How not to make an HK without technical assignment, misconceptions and mistakes of analysts, the best articles of 2021
Hello everyone! Happy New Year to everyone and wish you strength to gain new knowledge, self-confidence to pass all certifications, and at the same time have a good rest for all new achievements 🙂
Meet the latest digest with the most “juicy” articles for December, as well as the best articles from the digests for 2021!
In brackets near the headings – the difficulty level of the article (Normal * → Hard ** → Expert ***) and the approximate time to study the material.
Business Analysis
To be afraid of integration – do not go to analysts (**, 10 min)… In this article, the author talks about how to approach such a task as designing integration interactions between systems, gives several practical cases from his experience, and also highlights skills that will help an analyst solve such complex problems.
MBA228: Software Development Pearls (*, 26 min)… Karl Wiegers in a lecture format shared lessons on requirements, project management, design, quality and much more.
Top 5 misconceptions in analyst work (*, 10 min)… A compilation of some of the most popular misconceptions aspiring analysts about work and customer relationships.
How to develop without TK so that the result is not HZ (***, 6 min)… The author talks about a method developed in his company, which allows you not to demand from customers functional or business requirements or technical specifications, and at the same time to estimate the boundaries of the budget, keep within it and at the same time develop a product that satisfies the client.
Common Business Analyst Mistakes – 2 (*, 8 min)… The second part of the article, which was in the previous digest, is about typical mistakes that the author often encounters as a business analyst in his personal practice.
Business analyst in IT: who he is, what he does and how to become one (*, 10 min)… Among other things, I am sharing with you my article, which I recently wrote. In it, I reveal the essence of business analysis, what types of analysts are, what they do, and what skills analysts should have. If you have friends who are thinking about a profession, you can feel free to share this article with them, perhaps you will be interested in their business analysis;)
Expanding horizons
When to Use Context Methods: Field and Diary Studies (*, 11 min)… How and when to use contextual methods so that they provide insight into real life settings and user behavior.
Design-Pattern Guidelines: Study Guide (*, 9 min)… A collection of template-specific links on how to design and implement user interface templates.
GUI milestones: Alto, Apple, Blit, Paintbox, and other early systems (*, 15 minutes)… This article discusses how the graphical user interface has evolved over the past 50 years, as well as some interesting GUI use cases, unusual operating systems, and computers under the hood.
UX-Maturity Stage 5: Integrated (**, 6 min)… The series of articles continues on the stages of UX maturity. This article is about stage 5, which is called Integrated: how the strategy, culture and processes look and work at this stage, as well as what are the results of this stage.
Product localization: 10 practical tips (*, 12 min)… The article deals with the organization of an effective product localization process. The steps that are important to take, what to pay close attention to and what difficulties can be encountered along the way are considered.
Antiknob: reflections on the ergonomic interface of household appliances (**, 12 min)… The author of the article is trying to figure out why many of the existing implementations of buttons are too complex, and how to implement a better option.
Goals? We Don’t Need No Stinkin ‘Goals! (*, 6 min)… In this article, Karl Wigers discusses how to find the middle ground between setting a grand strategy for your company and just going with the flow.
Knowledge is not zero-sum (*, 11 min)… Grandpa Wiegers talks about how teams, by freely sharing knowledge with each other, form a healthy professional culture, and how this affects the productivity of the work result.
How user stories can help make design documentation (*, 10 min)… Reflections on how to use user stories and scripts to improve the design creation and acceptance process.
Using Fitts’ Law: A Basic Principle Of UI / UX In Online Store Development (*, 5 minutes)… The author in this article shares tips on how by applying Fitts’s Law to the design of the interface of an e-commerce site, you can simplify the search for add items to the cart and the shopping process, which subsequently leads to increased sales.
Not just text for buttons: what a UX editor does (*, 8 min)… UX editor – what is this profession, how does it differ from similar ones in name, what do such editors do, and what they should know and be able to do.
Paper Prototyping: A Cutout Kit (*, 4 min)… This article explains how easy, inexpensive, and effective it is to test early designs with a paper prototype kit.
Journey-Mapping Impact: Research Findings (**, 7 min)… To find out how travel maps are used in industry, I surveyed over 300 UX professionals and in this article shares my findings on how practitioners create travel maps and their perceived success with these initiatives.
10 Component Tips in Figma (*, 7 min)… An overview of the best life hacks and practices for working with components in Figma.
Claymorphism in user interfaces (*, 5 minutes)… Every year, if not more often, a new design trend emerges. This time she goes beyond the world of the user interface into the space of art – that’s Claymorphism! In the article, the author talks about the main features that characterize him.
2022 UI design trends guide (*, 5 minutes)… Learn more about the UX design trends of the coming year: minimalism, stigma, brutalism, and a look into the future of NFT, VR and Metaverse.
To design great internal apps, you probably need to do more user research (*, 8 min)… This article discusses how to develop great applications for internal users, why users don’t always take the most direct or convenient path, and what to do with all of it.
Let people work with their hands (or why you don’t need automation) (*, 8 min)… Process automation isn’t always helpful. Why? You will learn from the article in which the author will help you recognize malicious automation.
Dealing with an unhappy customer: a quick communication guide for designers (*, 10 min)… The author shares his personal experience and tells how to negotiate productively with the customer. The material will be useful not only for designers, but also for other IT specialists who regularly communicate with custom designers.
Let’s remember the juiciest articles of 2021
6 Trends Impacting Business Analysis to Watch in 2021 (*, 5 minutes)… Trends through the eyes of Delvin Fletcher, President and Chief Executive Officer of the IIBA.
Requirements testing checklist (*, 11 min)… The article discusses the main criteria for the quality of good requirements using examples from real life.
Requirements Testing: How I Find Errors in Feature Business Logic Before They Are Coded (*, 16 min)… The author shares his experience of testing requirements through the use of Use Case Scenarios.
Product Discovery Is A Mindset, Not A Process (**, 8 min)… The author explains why the continuous Discovery phase (which does not end with the start of the project) is the key to success.
MBA220: Thoughtless Design with Karl Wiegers (*, 32 min)… Karl Wiegers continues to delight us with his experience. This time, he shares the principles and lessons he learned from poor design and what you can do to help create your designs.
Docs as Code: introduction to the subject (**, 21 min)… The author shares many years of experience gained on the way to Docs as Code, as well as recommendations for the implementation of this framework.
The user story is perfect, but there are 100,500 bugs? How we test documentation (**, 8 min)… About how one company built the testing process, how it works, what principles it is based on, and what results are obtained from it.
Implemented changes, but employees do not accept them. What to do? (**, 10 min)… An article on the reasons for employee resistance to process changes and how to overcome them.
Analyst competency matrix for a samurai in stock (***, 30 minutes)… Reflections on what skills a systems analyst should have.
Business Analyst Interview – A View from Both Sides (**, 12 min)… An article on the interview process – a basic set of questions for a technical interview, possible conflicts, other important questions to ask the interviewer, as well as how the interview looks from the candidate’s perspective.
Use cases / Use cases / Use cases (BA techniques) (**, 20 minutes)… Another (but no less useful) analysis of the scripting technique.
CRUDL (BA techniques) (*, 7 min)… An overview and application guide for the CRUD (L) decomposition technique.
User Stories Guide for Junior BA / PO / PM (*, 15 minutes)… The author reveals the essence of User Stories, acceptance criteria, how to understand that the story turned out to be good, and also reveals the Job Stories and Personas techniques.
The role of a business analyst in the Discovery phase of the project (**, 8 min)… Kirill Belyavsky and Anton Babenko, authors and presenters of the Badass BA course, answer questions about Discovery and the role of a business analyst in it: goals, competencies and skills, main difficulties, personal experience.
When Bad Requirements Happen to Good People (*, 8 min)… There are no ideal software requirements, but life will be easier and better if you can avoid 6 common risks that Grandpa Wiegers talks about in more detail in the article.
The Humanizing Work Guide to Splitting User Stories (*, 23 min)… A detailed guide to splitting User Stories.
Common business analyst mistakes (*, 6 min)… The author shares typical mistakes that he often encounters as a business analyst in his personal practice. For example, do not specify the requirements and take everything at face value.
