business analysis

The Importance of "Occasional User" Requirements

Occasional users are likely to go back to more traditional, offline methods if the online equivalent isn’t immediately intuitive. There is little benefit for taking time to learn the system—as they’ll only be using it occasionally. This could impact the business case for moving a process to the web.

Adrian Reed's picture
Adrian Reed
Using Crowd Wisdom as a Marketing Tool

Crowdsourcing in its various forms has become a powerful technique used to connect with the end users and community, to engage with them, and to leverage their wisdom. While each form is powerful in its own right, crowd wisdom is becoming an important and inevitable marketing tool.

Rajini  Padmanaban's picture
Rajini Padmanaban
Not in the Mood: Why Emotion Prediction Software Will Annoy Many

Once you get over the cool factor of all the really neat things that can be done with emotion prediction software, you start to wonder just how much companies—specifically retailers—will use this information to gain access to not only your money but also your actual emotions and moods.

Noel Wurst's picture
Noel Wurst
Managing "But We Need This" Requests from Stakeholders

Product owners are constantly beset with a continuous stream of requests for the urgent, the important, and the marginal. The assumption implicit in such requests is that there is room for more of the "but we need this" requests to be filled.

Scott Sehlhorst's picture
Scott Sehlhorst
How Requirements Can Help Avoid Project Failure and Waste

Studies and experience show that higher quality and better value solutions are achieved by projects that attain a thorough and unambiguous understanding of business and user requirements. Adrian Reed looks at how requirements can help avoid project failure and waste.

Adrian Reed's picture
Adrian Reed
What Is Happening to Apple?

Joe Townsend explores what is happening to Apple and why IT professionals should care. We can all learn a lesson from Apple’s success—and its failures. If we are complacent in our jobs as testers and configuration managers, our “personal stock” will drop dramatically.

Joe Townsend's picture
Joe Townsend
Making Assumptions on Projects Is a Ticking Time Bomb

Assumptions are a fact of life. Without making assumptions, it’s unlikely that many decisions would get made, and certainly fewer projects would ever get launched. However, sometimes assumptions come back to haunt us. Adrian Reed looks at how to handle assumptions when working on projects.

Adrian Reed's picture
Adrian Reed
Why Being Simple Is Better Than Being Simplistic

Product managers know that a product needs to be simple to succeed in a market. Although being simple is a product virtue, being simplistic can be a product vice. Scott Sehlhorst evaluates why it's better to create a product that is simple—not simplistic.

Scott Sehlhorst's picture
Scott Sehlhorst