Introduction

Last Updated on Friday, 21 May 2010 19:58 Written by Joe da Silva Tuesday, 13 April 2010 18:03

This toolkit was developed by Phil Bailey and Joe Da Silva on behalf of Skandia, who have kindly agreed to allow us to donate it to the community for others to use and benefit. Many organisations spend considerable time developing their own BA templates, so we thought, why not save people some time and make ours available for reuse?

The toolkit itself may represent a major change in direction for many organisations, as it abandons the "traditional" monolithic documentation approach that is more common. We have found that our approach saves time, improves quality and importantly, allows BAs to use their skills more effectively and creatively.Business Analysts are experienced and highly skilled (or at least they should be) - why should they be constrained with restrictive templates? And why should business users be required to sign off unreadable 100+ page documents?

 

They shouldn't.

 

This is not the end of the toolkit however; we will be adding to this on a regular basis. Some of the upcoming changes include:

• standard lists of values
• standard non-functional requirements
• more guidance on more topics, including stakeholder management and benefits management 
• advice on supporting tools

plus more stuff that will be added when we think of it.

We will also be encouraging feedback and debate, both in relation to the toolkit and to the blogs that we will writing.

 

This toolkit is not perfect, and it's not intended to be the answer to all your problems. But it should be useful as a starting point, and we're open to any suggestions or criticisms. Plus, it's free.