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.

This unique desk reference offers the information, models and guidance needed to plan and deliver complete, end-to-end business analysis services. Its step-by-step approach enables maximum utility of the business analysis (BA) role, development of more complete solutions for meeting the strategic goals of a business, and dramatic and sustainable improvements in project success rates. Managing Business Analysis Services: A Framework for Sustainable Projects and Corporate Strategy Success provides chief information officers, business analysis managers and consultants the information required to maximize the efficiency and productivity of technology projects, obtain higher returns on investment from BA services, reduce operating costs, and increase alignment of products to better serve the company or the client organization.

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.

Get connected and improve outcomes with a more modern approach to project management Project Management 2.0 tackles the new emerging approach and toolset for practicing project management in a virtual world. Author Harold Kerzner is recognized as the thought leader in project management, and in this book, he shows how PM 2.0 offers better outcomes with a focus on new tools, better governance, improved collaboration, and more meaningful reporting using KPIs, metrics, and dashboards. This full color guide explores the impact PM 2.0 changes are having on organizations around the world, and provides a detailed comparison with PM 1.0 to help practitioners adopt new techniques and tools to use within their existing project management approach. At its core, PM 2.0 recognizes that a new generation of workers grew up in a Web 2.0 world of web-based project management tools that allow virtual or distributed teams to work together much more closely than in the past. Advances in technology and information flow have shown that traditional project management techniques are ineffective for many of today's projects. This book offers an alternative with PM 2.0, an updated approach that aligns more closely with the modern workflow. Discover the new project management tools that are changing the workflow Learn how to improve collaboration with stakeholders Explore new ideas and processes for better project governance Achieve more meaningful information reporting with traditional tools Project management is an integral component of successful business operations. With today's technology, teams are no longer limited by distance or time zones – so why are they being managed with approaches that are? This book provides a framework more relevant to the way people work today. For the project manager looking to increase efficiency and improve outcomes, Project Management 2.0 provides the information and tools that can make it happen.

Optimize the Role of the Project Sponsor The project sponsor is critical to project success, yet it is a role that is often assigned to a member of the organization with little knowledge or training in project management practices. This creates challenges not only for the sponsor but for the project manager. The organization suffers too if key members of the project team are not fully utilized, as valuable resources are wasted. In Strategies for Project Sponsorship, the authors address this challenge from all three vantage points—that of the project manager, the project sponsor, and the organization. Based on their practical experience and solid research, they offer practical methods that project manager s can use to optimize the participation of the sponsor. They also offer clear and straightforward guidance for project sponsors on how to properly execute their duties and contribute to project success. Executives will gain valuable perspective on the organization's projects and key players. From defining the roles and responsibilities of the project sponsor to suggesting specific practices that maximize the working relationship between the sponsor and project manager, this book is the ultimate guide. Examples from real-world sponsor experiences, as well as tips, techniques, and tools, enhance its applicability and practicality. This book should be given to every newly assigned project sponsor, read and referred to by every project manager, and on the desk of every organizational executive as a reference.

Regression Analysis: Unified Concepts, Practical Applications, Computer Implementation is a concise and innovative book that gives a complete presentation of applied regression analysis in approximately one-half the space of competing books. With only the modest prerequisite of a basic (non-calculus) statistics course this text is appropriate for the widest possible audience including college juniors, seniors and first-year graduate students in business and statistics, as well as professionals in business and industry. The book is able to accommodate this wide audience because of the unique, integrative approach that is taken to the teaching of regression analysis. Whereas other regression books cover regression in four chapters, beginning with a statistical review, followed by chapters on simple linear regression, matrix algebra and multiple regression, this book introduces regression and covers both simple linear regression and multiple regression in single cohesive chapter. This is made possible through an efficient, integrative discussion of the two techniques. Additionally, in the same chapter (Chapter Two) basic statistical and matrix algebra concepts are introduced as needed In order to facilitate instruction. This approach avoids the needless repetition that is often found in longer treatments of the subject, while serving to bring a collective focus to students of widely varying mathematical backgrounds.

Operations Research is a bouquet of mathematical techniques which have evolved over the last six decades, to improve the process of business decision making. Operations Research offers tools to optimize and find the best solutions to myriad decisions that managers have to take in their day to day operations or while carrying out strategic planning. Today, with the advent of operations research software, these tools can be applied by managers even without any knowledge of the mathematical techniques that underlie the solution procedures. The book starts with a brief introduction to various tools of operations research, such as linear programming, integer programming, multi-objective programming, queuing theory and network theory together with simple examples in each of the areas. Another introductory chapter on handling the operations research software, along with examples is also provided. The book intends to make the readers aware of the power and potential of operations research in addressing decision making in areas of operations, supply chain, financial and marketing management. The approach of this book is to demonstrate the solution to specific problems in these areas using operations research techniques and software. The reader is encouraged to use the accompanying software models to solve these problems, using detailed do-it-yourself instructions. The intended outcome for readers of this book will be gaining familiarity and an intuitive understanding of the various tools of operations research and their applications to various business situations. It is expected that this will give the reader the ability and confidence to devise models for their own business needs.

Project portfolio management (PfM) is a critically important discipline, which organizations must embrace in order to extract the maximum value from their project investments. Essentially, PfM can be defined as the translation of strategy and organizational objectives into projects, programs, and operations (portfolio components); the allocation of resources to portfolio components according to organizational priorities; alignment of components to one or more organizational objectives; and the management and control of these components in order to achieve organizational objectives and benefits. The focus of this book is aimed at providing a mechanism to determine the individual and cumulative contribution of portfolio components to strategic objectives so that the right decisions can be made regarding those components.

The shifting focus of service from the 1980s to 2000s has proved that IT not only lowers the cost of service but creates avenues to enhance and increase revenue through service. The new type of service, e-service, is mobile, flexible, interactive, and interchangeable. While service science provides an avenue for future service researches, the specific research areas from the IT perspective still need to be elaborated. This book introduces a novel concept—service mining—to address several research areas from technology, model, management, and application perspectives. Service mining is defined as “a systematical process including service discovery, service experience, service recovery, and service retention to discover unique patterns and exceptional values within the existing services.” The goal of service mining is similar to data mining, text mining, or web mining, and aims to “detect something new” from the service pool. The major difference is the feature of service is quite distinct from the mining target, like data or text. This book devises concepts of service mining and identifies the possible applications. The author provides a roadmap of service mining to researchers, managers, and marketers in service sectors.

This book is a concise and innovative book that gives a complete presentation of the design and analysis of experiments in approximately one half the space of competing books. With only the modest prerequisite of a basic (non-calculus) statistics course, this text is appropriate for the widest possible audience. Two procedures are generally used to analyze experimental design data—analysis of variance (ANOVA) and regression analysis. Because ANOVA is more intuitive, this book devotes most of its first three chapters to showing how to use ANOVA to analyze balanced (equal sample size) experimental design data. The text first discusses regression analysis at the end of Chapter 2, where regression is used to analyze data that cannot be analyzed by ANOVA: unbalanced (unequal sample size) data from two-way factorials and data from incomplete block designs. Regression is then used again in Chapter 4 to analyze data resulting from two-level fractional factorial and block confounding experiments.