Articles and Sources

[ Home ] [ About Us ] [ About Your Needs ] [ About Our Services ] [ Articles & Sources ]

Upcoming Training Events:

Business Analysis for the IT Professional

See books on Project Management, PMP^® Exam Prep or Business Analysis at Amazon.com:

VBH Recommends:
The following list of articles and links will take you to other websites & articles that share the same values for quality project management and complete collaboration between the IT development project and your business community.

	Project Management
	What to do When Project Estimates are Ignored by Victoria B. Haney, MBA, PMP^®, CBAP^® .. However, you may find that your best estimates are being ignored by your management or not being followed by the Sales organization. If you proceed with the organization’s estimates you may be on the hook to deliver the same Scope and Quality, but with a significantly reduced Budget and Timeline. Read this article Top IT Project Risks and What to do about them by Victoria B. Haney, MBA, PMP^®, CBAP^® Even though we all need to learn the mathematical basis of risk analysis, it’s often very time consuming and difficult for project managers to complete. As a result, risk planning is often skipped. In this article, we discuss the typical risks that an IT project would encounter and what the project manager can do about them. Read this article Avoiding Those Monster Projects by Victoria B. Haney, MBA, PMP^® Yesterday I had a meeting with a former colleague where we discussed successful projects and those nightmare projects we’ve worked on. You’re familiar with nightmare projects. They’re the ones on which people run around doing lots of work with no direction and without delivering anything useful. Read this article I Thought Being a Sponsor Was Easy Until I Became One by Victoria B. Haney, MBA, PMP^® During my training, I continually hear students say “my sponsor doesn’t have a clue and keeps trying to do things the old way” (or some similar variation.) These comments caused me to think that the sponsor was someone that had to be ‘dealt with’ rather than thinking about the project from the sponsor’s point of view. Read this article Project Management Training in Pittsburgh by Victoria B. Haney, PMP^®. I recently read an article on “The State of Project Management Training.” The article went into a lot of detail about the virtues of project management and areas of weakness in most project management training programs. It was all true. However... Read this White Paper How To Interview the Project Sponsor by Doug Decarlo - The ugliest words in project management can occur when the project is over: "We can't use that. It's not what we need." As the saying goes, "Projects don't fail at the end. They fail at the beginning." That's why it's important to get the venture off to a solid start... Read this article Fundamentals of Project Management: Developing Core Competencies to Help Outperform the Competition by James P. Lewis - This book follows the PMI^® methodology, but focuses on a few areas that are extremely valuable to a new project manager. Click to read reviews and order this book... Fundamentals of Project Management on Amazon.com Death March: The Complete Software Developer’s Guide to Surviving ’Mission Impossible’ Projects by Ed Yourdon—this book is a great read for project managers that have ever found themselves trying to manage a project that is either short on time, resources or budget. Click to read reviews and order this book... Death March on Amazon.com Project Management Book of Knowledge by the Project Management Institute This is the best guide to managing a project you’ll find. It includes every aspect of project management as well as examples. Join PMI® to get this book
	Requirements and Business Analysis
	Business Analysis Center of Excellence (BACE) - The Secret to Project Success By Vicky Haney This white paper was presented to the IIBA, Pittsburgh Chapter in May, 2007. It describes a BACE and why a company needs one... especially if they have any IT projects. The success of projects in the US today is less than 25%. Seven of the top ten reasons why project fail are due to requirements and communications problems, which are core competencies for the business analyst. Read this article to learn more about the BACE
	Eight Things Your Business Analysts Need to Know - A practical approach to recognizing and improving competencies by ESI International This paper examines the roots of project failures and centers on the elusive, often undefined role of the business analyst. Read this Article.
	Get It Right the First Time by Tom Farre. Improved requirements management is vital to the success of software development projects…Quality software must conform to user requirements, yet faulty or incomplete requirements management is a major cause of software project failure... Improved requirements management is vital to the success of software development projects…Quality software must conform to user requirements, yet faulty or incomplete requirements management is a major cause of software project failure. Read this Article

Requirements by Collaboration by Ellen Gottesdeiner
"The hardest part of software development isn't the technology, Ellen observes; it's the human side." this book is always in my hand when defining requirements gathering, workshop development and understanding requirements, their levels and complexity. A must-read for business analysts and project managers.
Click to read reviews and order this book... Requirements by Collaboration on Amazon.com
Decoding Business Needs by Ellen Gottesdiener. Facilitated workshops reduce the risk of scope creep from 80% to 10%, accelerate the delivery of early lifecycle phases by 30% to 40%, and provide a 5% to 15% overall savings in time and effort throughout the entire lifecycle.
Read this Article (you may need to register for their free newsletter for this article)

Joint Application Development by Jane Wood & Denise Silver—”This book is a gold mine of practical advice on the organization and conduct of JAD Sessions.”-Ed Yourdon
Click to read reviews and order this book... Joint Application Development on Amazon.com

Change Management and Business Process Analysis

Making Change Work: Practical Tools for Overcoming Human Resistance to Change by Brien Palmer - This is a great read! It provides a meaningful methodology for change management. Each chapter has a section "Why do this" that spells out why each step should be completed for a successful change management process.
Click to read reviews and order this book... Making Change Work on Amazon.com

Process Reengineering and Innovation

The following are links for two of the most well-known proponents of process reengineering. I disagree with some of their methods, however their books provide a lot of background and knowledge about reengineering, its benefits, pitfalls and thoughts…

Beyond Reengineering : How the Processed-Centered Organization is Changing Our Work and Our Lives by Michael Hammer—Actually anything by Michael Hammer is very good for Process Reengineering.
Books by Michael Hammer

In Pursuit of WOW by Tom Peters—This is a look at reengineering from the point of view of ...well Tom Peters. He stimulates thinking and new ideas constantly with his unconventional views. This is not a how-to or even a book that should be followed to the letter, but it is a good way to open up and think “out of the box.”
Books by Tom Peters