| | |  | Intrusion Detection | Home » » The Business Analyst's Handbook | | | | | | | Description: | | The Business Analyst (BA) plays an important role as liaison between business stakeholders and the technical team (software developers, vendors, etc.), ensuring that business needs are reflected in any software solution. Despite the importance of the job, there is currently no book specifically designed as a comprehensive reference manual for the working BA. The Business Analyst's Handbook solves this problem by providing a useful compendium of tools, tables, lists, and templates that BAs can use on-the-job to carry out their tasks. For example, you might be preparing for an interview session and use the book's checklist of interviewees to verify whether there is appropriate coverage of business stakeholders. Or you might be asked to review some diagrams and refer to the Glossaries of Symbols (organized by diagram type) for guidance. Or you may be asked to prepare textual requirements documentation and refer to the Business Requirement template for a list of artifacts and table of contents. Whatever your BA needs, the Business Analyst's Handbook places the necessary information right at your fingertips. | | | Product Details: | | | Author:
| Howard Podeswa | | Paperback:
| 411 pages | | Publisher:
| Course Technology PTR | | Publication Date:
| December 08, 2008 | | Language:
| English | | ISBN:
| 1598635654 | | Product Length:
| 9.1 inches | | Product Width:
| 7.4 inches | | Product Height:
| 1.2 inches | | Product Weight:
| 1.85 pounds | | Package Length:
| 9.1 inches | | Package Width:
| 7.3 inches | | Package Height:
| 1.1 inches | | Package Weight:
| 1.9 pounds | | Average Customer Rating:
|  based on 23 reviews |
| | | | Customer Reviews: | |
Average Customer Review:
 ( 23 customer reviews )
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
18 of 18 found the following review helpful:
Solid Reference MaterialApr 30, 2009
By IAG Consulting Team
This book has solid reference material that experienced Business Analysts can utilize on virtually any assignment. This is not the best book for a new Business Analyst and is really geared towards a practitioner that understands their craft and appreciates additional guidance. Coverage of techniques and models is very comprehensive.
14 of 16 found the following review helpful:
 The perfect combination of theory and practice.Feb 26, 2009
By Michael G. Bonamassa
In my experience most technical books are either overly dry and are useful as a reference tool or completely theoretical leaving it up to the reader to determine application modes. Howard Podeswa does a great job of blending the two. He also does this in the context of one of the most important and least discussed role - the Business Analyst.
Over the years I have had the privilege to be part of many software teams. We have had great successes and a few failures. One thing that is a constant is the impact of the Business Analyst role on project success. The The Business Analyst's Handbook provides a complete tailorable approach to facilitating, organizing and disseminating business information that is sure to have a positive impact on any team.
This is a book that should be near and dear to any professional Business Analyst.
34 of 44 found the following review helpful:
 What happens when you have an engineer write a bookApr 09, 2009
By Crazy Burns
"Laddish Culturalist"
The author says in the introduction that he began his career in Chemical Engineering and attempted to create a book similar to Perry's Chemical Engineer Handbook. At first I thought it was a neat idea to have everything I could ever need to know as a BA in one place. After muddling through the first couple of chapters, I noticed that this book contains way *too much* information in one place. It's like trying to read an encyclopedia cover to cover. This book may have its place in very rigorously structured environments where BAs need to quickly reference something, but as a comprehensive starting point for Biz Analysts it fails miserably. I think the biggest failure of this book is that it attempts to formalize everything too much without first getting across a hi-level overview of what a BA is supposed to learn from a particular section.
As a BA for several years, I can say that I found nothing in here of practical value. The organizations in which I have worked did not place much value of formal structure of analysis, so that may be why I do not find this book worthwhile.
Plus, the writing style is dreadfully dry. As my title suggests, when an engineer writes a book about soft skills this is about what you might expect. I'm a former engineer myself and have first hand knowledge of the low value placed on communication skills by many otherwise competent engineers (of course there are exceptions). I got more techniques for analysis out of Project Management books than this one (like the portable MBA series book on Project management) and I believe there are much better books out there but they probably don't have Business Analyst in the title.
9 of 11 found the following review helpful:
Essential Business Analyst Reference Book!Jan 27, 2009
By Keith Warrick
Once upon a time, one would be hard pressed to find many reference books on doing business analysis work properly but since the creation of the International Institute of Business Anlysis professional association and the advent of the CBAP certification in 2005, there has been a welcome torrent of titles.
I recommend this as an essential tool in your BA toolkit especially if you perform business analysis in Agile software development environments, though many of these techniques can be adapted to other software development methodologies as well.
4 of 4 found the following review helpful:
 Great book; a must for Managers of all kindOct 12, 2010
By Oscar Lizarraga
I strongly recommend this book for any kind of manager. Why? Because there are always problems and projects, and this book gives you great ideas for a structured thinking. Many times, I've seen people that when crisis or problems come, they start with whatever comes to their mind first. Rather than that, some of the ideas of this book is to go to the basis and understand all the components. Even when this book doesn't address problem solving as its main target the book does great for this purpose.
Obviously if you are working on the Information Systems Analysis and Design, Consulting or similar areas, this book is a must.
I'd love to see a QuickReference Version (like a HandPocket Book)!
See all 23 customer reviews on Amazon.com
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