. I found some fantastic male colleagues who were generous with their knowledge and helped me build and grow in this industry and through WIC, i hope to grow as a professional, inspire and mentor others (and not just my female colleagues).

There is a fantastic line up of speakers for this years breakfast series. The theme this year is “My Brilliant Career” and we have invited senior women with ICT in Canberra to come and tell their story. Details of the series are as follows:

2009-10 HOT Breakfast Series - Women in Leadership - My Brilliant Career

2009-10 HOT Breakfast Dates

  • Thursday 10 September 2009 – Ann Steward, Australian Government CIO

  • Thursday 15 October 2009 – Helen Austin, General Manager - Chief Solutions Architect SBR, The Treasury

  • Thursday 12 November 2009 – Narelle Dotta, CIO, Department of Veteran Affairs

  • Thursday 3 December 2009 – Kate Muir, Assistant Secretary, Department of Human Services

  • Thursday 11 February 2010 – Jenine Borowik, CIO, Australian Bureau of Statistics

  • Thursday 11 March 2010 – Julie Fursman, National Manager, Centrelink

  • Thursday 8 April 2010 – Nerida Gill, 2009 WICked Woman of the Year, Director of Admin Bandit

Each speaker’s story is very different so it should be an interesting series of talks.

WIC’s exceptionally popular annual HOT Breakfast look at the future of technology on all sorts of aspects of daily life, work and the environment..

For those of you not familiar with the HOT Breakfast Series, the aim is to enable you to:

  • Enjoy a HOT Breakfast, while you
  • Hear a HOT Speaker, talk about an
  • Exciting HOT topic.

WIC meetings are held at , The Hall, University House, ANU

7.15 for 7.30am start finishing at 8.30am.

I encourage you to register for the whole series if you can, but if not, come along to the session that seems most relevant to your career. Registration details are on the WIC events section of the website.

Business Analyst World 2009

Published by
Maria (Murphy) Horrigan
at 28 August, 2009 in User centred, Women in ICT, communication and business analysis. 0 Comments

This year I have been asked to give two presentations at BA World in Sydney (6 Jul), Melbourne (13 Jul), Canberra (21 Sep) and Brisbane (6 Oct). This is a great opportunity to talk about some exciting projects I have been involved in and also meet some of my BA colleagues.

The Sydney and Melbourne sessions have been fantastic and I am looking forward to Canberra in a few weeks.

I have put my presentations up on slideshare:

1. Communication and Connectedness in a Networked World and;

2. Capitalising on Female Strengths as a BA.

Hope to see you in Canberra or Brisbane.

What makes a good business analyst

Published by
Maria (Murphy) Horrigan
at 24 August, 2009 in ABAA, Business analyst, communication and business analysis. 3 Comments

At our recent ABAA meeting here in Canberra, Phil Rich, a Senior BA, discussed what makes a good business analyst (presentation is now on slideshare). Phil’s presentation was particularly interesting given his journalism back ground. His key points on journalism and business anlaysis were that:

  • if you can’t interview you can’t get information
  • if you can’t write you can’t communicate
  • if you can’t write quickly, you are already in trouble……

When interviewing, it is important to know who you are interviewing. This is critical and as I discussed in a previous blog on social networking analysis, often we can become unstuck when we work into an interview without doing some background only to find that the this person was the key influencer and you find that you didn’t make teh most of teh  session as you didn’t know “who was who in the zoo”.I recently spoke at BAWorld in Sydney and Melbourne on Communication and Connectedness in our Networked World. I stressed that it is important to know who you are interviewing, not just by their formal position on the organisational chart, but also by style, personality and group role on the project. This helps you identify who are the influencers, gatekeepers, blockers and supporters.

Ultimately one of the keys to successful requirements gathering and interviewing, is to know your audience.