A business system analyst is the crucial bridge that facilitates communication between an organization’s business and technical departments. For instance, a business manager with little or no technical background, would face great challenges if he were asked to come up with a business system. There is no guarantee that he will be in a position to visualize the system specifications sufficiently, so that they can be passed on to the IT department for implementation. Therefore, someone with knowledge in business, and with the necessary technical know-how will be required to act as a conduit between the business manager and programmers; hence the need for a business system analyst.

For any organization to be functional, the business and IT departments must be seen to work in harmony, without either one seemingly dominating the functions of the other. As such, the business department must stick to its core functionality of operations, whereas the IT department sticks to implementing systems. A business system analyst on the other hand, has the responsibility of being the go-between, by carrying out the functions that fall within the grey areas of these two departments.

The functions of a business system analyst include researching problems and coming up with possible solutions, studying business models, coordination of the development of business systems, and recommending suitable business software and systems. These professionals have to sit down with clients or business managers, to get the system requirements in non-technical terms. They then have to convert these specifications into technical language e.g. system architecture and processes, designs, flowcharts, and databases, that programmers can work with.

On the other hand, a business system analyst can recommend the most suitable solution that will enable a business to operate efficiently. Their recommendations are normally based on factors such as the hardware configuration that will be required, the cost of implementing and maintaining the system, the overall usability, and the speed of the system.

When a team is put together for the purpose of implementing new software or any other goal, it can be crucial to make sure they are using every bit of the time given the most efficiently possible in order to get the best outcome possible.

Pierson Requirements Group has a mentoring program put together for exactly this situation. They will assign a member of their team to coordinate with your team in an effort to help them realize the best way to create, implement, and endorse a plan.

Contact their offices to get all of these aspects to work together for you and your company.

Mentoring through Pierson includes:

Pierson has found that the mentoring for facilitation and process management has helped previous clients succeed in their first critical projects. Pierson can provide experienced mentors for the entire project team throughout the project life cycle.

One-on-One Mentoring can be provided to enhance and re-enforce the fundamentals and best practices taught in class.

• Instructors are available for critiquing requirements and quality assurance real life work products
• JAD Facilitation and Requirements Gathering mentoring to continue to enhance your collaboration skills
• Pilot Project Mentoring for process improvement initiatives

Pierson Requirements Group has been a consulting and training company since 1990 and they’ve helped many businesses realize their potential by using practices to uniquely steer your company down the road to success. They can help you take your idea from inception to full fruition in a clear and concisely planned way which will aide the smooth running of your ship. 

• project management
• business analysis
• system specification
• and more

Pierson’s training provides a framework for project teams that promotes development iterations throughout the life cycle of a project using a RAD/Agile software development approach. NEW Virtual Instructor-Led Training is a time efficient and cost effective way of delivering training to individuals and groups of attendees without travel. When we use Web Conferencing instead of traveling, we use less gasoline and we reduce our impact on our environment. Web Conferencing is a green technology. Instructor Led Classroom Training is also available for classes that require a face-to-face format to improve facilitating, requirements gathering and conducting effective meetings skills. All of Pierson’s training can be conducted on-site.

In this day and age it’s important to continually change and grow in the business community. Like rotating stock, it’s important to keep your staff and company fresh and relevant at all times.

Toward this effort, Pierson Requirements Group has training seminars and methods aimed to make sure your customers are kept happy. Check out the online and in person classes Pierson offers:

Public Classroom training is available in Chicago and Rye, NY (20 minutes from NYC) throughout the year for select training classes that require a face to face instructor-led hands-on format.

Business Process Management (BPM) Facilitation (3 days) Provides facilitation skills and techniques needed to conduct effective BPM workshops and business meetings. A real life company project is utilized to practice facilitating the BPM process analysis and design stages.

Learning Use Cases, UML and JAD Techniques Training Seminar (3 days) to train business analysts and developers how to create and interpret Use Cases and UML models using JAD and how the artifacts fit into the project life cycle for project initiation, business process definition and design.

The Pierson Requirements Group has been a consulting and training company since 1990 and they’ve helped many businesses realize their potential by using practices to uniquely steer your company down the road to success. They can help you take your idea from inception to full fruition in a clear and concisely planned way which will aide the smooth running of your ship.

Contact them today for your next best idea.

Business trends can be scary but with the current experts saying that our recession is technically over and we can all start breathing again, it may be time for your company to look at what you can do to take your bite of the rising profits.

Using a company like Pierson Requirements Group to show you in which areas you can improve and where to put resources can mean the difference between making money and throwing it away. Contact them to find out what training and analysis can do for your business no matter how big or small.

Listen to what others have said about the training Pierson Requirements Group can offer:

“I hired Pierson to come into Hallmark in 2002 to train a pilot class for a new repeatable requirements gathering process for Hallmark. I was the Manager of the newly created PMO whose task had been given by upper level management to bring Hallmark into qualification for SEI’s CMM- level 2 repeatable process. After Joy Matthews ran the initial training, I realized that Pierson had the ability to assess what our gaps were in order to become a top level organization and recommend solutions based on industry best practices. This proved to be a very successful project which Hallmark still maintains 5 years later with Pierson’s Requirements Group. In the middle of the project, Hallmark was rated CMM- level 3. Top management then brought in Accenture to assess the process and make recommendations for any gaps in the process. After several months, Accenture’s evaluation results stated that Hallmark was on the correct path and was already implementing a successful repeatable process with training that was customized where needed and which followed industry standards and best practices.

Pierson has trained 100s of business/systems analysts, requirements architects, developers, system architects, technical leads and project managers with a number of customized training classes to implement Hallmark’s “Quality Management Methodology”. Pierson is currently providing the same services for Hallmark Canada. I highly recommend that you use Pierson’s training.” – Manager of PMO hallmark

The fifth and final step in the walk through the steps advised by the SCORE organization is:

Seek help from other small businesses, vendors, professionals, government agencies, employees, trade associations and trade shows. Be alert, ask questions.

This is a particularly wise step. There are those who refuse to ask others for the valuable advice that could help a new business owner down the road to a less stressful beginning and possibly warning of potholes that can be avioded.

“Pierson Requirements Group is a company dedicated to giving the advice and training that is so necessary to anyone wishing to either start or build on a business of any kind.

Specializing since 1990 in helping companies realize a 30 – 50% time and cost savings for business requirements definition and testing by implementing a repeatable process through project team training, mentoring and methodology development. Pierson provides:

• On-site Training and Virtual Training
• Customization of all training at no charge to align with your company’s lifecycle, templates and terminology

Pierson specializes in business analysis and requirements gathering training for the Business Analysts, System Analysts, Project Leads, JAD Facilitators, Developers and Quality Assurance Leads using the latest in the Unified Modeling Language (UML), Use Cases, User Stories and Data Warehousing methods in conjunction with the JAD (Joint Application Development) process. User Acceptance Testing training is also available for Business Analysts, System Analysts, Developers and Quality Assurance Departments.”

Contacting Pierson Requirements Group can mean the difference between pick and shovel building and the knowledge to move mountains where customers and training are concerned.

Tip number four of the five business tips we are discussing this month is:

Conduct a competitive analysis in your market, including products, prices, promotions, advertising, distribution, quality, service, and be aware of the outside influences that affect your business.

This tip is particularly great for Pierson Requirements Group because they specialize in business analysis. They also offer ways for you to learn more about the process of business analysis via online workshops.

Business Analysis Training Seminars

Pierson Requirements Group’s public seminars are presented as Virtual Live Interactive Instructor-Led Training Classes.

Virtual Instructor-Led Business Analysis Training Workshops

• Live Instructor-Led Interactive sessions (3 – 4 hours per day of live instruction over a 2 – 4 day period depending on the virtual class)
• Training material presented via the web and live interactive instruction by phone
• Interactive exercises both in groups and individually
• All participants receive printable .pdfs of materials
• PDUs, CDUs and Certificates of success completion are provided

Virtual Instructor-Led Training is a time efficient and cost effective way of delivering training to individuals and groups of attendees without travel. The class size is limited to 10 participants. More sessions can be scheduled on request. Group discounts are available.

Web conferencing training includes hands-on case study exercises and instructor one-on-one mentoring of exercise deliverables.

These classes and many more are but a few of the benefits available to anyone who hires the Pierson Requirements Group. Contact their offices for your personalized analysis.

As discussed in the previous blog, this week continues our look into business tips from SCORE and how Pierson Requirements Group can take those tips and turn them into plans and actionable goals.

This weeks tips is the second of the 5 business tips to writing your business plan.

2. Examine your motives. Make sure that you have a passion for owning a business and for this particular business.

“Pierson can provide you with a customized methodology for Object-Oriented development projects using the notation of the Unified Modeling Language (UML) and the Unified Process. This customized methodology can be placed on your intranet to serve as a handbook or guide for the software system development teams. This document defines the steps and phases that should be followed, technical modeling options, and refers to quality procedures which should be employed. In this methodology Pierson

will provide your company with a repeatable process for:

• Using the notation of UML Modeling and Unified Process
• System Development Life Cycle deliverables
• Joint Application Development (JAD) activities and JAD Session agendas
• Rapid Application Development (RAD)
• Documentation templates

Best practices to be utilized throughout the Problem Statement, Requirements, Analysis, Design, Construction, Business User Final Acceptance and Transition phases of the system development life cycle.”
Creating your business plan can be a time consuming and sometimes daunting task. However, if you follow the steps outlined by a company aimed to help you along and use the tools offered by Pierson Requirements Group, the entire process becomes a step by step plan to greatness.