About Us
This blog and website are owned by Wyyzzk, Inc. (http://www.wyyzzk.com), a company founded by Geri Schneider Winters and Jason P. Winters to provide materials and services for those in Software Engineering.
IEEE defines Software Engineering as the organization and management of very large projects. So we give presentations, contract, consult, train, and mentor in: Requirements Development and Management (especially Use Cases), Software Architecture, Software Development Process Engineering, Project Management, and Object Oriented Analysis and Design, as well as the supporting technologies of Unified Modeling Language, Rational Unified Process, Agile Development, Rational Rose, Rational RequisitePro, IBM Rational Software Architect and Software Modeler, Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect, and RavenFlow Scenario.
The domain writingusecases.com points to this set of web pages devoted to the Business Analysts of a software project. Here you can expect to find information on writing Use Cases, other project requirements, the role of the Business Analyst, our favorite books for Business Analysts, and our favorite tools for Business Analysts.
Browse around, post comments as you desire. We look forward to hearing from you.
Geri and Jason
Geri’s Story – or Why I Became a Business Analyst
My mother and father loved musicals. As a child, there were many nights I fell asleep listening to the sound tracks from shows such as Oklahoma!, Fiddler on the Roof, and The Wiz. In school, I played the violin. Every year I played in the pit orchestra for my school’s musicals, other school’s musicals, and charity events.
In college I figured out how hard it is to make a living as a violinist. I discovered a love of computers and software, and hung up my violin to become a programmer. This may sound sad, but the story does not end there.
After college, I started working as a programmer in Silicon Valley and volunteering with local community theater groups. I volunteered so much that over time I learned every job connected with a musical theater production, including producing and directing. During this time, my career in software moved from programming into more people oriented jobs such as technical support, field engineer, trainer, process engineer, and software architect. In particular, I started working a lot with software requirements.
I see a lot of correlation between a software project and a musical. One major difference between a software project and a musical, is that a musical has a story that tells what the show is about. A software project needs to be described as well. It needs its own story that tells what the software project is about.
I am the Business Analyst on the team. I collect a lot of information and create the story of the project. Until the end of the project, I keep telling other people the story of the project (the stakeholders, sponsor, designers, and so on). I am the Storyteller.
Hello Gery,
In the past weeks I’ve read your blog posts on this site and I’m amazed with the quality and depth of your writtings. Since we share the professinal interests I would feel honored if you join our “Information Analysis Group” on LinkedIn. In this way we can broaden our mutual professional network further.
With Kind Regards,
Igor
Hello Geri!
I am registered for receiving Tips for BA’s for a while now and I find it very interesting and useful. There’s a lot of quality information shared and I really look forward for each new post of yours.
I haven’t however yet find a topic that interest me at this point. That is, what tool is suitable for a complete and manageable analysis? I would like to cover as much as possible:
- Statement / vision
- Stakeholder management
- Requirement management
- Business Rules management
- Traceability of requirements / BR’s
- Business Process
- Use Cases
- Activity Diagram
- Sequence Diagram
- Communication Diagram
- Class diagram
- Security management
- Prototype creation (nothing I’ve seen impressed me)
I am due to work my way out to the model. After that, the architect is correcting (the model if necessary) and taking over. For development phase I am there to guide the development on the right path.
I am at the point that I need a bit more than what I have. I used Rose for the analysis I made so far but I am sick of it as I get to work on very old versions that are rather annoying and limited. Requisite Pro is dying on MS versions and it’s hardly usable. That is because new products licenses are not worthy for the money… I can’t afford it and the companies I worked for don’t care about an expensive tool that would lead to a similar outcome eventually – that’s where I work a lot!
I have decided to move on and acquire a decent value product for a complete analysis tool. I am not going to throw thousands away so I looked at features vs. price. I made a bit of research and came that EA (Enterprise Architect) caught me pretty well. I’ve played with it for a few weeks now and I tend to lay on it. I however have my reserves over some limitations on requirements management, but probably I will leave with it (most likely I will double requirements in some straight forward sheets I use most of the time)
Based on your experience with various products, would you have a recommendation for me? I red reviews and saw opinions but I would happy having your advice on it. Would you share your experience with the tools you worked on ? Strong points / weak points on those you used ? Would you recommend something that suits best analysis within a large organization ?
I appreciate your time! I am looking forward for further Tips for BA’s
Marius