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Product People

March 15, 2017 by Kent McDonald

A recent series of blog posts on KBP.media described different product ownership models. It occurred to me that I made a big assumption throughout the entire series – that everyone reading it was familiar with the roles that I mentioned. I also realized that I left out a role quite prevalent in digital product development …

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Role of a Business Analyst in Agile

May 27, 2016 by Kent McDonald

“What is the Role of a Business Analyst in Agile?”I see this question asked quite a bit. I’d like to suggest that rewording the question may be a bit more instructive. Instead of wondering what is the role of a business analyst in agile, you may want to ask the question “how can people who …

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What is Product Ownership?

July 22, 2015 by Kent McDonald

Another Way to Say “Building The Right Thing” Successful software product development and IT Projects face a constant, and healthy tension – you want to build the right thing, you want to build the thing right, and you want to build the thing fast so you can get more feedback. (Thanks to Henrik Kniberg’s excellent …

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Beyond Requirements on Mastering Business Analysis Podcast

April 14, 2015 by Kent McDonald

About a month ago I was honored to talk with Dave Saboe on his Mastering Business Analysis Podcast. We talked about my forthcoming (for a while now) book Beyond Requirements: Analysis with an Agile Mindset and other things analysis and agile. Thanks to Dave for having me on his podcast. Here are a variety of …

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Feature Injection Clarified (Hopefully)

December 27, 2014 by Kent McDonald

Feature Injection is a very helpful process framework created by Chris Matts that is not explicitly used as much as it probably should. I suspect the main reason it is not adopted more is because people don’t really understand what it’s all about. There are several articles and blog posts that explain feature injection, but …

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Crowdsourcing 2015 Business Analysis Predictions

December 23, 2014 by Kent McDonald

At the start of 2014, I joined a common trend and made a series of predictions about the upcoming year (2014) in the business analysis world. Unlike most others, I reflected back on those predictions to see how I did. The verdict? Meh. Even with my less than inspiring predictive abilities, I’ve been asked to …

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10 Ways to Determine the Purpose of a Project

November 17, 2014 by Kent McDonald

The Five Whys Technique (also known as “Popping the Why Stack”) has long been suggested as a way to get to the ultimate reason for a project. But when you ask why repeatedly, you run the risk of looking quite pedantic and annoying stakeholders. With that in mind, I thought I’d provide a list of …

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Do We Need (Another) Business Analysis Certification?

January 17, 2014 by Kent McDonald

In a recent blog post I predicated that within the year PMI would come out with a Requirements Management Certification. In the interest of full disclosure and learning from our mistakes, I’m writing here to acknowledge I was wrong (how many other people making predictions do you see do that?) Well, I was sort of …

Read moreDo We Need (Another) Business Analysis Certification?

BDD and the Business Analyst

November 22, 2013 by Kent McDonald

This morning (November 22, 2013) I had the opportunity to be involved in a very unique discussion. SkillsMatter hosted the Agile Testing & BDD Exchange in London. The format of this particular conference was to have a series of sessions that featured two or more presenters teaming up to cover a particular topic. Chris Matts …

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Analysis and Product Management In Agile

October 27, 2013 by Kent McDonald

I am proud to be a part of a new program in the Agile Alliance – Analysis and Product Management in Agile that was formed with the purpose of providing a way for practitioners in the business analysis and product management communities to share stories, questions, and puzzles about using those skills in an agile …

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Is Business Analyst a stepping stone for Project Manager?

October 15, 2013 by Kent McDonald

I keep a casual eye on a variety of LinkedIn Discussion groups. A couple of years ago, I chimed in on a discussion on the Business Analyst Times Linked In Group posing the question “Why do very good Business Analysts NOT want to become Project Managers ? Let’s discuss the reasons for this.“ My first …

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What BA’s Can Learn from Small Business Pricing

July 19, 2013 by Kent McDonald

I like to think of myself as an entrepreneur. My business mostly consists of some form of consulting, and when I consult it usually has something to do with business analysis. That combination of perspectives certainly colors my thinking and causes me to see connections between those different domains. For example, I have often thought …

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Better, Cheaper, Faster, sort of…

May 6, 2013 by Kent McDonald

A recent conversation with a friend got me thinking of the reason why many organizations are choosing to adopt agile, and how they may be setting themselves up disappointment. When organizations approach me for help adopting agile software development, one of the first things I do is ask “Why?” The usual answer is that they …

Read moreBetter, Cheaper, Faster, sort of…

Thoughts on Building Business Capability

November 8, 2012 by Kent McDonald

I’m in the midst of a two week stretch of conferencing. The week of October 29 – November 2nd I was at the Building Business Capability Conference in Fort Lauderdale. The conference markets itself as 5 different conferences for the price of 1 and even goes to the trouble of creating the concept of five …

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The Roundabout BA

July 19, 2012 by Kent McDonald

These days I deliver more training classes than I attend. That’s not because I think I can’t learn anything new – I’m probably at a higher state of enlightened ignorance than I have ever been – It’s because that’s a big part of how I make a living. Thankfully, I am able to learn things …

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The Primes – Helping Problem Solvers Solve Problems

June 27, 2012 by Kent McDonald

Analysts are inherently problem solvers. A couple of days ago, I came across a resource that appears, at first blush at least, to be indispensable for analysts when solving problems related to organizations and groups of people. Chris McGoff identified a set of patterns about group behavior that help to address team or organizational problems. …

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What Size is Your Hat – Wearing the Organizational Big Hat

June 26, 2012 by Kent McDonald

I ran across a blog post today entitled Be a meeting whisperer: Conflict Management 101 that I found to be particularly relevant for analysts. It’s about using one of many ideas called PRIMEs to help manage change. While I find the PRIMES concept interesting and will dig more into them later, I wanted to share …

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Ten Things Business Analysts Should Pay Attention To

February 26, 2012 by Kent McDonald

The end of one year and the beginning of the next brought with it a slew of posts covering the top trends for just about every field. I’ve run across three so far, all of them providing a different perspective, some I agree with, some I don’t. Regardless of my thoughts, they deserve reading: Glenn …

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Business Value Model

February 18, 2012 by Kent McDonald

Business value is a conversation, not a number. What It Is The business value model is a technique for making critical organizational decisions in an informed and timely manner. Teams using this tool identify the most critical decisions they face, determine when they need to make those decisions, and figure out which information they need …

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A Valentines Day Tale of Woe and Systems Issues

February 18, 2012 by Kent McDonald

One of my guiding principles is Reflect and Adapt, which is another way of saying learn from your experiences. Those experiences can be good or bad, and they could be based on things you did or things that you weren’t even involved in. As a result of the experience I relate below, I learned a …

Read moreA Valentines Day Tale of Woe and Systems Issues
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