Joy Beatty, VP of Research at ArgonDigital, recently presented to the vibrant business analyst community in Central Iowa at IBADD 2012. CBAPs, CCBAs, and new business analysts learned about:

Models for Data Requirements: Many analysts think that “data modeling” means designing databases and technical data models. Business users have no capability of creating and consuming that level of technical design, but they very much do care about their? business data requirements. They can describe how the data is used to make business decisions and how they want to see it processed by the system.

Joy introduced a set of requirements models for data that help describe the relationship of data in the system, details about fields, how data is used to make decisions, and how data is processed by the system. She described how the models can be used together from top to bottom to create a complete picture of the data needs and how they integrate to other requirements models to fully round out the requirements.

Visually Modeling Requirements: A list of 2,000 “the system shall…” statements is some of the most boring reading, so it’s no wonder that developers tend not to read traditional requirements documents. And after reviewing twenty “shall” statements, let alone 2,000, any reader probably has forgotten the first few, so there is no way to know if the document really contains a full set of requirements.

Joy introduced a language to visually model requirements and make requirements documents easier to read, understand, and validate. She presented a set of models for requirements to help ensure that specifications are complete and accurate, explaining how to create it, describing its uses, and sharing examples. Attendees learned how to select which models to use—based on your project type and audience—and how to use them together to get a full ?picture of the system.

If you’d like more information about the sessions, or a PDF of the presentations, please email me –info@argondigital.com-  and I’ll be happy to help.