Classic Business Analysis Articles

I was sorting through some of my bookmarks and articles I’ve accumulated over time via the Web, and found that there are a few articles and reference matieral that I  seem to refer back to time and again. I’ve provided links below to several articles/presentations I consider to be “classics” in the field of business analysis and requirements engineering that I think any analyst would benefit from reading.

Some are relatively new, and some have been around for quite a while but are still every bit as valid as the day they were published.

I hope you’ll get as much use and enjoyment from these resources as I have.

Elicitation

1. Building a Requirements Foundation through Customer Interviews – Esther Derby

2. Discovering Requirements by Trade-offs – Ian Alexander

3. The Tactic: Always. Never. Everyone.

Analysis

1. The Fuzzy Line Between Requirements and Design – Karl Wiegers

2. Structured Analysis Wiki – Ed Yourdon

3. 10 Requirements Traps to Avoid – Karl Wiegers

Specification

1. Writing Good Requirements – Ivy Hooks

2. Use Cases: Best Practices – Ellen Gottesdiener

3. Why I still use Use Cases – Alistair Cockburn

4. Defining Business Rules: What are they Really? – The Business Rules Group

5. Business Rules vs. Business Requirements – Gladys Lam

6. The Business Rules Manifesto – The Business Rules Group

7. Painless Functional Specifications (Part 1 of 4) – Joel Spolsky

8. What’s in a Story? – Dan North

9. User Stories Quick Reference Guide – Virtual Genius

10. Requirements 101: User Stories vs. Use Cases – Stellman & Greene

11. Write, Think, Learn – Michael A. Covington

Validation

1. Checklist for Fuzzy Requirements

2. The Seven Deadly Sins of Software Reviews – Karl Wiegers

Communication/Collaboration

1. Customer Rights and Responsibilities – Karl Wiegers

2. Top 10 Team Practices – Mike Griffiths

3. 8 Steps for Leading Change – J.P. Kotter

Methodology

1. The Agile Business Analyst – Cottmeyer and Henson

2. Up-front Requirements – James Shore

3. The Pipelining Anti-Pattern – Mike Griffiths

4. No Silver Bullet – Fred Brooks

5. Lean Primer – Craig Larman and Bas Vodde

6. Software Development as a Cooperative Game – Alistair Cockburn

7. Agile Analysis – Scott Ambler

8. The Agile Manifesto and the Twelve Principles of Agile Software

9. Scrum in five minutes – Softhouse

Architecture

1. Straight from the Shoulder – John Zachman

If you have any “classics” that you’d like to share, please comment so I can add to my collection and readers can add to theirs, too.

Keep an eye on this post – I’ll add more “classics” as I come across them.

#Elicitation #design #analysis #Requirements #modeling