A few notes and impressions from the February, 2008 Atlanta IIBA chapter meeting.

I just RSVP’d to attend this coming Tuesday’s Atlanta IIBA chapter meeting. This will be my first time attending, and I’m really looking forward to it.

There is a place for enterprise business analysis, and a place for software requirements analysis. Often, those roles will be filled by a business analyst, but they don’t have to be. Different methodologies work better in different environments. In some shops, agile is the way to go. In others, it’s a waterfall or some derivative of the waterfall method that makes the most sense. While the titles of who performs the work may differ, business analysis skills are critical in any methodology.

For some reason, last week I picked up and began reading from Benjamin Franklin’s autobiography. In it, he mentions a mutual improvement society that he and several of his acquaintances founded in colonial Philadelphia to compare ideas, to critique each other’s publications, and to gather sociably. They called it “Junto.” The idea behind Junto was that in gathering like-minded individuals with a common cause for civil discourse, all participants stood to benefit.

Presentation tips, ten ways to screw up requirements, how to speed up your meetings and more.

Language, productivity, a NASA dissertation on requirements specs, and a few funnys.