Outlook 2010 – More things to like.. Connecting socially?

In the same way legal technology providers have been making use of Outlook as the hub of a lawyers daily lives now Microsoft are at it. It’s not news but now that I have been playing with the social connector for a while I wanted to share some of my thoughts.

Right to the main question for a law firm. Do I think it should be turned on by default?

IT Marketing and Communications officer – The internal salesman?

I was reading a post by Simon May (@simonster) called the new heroes of the next gen IT dept.. and I wondered who currently fulfilled the IT Marketing and communications role in your IT dept? I know the post covers three roles but I’m only focusing on the last one.

Well does it sound familiar? Do you have a dedicated role to fulfill this responsibility? I’m guessing the simple answer is no. I’m sure there are people in various teams who fulfil the parts of the role but there is no single point of responsibility.

Requirements elicitation and validation – It’s all about a good story

During any project, the process whereby the business analyst validates the requirements gathered from the project stakeholders is of utmost importance. Getting the collection signed off and frozen is key, but we all know it’s a challenge, and it’s not going to happen at the first attempt.

When I think about how to do this, I always think about the end game. The aim of validating these requirements should create the foundations of a story that ultimately leaves your audience happy.

Underdocumented elements of business analysis…

A LinkedIn update from Giles the other day read “Working on more reliable mechanisms for the transfer of the underdocumented elements of business analysis. Osmosis doesn’t quite cut it.” I’m not sure what exactly he meant (is underdocumented a word) but I joked  that perhaps he should use the ‘back of a fag packet’ approach. It got me thinking about requirements and the how best to share them and ultimately get them signed off.

What is a good requirement?

A business analysts resource list

I’ve been meaning to do this for a few months and finally pulled together a list of business analyst resources that I use fairly regularly.

Please add more resources and links via a comment.

Please look to the right of your screen > yes beyond the screen shot.

Thanks again.