Showing posts with label decision modeling. Show all posts
Showing posts with label decision modeling. Show all posts

Tuesday, December 2, 2014

Business Analysis Webinars for December 2014

Testing From Start to Finish: How to Ensure that You Build the Best Software
Presented by Rick Clare, PMP, CBAP, CSM, MSPM

Many organizations experience varying results in the delivery quality of developed software, and often it turns out to be the Business Analyst and their testing approach that makes the difference.  Come and learn the basic concepts and best practices behind successful testing and become one of the difference-makers at your company.

Audience: Public
Date/Time: Thursday, December 4, 2014; 12:00 pm – 1:00 pm EST
Host: @PMCentersUSA
Cost: $14.95
Registration:   PM Centers USA Webinar Registration

 
 

IIBA Certification Chat
Presented by Rich Larson, PMP,CBAP,  PMI-PBA

This is a free chat session featuring questions and live answers by an experienced CBAP from Watermark Learning.

Audience: Public
Date/Time: Friday, December 5, 2014; 11:00 am – 11:30 am EST
Host: @WatermarkLearn
Cost: Free
Registration:   Watermark Learning IIBA Certification Chat Registration


 

Expert Q&A – Tying Agile Development to Fast & Stable Deployment
Presented by Byron Brewer and Chris Knotts

It's been exciting over the past year to watch as big products become available that really give development teams the tools they need to perform agile software engineering (we're thinking of Microsoft Team Foundation Server in particular, but the story is bigger than that).

With tools like TFS and a host of others, development teams can track and store all their code, automate their releases, control versioning, automate testing, collaborate across the team and much more. But how much are these tools doing to bridge the infamous gap between development of the product and the production environment into which it is released? For years we have heard about breakdowns between agile developers, release teams, and operations staff who have to maintain system stability and keep customer-facing software stable. We wanted to talk to a real-world expert about how newer tools and techniques are being used to break down walls between agile development and release engineering.

Join us for one hour of open Q & A with our resident Agile Engineering guru and TFS expert, Brian Brewer. We will have an unscripted conversation about how teams are using these tools, and how real-world IT shops can use agile practices and have stable deployments too.

Audience: Public
Date/Time: Friday, December 5, 2014; 12:00 pm – 1:00 pm EST
Host: @ASPE_SDLC
Cost: Free
Registration:   ASPE Event Registration

 
 

From Use Cases to Test Cases
Presented by Marc Balcer

Use cases and their agile brethren, user stories, are popular forms for documenting functional requirements. Nearly every requirements document, functional specification, or design document contains some form of use cases.

Because they describe behavior and distinct outcomes, use cases can be the foundation for test cases. This presentation will show simple and sophisticated techniques for transforming use cases into effective test cases.

Start with techniques for organizing systems into processes and activities. Learn how to define the behavior of these processes and activities in use cases. See how to define distinct scenarios, to partition inputs into different characteristic values, and to relate those scenarios and inputs to expected results. Finally, construct executable test cases from those scenarios, inputs, and results.

You'll see how to easily produce a good set of test cases – exhaustive enough to give your software a good workout, but intelligent enough not to waste time and effort.

Audience: Public
Date/Time: Monday, December 8, 2014; 12:00 pm – 1:00 pm EST
Host: @ASPE_SDLC
Cost: Free
Registration:   ASPE Event Registration

 
 

Less Pain More Gain: Best Practices for More Effective Meetings
Presented by Crystell Anthony, M.Ed., MBTI®

Meetings are an opportunity to bring out the best in people in a collaborative, safe environment. Meetings can also be an incredible waste of time and resources if they’re not managed effectively. Creating an effective meeting involves making a series of conscious choices, and also preparing, conducting, and following through.

This webinar concentrates on how to use meeting effectiveness tools and best practices to promote energizing, focused meetings that produce results; it also provides opportunities to discuss specific meeting challenges and how to successfully facilitate your way to resolution.

What You Will Learn:
·         Foundation tools to set the stage for meeting effectiveness
·         Steps and actions to successfully manage the 3 phases of a meeting: Before, During, and After
·         How to prepare an action agenda
·         Strategies to keep participants engaged and focused
·         Facilitation skills and techniques to guide meeting interactions
·         Guidelines and tips for managing difficult behaviors and situations

Audience: Public
Date/Time: Monday, December 8, 2014; 1:00 pm – 2:00 pm EST
Host: @CorpEdGroup
Cost: Free
Registration:   Corporate Education Group Webinar Registration

 

 
Being a BA - Technical Excellence Webinar: From Use Cases to Requirements – Part 2
Presented by Tom Karasmanis

When eliciting and documenting requirements, should we capture them with use cases or with traditional functional requirements? In Part I we looked at use cases and their limitations and how the various requirements types complement use cases to provide a complete picture of the target solution. We also learned the characteristics of good use cases and functional requirements.

In this, the second part of the series on use cases and requirements, we look at writing good requirements and use cases as well as deriving requirements from use cases. Upon completion of this session you will:

·         Write a good functional requirement
·         Write a good non-functional requirement
·         Write a good use case
·         Derive requirements from use cases

Audience: IIBA Members
Date/Time: Tuesday, December 9, 2014; 7:30 pm – 8:30 pm EST
Host: @IIBA
Cost: Free
Registration:   IIBA Members Webinar Registration

 
 
Enterprise Agile Requirements
Presented by Blueprint Systems

It is possible to scale agile for use on larger, complex IT software projects but many challenges need to be overcome. A key challenge is how to deal with requirements, which affect so many key business functions.

Join us for the live webinar and uncover how Requirements Management fits in the agile process.

What will be covered in the webinar:

·         How traditional requirements approaches still apply and are necessary, along with user stories, in projects using agile on a larger scale.
·         Separate the myths from the realities when it comes to making agile work in the enterprise, so you can be better equipped to succeed in this changing world.
·         A live demonstration of how Blueprint fits in the agile process and integrates with agile ALM systems, such as Rally, Jira, VersionOne, and MS TFS.

Audience: Public
Date/Time: Wednesday, December 10, 2014; 11:00 am – 12:00 pm EST
Host: @BlueprintSys
Cost: Free
Registration:   Blueprint Systems Webinar Registration

 

Four Keys to Simplifying Complex Product Delivery Problems
Presented by Jama Software

Building a new product is like putting a large, complicated puzzle together with a stopwatch counting down to completion. As you assemble the puzzle, you see progress on one section and discover missing pieces in another. There are so many pieces to keep track of and you’re under pressure to move fast.

Four Keys to Simplifying Complex Product Delivery Problems outlines a time-tested collaboration method that serves your teams’ needs and your company’s business goals.

It’s a configurable, accessible solution that removes complexity and greatly increases efficiency, no matter what you’re building or how you are building it.

Audience: Public
Date/Time: Wednesday, December 10, 2014; 1:00 pm – 2:00 pm EST
Host: @JamaSoftware
Cost: Free
Registration:   Jama Software Webinar Registration

 

 
The Business Blueprint to being a Successful PM or BA
Presented by Rick Clare, PMP, CBAP, CSM, MSPM

Think about some of the really successful Business Analysts and Project Managers that you know.  How did they get that way?  What steps did they take to maximize their success and their career trajectories?  This webinar will look at the common elements that show up over and over again in the professional lives of successful BAs and PMs.

Audience: Public
Date/Time: Thursday, December 11, 2014; 12:00 pm – 1:00 pm EST
Host: @PMCentersUSA
Cost: $14.95
Registration:   PM Centers USA Webinar Registration

 

The Year in Decision Modeling
Presented by Barbara von Halle

Join thought leader and Knowledge Partners International (KPI) Managing Partner Barbara von Halle as she reviews 2014's key events in Decision Modeling and analyzes their impacts on the Business Analysis community

Audience: Public
Date/Time: Thursday, December 11, 2014; 12:00 pm – 1:00 pm EST
Host: @KPIUSA
Cost: Free
Registration:   KPI USA Webinar Registration

 

Saturday, August 2, 2014

How Business Analysis Services Add Business Value

Just as the Agile approach to software development contains a few methodologies, Business Analysis contains a few business services to drive better business outcomes. Notice, I did not use the term “business solutions” as Business Analysis is more than just business solutions, it contains a few services outside of information technology projects that deliver business solutions. Business Analysis is about defining and delivering the outcomes that are best for the organization; strategically, tactically and operationally.


It never ceases to amaze me how many people don’t feel that they are a Business Analyst because their job title is not Business Analyst, or some derivative thereof. There are many job titles that perform business analysis activities, and this is increased by those companies that get creative with their job titles. There are job titles in and outside of IT project work that perform business analysis activities. Remember, whether you are a business analyst is determined by the tasks you perform for the company, not by your job title.

Read more about the many business services under the umbrella of business analysis…Read the whole article

Monday, June 16, 2014

Business Analysis Webinars for June 2014 - Part 2

IIBA Webinar: Agile Test-Driven Requirements Management Using BDD-Style Executable Specifications
Presented by Ted Kerr, CBAP VP Marketing IIBA Ottawa-Outaouais Chapter

For several years now, there has been a significant movement toward using a Test-Driven Development (TDD) approach within the Agile software developer community. Test-Driven Requirements Management helps BAs to ensure: all requirements are aligned to a business need; application behaviour is obvious and testable; and it is safe to change requirements.  Product owners, BAs, testers and developers use tests as the central element for requirements collaboration: this is the premise of using a Test-Driven (or Test-First) approach. Quality is baked into the solution from the very beginning of the project and a full set of executable specifications can be included inside the working software. Testing is not left to a bunch of isolated individuals off on an island somewhere, far removed from evolving requirements and evolving code.
 
Learning Objectives:

1.   How to use Given-When-Then to capture behaviour and document requirements.  

2.   How automated scenario tests can become executable specifications.  

3.   The effectiveness of writing requirements, tests and code for a given feature in parallel. 

Audience: IIBA Members

Date/Time: Tuesday, June 17, 2014; 11:00 am – 12:00 pm EDT

Host: @IIBA

Cost: Free


 
 

Q and A – How Can Business Analysts & Project Managers Do Better With Data?
Presented by Chris Knotts and Darrel Raynor

The information and decision-making duties of project professionals and business analysts get more complex every day. Data resources – and concerns – have become ubiquitous, and it’s critical to stay on top of them. While BAs and PMs don’t need to suddenly transform into data scientists, they must understand the data resources currently available, what they offer, and how they’re being used. Most importantly, every BA and PM should understand how data can be leveraged to deliver business value and project solutions in their own work.

This one-hour open Q&A session gives you a chance to get answers to common real-world data challenges. Join us as we talk with top-tier data expert Darrel Raynor. Darrel is a veteran project consultant and turnaround expert. He owns and runs www.dataanalysis.com and has provided consulting services to many dozens of Fortune and enterprise customers.

Audience: Public

Date/Time: Tuesday, June 17, 2014; 12:00 – 1:00 pm EDT

Host: @ASPE-SDLC

Cost: Free


 

 
How to Prepare a Complete & Concise WBS
Presented by Joe Lukas, PMP, PE, CSM, CCP

This webinar will discuss the importance of having a complete Work Breakdown Structure (WBS), including defining WBS quality and tracing WBS elements back to project requirements. Decomposition of Work Packages into activities will also be covered, including showing activities in MS Project and the pros and cons of linking activities in the project schedule.

Audience: Public

Date/Time: Tuesday, June 17, 2014; 12:00 pm – 1:00 pm EDT

Host: @PMCentersUSA

Cost: $14.95                                                        June Webinar Special: 4 Webinars for $39.95


 


‘Early Warning’ for IT Software Projects
Presented by Tony Higgins, Barbara Davis and Mark Mullaly

At the beginning of your IT projects can you tell which are heading into danger?  Statistically one in six IT projects are “Black Swans”, exceeding their original budgets by 200% on average.  What if you could tell, during the early formative stages of a project, whether it was heading in the right direction?  How much money, time, and frustration would that save you and your organization?

Requirements are the “Blueprints” for a software project.  When they’re imprecise, incorrect, or incomplete it can – and regularly do – spell disaster.  To see into the requirements process and detect if it is “on track” lets you steer the project onto the right course.  Join Barbara Davis as she presents how a handful of basic requirements measures and a few KPI’s provide visibility that can transform your projects.  Tony Higgins from Blueprint will then demonstrate how these are automatically generated using technology available today, across your entire portfolio of projects.

Audience: Public

Date/Time: Tuesday, June 17, 2014; 12:00 pm – 1:00 pm EDT

Host: @BlueprintSys

Cost: Free


 


The Executive's Guide to Information Management Across the Extended Enterprise
Presented by Tyler Shields, Forrester and John Giudice, Intralinks

IT Consumerization, particularly the “bring your own device” phenomenon is continuing to reshape the way IT is purchased, managed, delivered, and secured. While BYOD has the potential to increase worker productivity, it also poses significant challenges. How do you balance the needs for end-user flexibility without compromising organizational data? Join our guest speaker, Forrester Research Sr. Analyst, Tyler Shields, a leading expert on mobile and application security topics and Intralinks Director of Product Management, John Giudice as they address the IT realities of today. Attend this session to learn how you can easily share information across the extended enterprise while maintaining security and control.

Audience: Public

Date/Time: Tuesday, June 17, 2014; 1:00 – 2:00 pm EDT

Host: Ziff Davis, Inc. @ZDB2B

Cost: Free


 

IIBA Chapter Leadership Webinar: 2014 Chapter Awards Program Kick Off
Presented by Jared Gorai, Deputy VP of Chapters, IIBA

Please join Jared Gorai, our new Deputy VP of Chapters to officially launching the Chapter Awards Program. Learn the merits of participating and what the program means to those chapters that have participated in the past.

Audience: IIBA Chapter Leaders

Date/Time: Wednesday, June 18, 2014; 1:00 – 2:00 pm EDT

Host: @IIBA

Cost: Free


 
 

Blueprint 5.4 Live Product Demonstration
Presented by Blueprint Software

Join us on for a live, interactive demonstration of Blueprint, a visually driven requirements platform, that empowers companies to get complex IT project requirements right from the start. Register now and see why Blueprint is a better, visual way to drive the success of mission critical IT projects.

Audience: Public

Date/Time: Wednesday, June 18, 2014; 7:00 – 8:00 am EDT
Date/Time: Wednesday, June 18, 2014; 12:00 – 1:00 pm EDT
Date/Time: Wednesday, June 18, 2014; 3:00 – 4:00 pm EDT

Host: @BlueprintSys

Cost: Free


 
 

Owning the Collaboration Circle on All of Your Future Projects
Presented by Jama Software

As a Business Analyst or Project Manager, you are on the front lines of bringing products to market that build value for your business. If you’re like most BAs, however, you spend too much time reporting status, explaining context and tracking decisions. In this session, learn tips and tools to help you keep your teams aligned, provide better visibility and maintain a continuous feedback loop so you can spend less time reporting and more time innovating.

Audience: Public

Date/Time: Wednesday, June 18, 2014; 1:00 – 2:00 pm EDT

Host: @JamaSoftware

Cost: Free


 

IIBA Webinar: How to Introduce The Decision Model to your Organization Successfully
Presented by Barbara Von Halle, Managing Partner, Knowledge Partners International, LLC

The practice of Decision Modeling and Management is becoming widely accepted as the best way for organizations to transform business logic and business rules, often buried in process models or code, into a highly visible, changeable, reusable asset.  Doing so enables Business and IT to collaborate effectively and efficiently while executing organizational strategy.  Productivity and agility improvements over other approaches have proven to be significant, sometimes game-changing.
 
Published in 2009, The Decision Model provides organizations with a uniquely rigorous, technology independent framework for business decision modeling.  The Decision Model finds its way into organizations in many different ways: through a Center of Excellence, a pending crisis or opportunity, an inspired individual, or a small investigative group.
 
Regardless, all paths to organizational decision modeling encounter a common question: How do you introduce The Decision Model into an organization?  More specifically, how do you gain management attention for delivering decision models as a standard practice? This webinar addresses that question.
This webinar will

·         Describe goals for a presentation for introducing The Decision Model to a management audience.  

·         Provide insight on creating a visual story targeted at your organization’s needs.  

·         Highlight the key points you should include in your presentation 

Audience: IIBA members

Date/Time: Thursday, June 19, 2014; 11:00 am – 12:00 pm EDT

Host: @IIBA

Cost: Free


 
 

Business Book Reports: Monday Morning Leadership by David Cottrell
Presented by Chris Knotts

Each month we pick a valuable, substantive business book we think will benefit the professionals we serve. Some are new; some are classics. Either way, we do the reading, then use one of our free web seminars to deliver a one-hour "book report."

This month’s book pick is “Monday Morning Leadership “ by David Cottrell

Little known yet highly impactful, this little gem of a book is required reading for every member of the management team here at ASPE. Cottrell outlines 8 of the most fundamental and useful principles any business professional should internalize for success in business, work, or any leadership endeavor. Through a series of eight mentoring sessions, the author uses the experiences of “Jeff,” a fictional manager at a Fortune 500 company, to outline the framework of successful leadership:

·         Drivers and passengers

·         The “main thing”

Audience: Public

Date/Time: Thursday, June 19, 2014; 12:00 – 1:00 pm EDT

Host: @ASPE-SDLC

Cost: Free


 
 

Real-Time Actionable Insights for Better Business Decisions

Presented by James Cancilla, IBM and Kimberly Madia, IBM

Real-time analytics enable truly data driven decisions where and when you need them most. Streaming applications must support business decisions in real time. IBM Operational Decision Manager provides a rich environment for authoring and managing business rules and InfoSphere Streams provides analytic toolkits to support the execution of business rules created using Operational Decision Manager.

Audience: Public

Date/Time: Thursday, June 19, 2014; 1:00 – 2:00 pm EDT

Host: @ZiffDavis  @IBM

Cost: Free


 


 

Introducing the New PMI-PBA (Professional in Business Analysis) Certification
Presented by David Mantica

PMI (Project Management Institute) continues to meet the needs of Project and SDLC (Software / System Development Life Cycle) professionals by offering another specialty certification.

The industry knows how critical a working relationship between the BA and PM is for project success. Also it is well understood that smaller companies can only afford to have Project Managers yet still need strong business analysis work done. PMI as answered these needs by offering this new certification.

Pilot applications are being accepted through May 12, 2014.

This web seminar will go over in depth the PMI-PBA handbook (costs and application requirements), the examination content outline and the reading/outside knowledge requirements. We will save you the time and energy of reading through the 70+ pages of documentation.

ASPE-SDLC promises to be a the fore-front of this critical designation and this is our first step in providing you the information, knowledge, and skills needed to achieve the designation

Audience: Public

Date/Time: Tuesday, June 24, 2014; 12:00 – 1:00 pm EDT

Host: @ASPE-SDLC

Cost: Free


 

 

 

IIBA Annual General Meeting and Board of Directors Election 2014
Presented by Stephen Ashworth, President and Chief Executive Officer of IIBA and Indy Mitra, Chair of the IIBA Board of Directors

On Tuesday, June 24, 2014, International Institute of Business Analysis (IIBA) will be holding the 11th Annual General Meeting (AGM) and Board of Directors Election. For more information on the Board of Directors Election please visit here.

Audience: Public

Date/Time: Tuesday, June 24, 2014; 7:00 – 8:30 pm EDT

Host: @IIBA

Cost: Free


 
 

Stand Up and Deliver Great Product with Collaborative Requirements
Presented by Regg Struyk, Product Manager, and Jiri Walek, Vice President, Product Management, Polarion Software

Process and organizational changes alone are no longer sufficient to meet the mandate of improved quality, governance and auditability in today’s complex, high-pressure development environments.

We will discuss the value of real-time collaboration, where everything is connected through bi-directional traceability, and all collaborators have access to the information and functionality they need to succeed. We’ll demonstrate why engaging stakeholders early and in context provides a clear path forward and helps uncover issues before defects occur. And we will share how easy access to previous work products combined with fully linked variant and change management can bring your team collaboration to the next level.

Topics covered in the presentation include:
   * Integrate Workflow into your existing process
   * Power of Granular Work Items
   * Complete Traceability and Versioning
   * Real-Time Collaboration using Social Media

Audience: Public

Date/Time: Thursday, June 26, 2014; 1:00 – 2:00 pm EDT

Host: @ModernAnalyst

Cost: Free


 



Bringing your Big Data Strategy to Fruition
Presented by Ziff Davis Events

IT professionals and business leaders alike know that the insights gleaned from big data holds the key to growth and creating competitive advantages. Giving lines of business and end users access to powerful capabilities that let them harness their data for business value can mean the difference between closing a deal and losing a deal to competitors or detecting a data breach as it happens instead of ending up in the headlines. However, knowing the potential of big data analytics and actually executing on a holistic big data strategy are two very different things.

Ziff Davis recently conducted a User Insight Survey, investigating the capabilities of businesses to leverage their growing data resources. While it was clear that respondents understood the areas in which analytics could offer substantial benefit and insight, it was also apparent that many organizations were still developing a big data strategy but weren’t yet prepared to bring it to fruition.

Join Ziff Davis and IBM for a round table webcast where analysts and experts that understand what’s required for success with big data & analytics will discuss:

  • How to operationalize big data across lines of business
  • Necessary infrastructure to support big data analytics now and in the future
  • Capabilities and delivery options and considerations

Don’t miss “Bringing Your Big Data Strategy to Fruition,” where our panel of experts will dive into the elements necessary to turn a big data strategy into big data insights.

Audience: Public

Date/Time: Thursday, June 26, 2014; 1:00 – 2:00 pm EDT

Host: @ZiffDavis  @IBM

Cost: Free

 

It's All About the Visuals: Effective Modeling Techniques for Business Analysts
Presented by Terrell Smith, MPA, PMP, CBAP, Corporate Education Group

Poor requirements lead to failed projects. There is solid evidence that visualization of requirements result in higher quality results. Engaging stakeholders by the use of a variety of modeling techniques results in much higher quality requirements and greatly improved project results.

In this webinar, you will gain insight into a wide array of modeling tools that assist in more effectively documenting customer requirements. You will gain an understanding of how these tools can effectively improve the communication with your clients. Examples of modeling tools will be overviewed, including: context diagrams, use cases, activity diagrams, screen flows and prototypes. This allows a business analyst to connect the dots when documenting requirements.

Learning objectives include:

·         Understand the value of creating a context diagram at the beginning of the project

·         Learn how to derive use cases from the context diagram to document functional requirements

·         Increase the effectiveness of process documentation by developing activity diagrams

·         Learn how to create screen flows and use prototyping for improved usability

·         Understand how these modeling techniques come together to provide a true picture of requirements

Audience: Public

Date/Time: Friday, June 27, 2014; 1:00 – 2:00 pm EDT

Host: @ModernAnalyst

Cost: Free