Welcome to The Lodge.
A lodge is where beavers live. In our case, it’s a blog where we post guides and articles.
We also have a company updates page where we share our latest news and progress.
A colleague asks the new AI search tool, “Can I approve this purchase myself?” It replies confidently and links to a policy. Everyone moves on. But which policy? Was it approved, or still a draft? Did it apply to that
How Requirements Flow from Product Owner to Developers Scrum has no Business Analyst accountability. Here is how the work still gets done, using one team and one feature. If you’re a Business Analyst moving into an agile team, one of
There is no single best way to gather requirements. A stakeholder interview can uncover information that would never appear in a questionnaire. A workshop can resolve a disagreement that would take weeks to uncover through individual conversations. Shadowing (observing someone
Requirements gathering is treated as a simple exercise: talk to stakeholders, write down what they say, and turn it into requirements. Projects have deadlines and the priority is to tick it off as quickly as possible. We know that the
A colleague asks the new AI search tool, “Can I approve this purchase myself?” It replies confidently and links to a policy. Everyone moves on. But which policy? Was it approved, or still a draft? Did it apply to that
How Requirements Flow from Product Owner to Developers Scrum has no Business Analyst accountability. Here is how the work still gets done, using one team and one feature. If you’re a Business Analyst moving into an agile team, one of
Every BA knows they need one. Almost nobody enjoys building one. Here’s why the RTM is worth the effort, what goes wrong without it, and how I automated the grind. What is an RTM? A Requirements Traceability Matrix (RTM) is
Requirements elicitation can be a pain. Best practice tells us that Business Analysts should employ various tools and techniques to elicit requirements, including interviews, and (my favourite) job shadowing. But in fast paced environments, our stakeholders are not always available.
Introduction Business Analysts have always been taught to write SMART requirements. In the context of this article: Specific, Measurable and Testable requirements. We define what a system should do, document the business rules and describe how users interact with the solution. Those principles have not changed.
This article expands on one of the themes from a recent presentation I gave at MAP TALENT. The images in this article are available as slides here. Whenever a new technology reaches the masses, society tends to grab it and
Everyone talks about AI models Whether it’s prompting, reasoning, retrieval or agents, most discussions focus on the intelligence inside the application when building AI software. What receives far less attention is everything around it. Especially in today’s environment where everyone
Introduction Recently we conducted a survey where we asked Business Analysts and Project Managers the question, “What are the most frustrating things for you when facilitating or attending workshops?”. One participant, upon seeing the replies of others’, left a response
A comprehensive guide to AI-powered stakeholder interviews, requirements discovery and the emerging software category which we believe will transform business analysis. Summary Requirements elicitation remains one of the least automated stages of software delivery. While software development has embraced AI-assisted
A complete guide to user stories. Told in our own words based on experience working in this space since 2007 across multiple clients and businesses. Pre and Post WORKSHOP IT. What is a User Story? A user story is an
This article will look at the various gold standards out there and explain – upon balance – what we do at WORKSHOP IT when writing project requirements. The cost of ambiguous requirements We can agree that when writing technical or