“Many have struggled with the overlap between the PM and BA roles on a project. This is a book every BA and PM should read with a highlighter in hand.” —Kevin Aguanno, PMP, PMI-ACP, CSM, FPMAC,Agile Project Management Pioneer and President, Genxus The role of the business analyst (BA) has seen rapid growth over the past decade, and for good reason. Business analysis is a hybrid function that evolved from the systems analysis role over several decades into one where the individuals performing it have both a good understanding of the business and of the IT and software used to support the business. One set of activities that is the BA’s specialty is the eliciting and management of accurate product requirements. Recent research has shown that when this BA role is properly executed in collaboration or partnership with the project or program manager (PM), higher quality product and project requirements are produced and managed resulting in higher success rates, with solutions that deliver business value and products and services that better satisfy stakeholder and customer needs. While leading experts all agree that collaboration between the PM and BA roles is key, the matter of how remains a subject of debate. This innovative guide shows how to address the challenges associated with the definitions of these roles and the gaps, intersections, overlaps, and touch points between the PM and BA to reduce waste, improve efficiency and effectiveness, and increase benefits to the organization. It demonstrates how this can be achieved without adding resources, or going through duplication of effort, waste, and misunderstandings that lead to failure. This essential reference evaluates the PM and BA roles current contrasting perceptions, defines the roles they should fulfill, and describes how to ensure the PM/BA partnership is maintained from the business case, through to project initiation, execution, implementation and post-project evaluation. The authors provide readers with concepts and approaches for developing a partnership between the PM and BA roles, within their own context and specific challenges, in a manner which has proven to result in a synergistic, functionally harmonious relationship that maximizes the business value these roles produce for the organization. Key FeaturesApplies concepts that are aligned with the PMI-PBASM, CBAP®/ CCBA® and PMP® certificates, the Business Analysis for Practitioners – A Practice Guide, the PMBOK® Guide, the BABOK®, and PRINCE2Divides the PM and BA roles in aligning strategy to organizational goals and estimating; addressing risks, constraints, assumptions, dependencies, and communication; and managing relationships, stakeholder expectations, organizational priorities, resources, scope, requirements, and documentation.Provides readers a practical approach to addressing the intersections between the PM and BA roles and the ability to maximize each role’s contribution, while sorting out the overlapping parts and articulating the handover pointsDiscusses activities that need to be integrated, setting up boundaries, and lists activities that must be performed in the gaps between the PM and BA roles, in logical order, to ensure project and organizational benefits are maximizedGives an enhanced meaning to integration management within the context of role definitionIllustrates the flow of work and responsibilities between the PM and the BA through both the project life cycle and the product life cycleRationalizes the undertaking of an increased load of work early in the project with a focus on initiation and early planning activities—to gain more control over the project outcome and successIntroduces collaboration techniques to improve resource allocation in the project and throughout the organization, and to streamline the transition between product requirements and project scopeWAV offers downloadable checklists for determining Agile suitability, PM and BA role collaboration areas, a variety of requirements elicitation and management checklists, and other tools—available from the Web Added Value™ Download Resource Center at www.jrosspub.com

A breakthrough game plan illustrating the need for better collaboration between Project Managers and Business Analysts In The Business Analyst/Project Manager, author Robert Wysocki draws on his forty-five years of professional experience as a PM/BA to shed light on the similarities and differences of the roles and responsibilities of these two positions, the need for greater collaboration, and how to staff a project with one or both of these professionals. Examines the boundaries and interactions between the BA and the PM Looks at how to identify the skill sets needed to make the project a success The typical relationship of the BA and PM across the project management life cycle Making the best configuration of leadership assignments based on project characteristics Where the responsibilities of the BA leave off and the PM's begins and where the two have collaborative responsibilities How to use a PM/BA to enhance project performance How to foster a "dual career path" for PM/BAs development The in-depth discussion of the synergies between the two roles and the advantages of a combined PM/BA makes The Business Analyst/Project Manager a valuable contribution in your ability to be successful on the complex projects of the 21st century.

FINALIST: Business Book Awards 2020 - Specialist Book Category FINALIST: PMI UK National Project Awards 2019 - Project Management Literature Category The business analyst role can cover a wide range of responsibilities, including the elicitation and documenting of business requirements, upfront strategic work, design and implementation phases. Typical difficulties faced by analysts include stakeholders who disagree or don't know their requirements, handling estimates and project deadlines that conflict, and what to do if all the requirements are top priority. The Business Analysis Handbook offers practical solutions to these and other common problems which arise when uncovering requirements or conducting business analysis. Getting requirements right is difficult; this book offers guidance on delivering the right project results, avoiding extra cost and work, and increasing the benefits to the organization. The Business Analysis Handbook provides an understanding of the analyst role and the soft skills required, and outlines industry standard tools and techniques with guidelines on their use to suit the most appropriate situations. Covering numerous techniques such as Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN), use cases and user stories, this essential guide also includes standard templates to save time and ensure nothing important is missed.

Discover solutions to common obstacles faced by project managers. Written as a business novel, the book is highly interactive, allowing readers to participate and consider options at each stage of a project. The book is based on years of experience, both through the author's research projects as well as his teaching lectures at business schools. The book tells the story of Emily Reed and her colleagues who are in charge of the management of a new tennis stadium project. The CEO of the company, Jacob Mitchell, is planning to install a new data-driven project management methodology as a decision support tool for all upcoming projects. He challenges Emily and her team to start a journey in exploring project data to fight against unexpected project obstacles. Data-driven project management is known in the academic literature as “dynamic scheduling” or “integrated project management and control.” It is a project management methodology to plan, monitor, and control projects in progress in order to deliver them on time and within budget to the client. Its main focus is on the integration of three crucial aspects, as follows: Baseline Scheduling: Plan the project activities to create a project timetable with time and budget restrictions. Determine start and finish times of each project activity within the activity network and resource constraints. Know the expected timing of the work to be done as well as an expected impact on the project’s time and budget objectives. Schedule Risk Analysis: Analyze the risk of the baseline schedule and its impact on the project’s time and budget. Use Monte Carlo simulations to assess the risk of the baseline schedule and to forecast the impact of time and budget deviations on the project objectives. Project Control: Measure and analyze the project’s performance data and take actions to bring the project on track. Monitor deviations from the expected project progress and control performance in order to facilitate the decision-making process in case corrective actions are needed to bring projects back on track. Both traditional Earned Value Management (EVM) and the novel Earned Schedule (ES) methods are used. What You'll Learn Implement a data-driven project management methodology (also known as "dynamic scheduling") which allows project managers to plan, monitor, and control projects while delivering them on time and within budget Study different project management tools and techniques, such as PERT/CPM, schedule risk analysis (SRA), resource buffering, and earned value management (EVM) Understand the three aspects of dynamic scheduling: baseline scheduling, schedule risk analysis, and project control Who This Book Is For Project managers looking to learn data-driven project management (or "dynamic scheduling") via a novel, demonstrating real-time simulations of how project managers can solve common project obstacles

Only 39 percent of projects today are successful. Nearly half of the projects that fail do so because of “poor requirements management” (PMI 2014). Leveraging Business Analysis for Project Success, Second Edition explores the role of the business analyst in setting a project up for success. It informs and educates project managers, sponsors, and organization leaders on what is necessary for project success. This book goes beyond requirements management in exploring how business analysis professionals (business analysts, product managers, product owners, and others) can contribute to increased profitability through project selection, scope definition, and postimplementation evaluation. The reader will learn about the history of business analysis, professional organizations and resources to support the profession, and what to expect from the business analysis professional at each phase of the project lifecycle as presented in a case study throughout the book. Project leaders will better be able to support the business analysis needs of the project by understanding the skills, expertise, tasks, resources, and time needed to do business analysis right and maximize the return on investment for each project.

You may be wondering if business analysis is the right career choice, debating if you have what it takes to be successful as a business analyst, or looking for tips to maximize your business analysis opportunities. With the average salary for a business analyst in the United States reaching above $90,000 per year, more talented, experienced professionals are pursuing business analysis careers than ever before. But the path is not clear cut. No degree will guarantee you will start in a business analyst role. What's more, few junior-level business analyst jobs exist. Yet every year professionals with experience in other occupations move directly into mid-level and even senior-level business analyst roles. My promise to you is that this book will help you find your best path forward into a business analyst career. More than that, you will know exactly what to do next to expand your business analysis opportunities.

“Robert Wysocki does it again, and again. He has evolved from a project management expert and guru to the preeminent thought leader on managing complexity in the 21st century! Wysocki’s approach is to use an adaptive framework and decision-making tool which includes a robust project management methodology that seamlessly integrates change, and can be applied to all types of projects across industries. This adaptive complex project framework is aligned with the most contemporary principles of innovation, agility, and lean approaches to change, and represents the most advanced thinking in applied complex project management to date.” —Kathleen Hass, Project Management and Business Analysis Practice Leader, Consultant, and PMI award-winning author of Managing Complex Projects: A New Model With technology continuing to invade the business world and the convergence of complexity, uncertainty, and constant change, a whole new class of projects has emerged for which traditional project management models such as Waterfall are totally insufficient. These are called complex projects. Extreme Project Management models and a variety of Agile Project Management models such as Scrum, Rational Unified Process, Feature-Driven Development, and Dynamic Systems Development Method have emerged, but project failure rates have not been measurably reduced. Effective Complex Project Management offers a proven solution to managing any project that must succeed in the face of organizational complexity and market uncertainty, in the form of an adaptive complex project framework. Developed, refined, and validated through 20+ years of client experiences and feedback from project management thought leaders, this framework and robust methodology has demonstrated a favorable impact on project and program management success rates. Dr. Wysocki demonstrates that for program and project managers to be consistently successful in managing complex projects, they need to include in their project management portfolio of processes an adaptive framework that continuously analyzes and adapts to changing and modifying conditions even to the point of changing project management models mid-project. The author’s adaptive complex project framework is currently the only robust tool to offer an orderly approach to do just that. When applied and managed correctly, this intuitive framework that proceeds from ideation to set-up to execution has proven to deliver on the purpose of programs and projects without fail, in the form of desired business value.

"This encyclopedia provides the most comprehensive compilation of information on the design and implementation of e-collaboration technologies, their behavioral impact on individuals and groups, and theoretical considerations on links between the use of e-collaboration technology and behavioral patterns. It delivers indispensable content to libraries and researchers looking to develop programs of investigation into the use of e-collaboration"--Provided by publisher.

The implementation of effective decision making protocols is crucial in any organizational environment in modern society. Emerging advancements in technology and analytics have optimized uses and applications of decision making systems. Decision Management: Concepts, Methodologies, Tools, and Applications is a compendium of the latest academic material on the control, support, usage, and strategies for implementing efficient decision making systems across a variety of industries and fields. Featuring comprehensive coverage on numerous perspectives, such as data visualization, pattern analysis, and predictive analytics, this multi-volume book is an essential reference source for researchers, academics, professionals, managers, students, and practitioners interested in the maintenance and optimization of decision management processes.

Big data analytics utilizes a wide range of software and analytical tools to provide immediate, relevant information for efficient decision-making. Companies are recognizing the immense potential of BDA, but ensuring the data is appropriate and error-free is the largest hurdle in implementing BDA applications. The Handbook of Research on Organizational Transformations through Big Data Analytics not only catalogues the existing platforms and technologies, it explores new trends within the field of big data analytics (BDA). Containing new and existing research materials and insights on the various approaches to BDA; this publication is intended for researchers, IT professionals, and CIOs interested in the best ways to implement BDA applications and technologies.