Monthly Archives: March 2015

Requirements Reuse – what is it all about anyway?

Requirements reuse is both an interesting and frustrating subject and one which comes up periodically on discussion fora. There is a wealth of discussion about it, but no general consensus on what it actually is.

Re-use as a concept is a familiar one within the software development world and has been around for a while. However in the requirements engineering field it isn’t common, either at the knowledge or the artefact level even although local pockets of reuse seem to exist. There is an increased management expectatReuseion of requirements re-use in parallel with the introduction of Requirements Management Tools. The perceived benefits are significant savings in terms of reduced analysis time, improved quality and elimination of redundant development effort, all leading to a reduction in the overall delivery time of a project.

But what is Requirements reuse anyway? There doesn’t seem to be a single agreed definition of what it actually is. The best definition I’ve found so far defines reuse as “the ability to use an item again after it has been used already”. This includes conventional reuse where the item is used again for the same function and new-life reuse where it is used again for a different function.

Continue reading

Knowledge Representation Types

The range of projects undertaken in today’s world presents Business Analysts with many challenges. One challenge we need to consider is how to represent and analyse more than one information type.

During the seventies there was a lot of research into representation for information or knowledge types. This area grew rapidly in late 1980s onwards providing guidance when and how to use knowledge representation techniques for solving particular problems.

Continue reading

The Wonderful World of Workflow

Workflow projects are fascinating projects to undertake. They touch so many aspects of the business analysis role such as business strategy, organisation models, process and data. They also offer many potential benefits to the business. Yet it seems to me that these types of projects remain an unpopular choice amongst the business analysis population. As workflow offers the BA a chance to consider static and dynamic aspects of business systems, using a variety of techniques and work across organisational boundaries, I find it hard to understand why more BAs are not queuing up for the opportunity to do this work.

Continue reading