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Business Analyst

Tips for Creating and Maintaining a Collaborative Team Environment » Business Analysis Experts

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Social Skills Are Powerful Teambuilding Assets

In a collaborative team environment, individual members are more efficient at their jobs because they understand the other’s strengths and weaknesses better. In turn, this help build trust within the group, which adds to job satisfaction.

Influence and Persuasion Are Different People Skills

You build a collaborative team environment through persuasion, which includes the use of language, body language and visual cues. Persuasion includes cognitive biases such as social proof, reciprocity, and authority bias.

You can also build it through influence. Influence is more durable than persuasion, but it also takes a lot more up-front effort. To influence a decision, you first have to gain the trust of the deciding party. If you ever violate that trust, you your ability to influence them evaporates.

This video presents a layman’s perspective on the conscious and nonconscious minds interacting to turn teambuilding to an artform.

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Business Analyst

A Formula for Great Gherkin Scenarios (with Given-When-Then Examples) » Business Analysis Experts

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Given-When-Then Examples for Non-functional Requirements (NFRs)

Most of your Scenarios will test the functionality of the product or feature, but non-functional testing is as important as functional testing. If you want to ensure customer satisfaction do not neglect writing Scenarios that test Non-Functional Requirements (NFR) of the product as well.

As a refresher, NFRs express conditions such as how many, how often, how fast, how friendly, etc. Any of the four common types (Constraints, Performance, User Experience, or Volatility) should be tested. Testing Non-Functional Requirements can be extremely time- and resource-intensive. For that reason, many organizations have specialists whose primary job is performance testing, security testing, usability testing, etc.

However, if an NFR is important to the success of a product or feature, you should define User Acceptance Criteria or UAT Test Cases that will instill the confidence that the Non-functional Requirement has been met.

Here is an example

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Business Analyst

8 Techniques for Splitting User Stories » Business Analysis Experts

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Splitting User Stories by Workflow Steps or Events

The idea of splitting a User Story or Epic by workflow steps is simple:

  1. Find the fewest number of workflow steps needed to deliver business value to the end-user
  2. Create a Split Story for those steps
  3. Move the remaining steps of the workflow to future releases.

However, if you have ever tried to split a Feature, Story, or Epic by workflow steps, you know how tricky it can be.

For simple workflows, we recommend a technique called “Sequence of Events.” It works like this: You ask your end-users to walk through the events that happen (workflow steps) in their head and write them down on a piece of paper. Tell them not to worry about whether the steps are sequential or not, you just want to hear them all.

For example, for an event planning product, we got this Epic that

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Business Analyst

Business, Stakeholder, and Solution Requirements vs User Stories » Business Analysis Experts

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Business Requirements Are the Outcome of Strategic Business Analysis

Historically (e.g., in a Waterfall approach) Strategic Business Analysis was the preliminary work preceding a project or initiative.

The purpose of Strategic Business Analysis was to clearly define the scope and goal of proposed IT projects. If the initial feasibility analysis determined that the project was unlikely to deliver a positive outcome for the organizations, it was canceled. If the outcome was to approve the project, Strategic Business Analysis delivered high-level business requirements.

As per the IIBA® definition, “Business Requirements” define an outcome that would benefit the organization as a whole or a specific subset.

Whether you call it “Strategic Business Analysis” or not and whether you create “Business Requirements” or not, someone must decide whether to solve a particular problem or take advantage of an opportunity.

Decision makers at this level of detail are typically senior executives or owners

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Business Analyst

Functional vs Non-Functional Requirements – How to Write FRs & NFRs » Business Analysis Experts

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Types of Non-Functional Requirements

External Constraints
Digital solutions do not exist in a vacuum. There are many external factors that can influence or constrain your product. I call these external constraints. Here are some general groupings to think about.

  • Boundaries Enforced by Nature
  • Laws and Regulatory Requirements
  • Organizational Policies and Rules
  • IT Security: Access and Data Security
  • Geographic location of Functions and Data

Performance Requirements
In the Performance category, there are limits to the speed and efficiency of the application and the overall business solution. The main issue with performance is not the difficulty of achieving it, but the cost. Modern applications can achieve amazing levels of performance if they are necessary –  and the business is willing to pay for it.

  • Frequency: how often is a feature used?
  • Urgency: response time vs. update time.
  • Data volume of information
  • Precision and timeliness of information

User Experience Requirements
User experience

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Business Analyst

Writing Acceptance Criteria Like a Pro » Business Analysis Experts

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Writing Acceptance Criteria in the Form of Business Rules

Business rules are a form of business requirements that, once created, do not require programmer involvement to be changed. They make excellent Acceptance Criteria.

For example, if a marketing department wants to give a 10% discount to students living in Florida during the winter season, it needs to specify this option in Business Rules. Marketing wants to be able to make these changes on the fly to adapt to current market changes and stay competitive. Business Rules give them that ability.

In their simplest definition, Business Rules are policies that define, trigger, or restrict business activities. They are an integral part of User Stories, and describe the processes, definitions, and constraints that apply to the business.

Business Rules are not just about technology – they relate to people, processes, business behaviors, and systems. They help the organization achieve its goals.

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