BA Rocks!

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.