Welcome to our Seilevel Photo Op.
I recently re-watched The Martian, a great movie I recommend to anyone. One lesson I learned from the movie that is also relevant to my work is to solve one problem at a time. For those of you who have not seen the movie (no plot disclosures – I promise!) …
What? In 1999, Buckingham and Coffman authored First, Break All the Rules. They used Gallop data from manager interviews to identify how good managers drive employee satisfaction. Internally at Seilevel, we use the methodology described in the book for gauging employee satisfaction. People who join us are sometimes surprised by our …
Recently, I was able to speak at the Project Management Institute (PMI)® Global Conference 2017 in Chicago, Illinois. During the conference I participated in an interview for a PM Podcast; it was recently published. Here is the introduction to the podcast, with a link to the podcast at the end. I …
Do we have good requirements? I hear that question asked all the time as I work with our various customers. Many organizations are looking to measure whether or not they have good requirements. Researchers are working on new methods to measure the quality of requirements. Unfortunately, both groups are trying …
Conventional wisdom generally holds that the ratio of developers to analysts in an Agile framework is about 4:1 or 3:1. In essence, it says that 1 analyst can support the work of 3 or 4 full time developers working on a project. For Waterfall projects, this ratio is higher and …
We recently received an “Ask Joy” question around what models can be helpful for a system replacement project. Below is our answer, slightly modified to give proper context for all. System replacement projects can be a challenge, since many times the systems being replaced are old and obsolete from a …
I recently had a conversation with a fellow business analyst, Susan, regarding process flows. At Seilevel, we like to keep process flows focused on what people are attempting to accomplish. In my experience, I find that most people (there are always exceptions), know that when they press a button that …
When I was a product manager for a commercial software company, one of the things that we regularly created was product roadmaps. These were tied to the vision for the product, and how we thought we could reach that vision. All requests to change our product were evaluated against our …
Reading the NYT review of the new Apple Watch, I’m reminded of what it was like to first use an iPhone. Having cracked all the shrink-wrap and pulled apart each of the black and white paper boxes that include instructions no human would ever read, and there it was, a …
I recently participated in a Panel Discussion on the state of the Business Analyst Profession held by IIBA of Austin. One of the questions we tackled was the following: “What are the key traits that a Business Analyst must possess?” There are many qualifications and abilities that a good analyst …
