To truly and accurately identify customer need, one has to be able to communicate effectively. One aspect of effective communication in a requirements elicitation context is the ability to organize and ask the right questions in the right way.

To that point, I’d like to refer you to one of my all-time favorite articles on customer interviews by Esther Derby. Below is a synopsis of a few of her key points on how to prepare for and frame an interview intermingled with some thoughts of my own….

I’ve long been of the opinion that involving as many stakeholders in the project as early as possible is a key to successful business analysis, and, more importantly, to successful projects, and have said as much in a few of my posts on this site.

Jim Highsmith, in the book Agile project management : creating innovative products, thinks that the reason projects tend to have so much documentation and so few results is that:

IT communication problems, usability, suggestions for success, and a few funnys.

One thing that I think we, as business analysts, occasionally forget is that the downstream delivery teams are our customers, too - and in a very real way. We need to make sure that they have an opportunity to develop a true sense of ownership for the project early on and that they understand what the requirements are all about.

Software developers are in pain, 10 types of programmers, best geek quotes, relationships, usability, and other goodies.