In keeping with the theme of this month we will discuss the third in five effective ‘Tips For Effective Business Planning’.

Be willing to commit to the hours, discipline, continuous learning and the frustrations of owning your own business.

It is a well known fact that starting a business takes more dedication than any job. Often those who have successfully started a business will tell you the commitment is like having a child. It requires your full attention and complete focus.

Pierson Requirements Group also views their clients and business partners as family. They will dive into your business, no matter what stage you are in, and help with each and every detail.

“Pierson can provide clients with a customized methodology for all types and sizes of development projects using Structured Analysis and/or the Unified Process with the Unified Modeling Language (UML). The customized methodology serves as a handbook and guide for the software development project teams. The methodology defines the steps and phases that should be followed, technical modeling options and refers to quality procedures which should be employed. Some strengths of Pierson’s methodology are as follows:

• The format is easy to use and is concise. For each work step the following is given: Description, Input, Output, Tips & Techniques, Agendas, Roles and Responsibilities, Templates.
• The methodology is a detailed guide telling you exactly ‘how to’ successfully conduct your projects.
• Our training is patterned after the methodology and assists you in successfully implementing it. The author of the methodology also wrote the related training seminars.”

Contact Pierson Requirements Group to make these guidlines a plan for success.

A company by the name of SCORE, Service Corps of Retired Executives, is a group of people dedicated to helping others build or grow their businesses. Online they have a blog dedicated to tips, tricks, and advice to doing just that.

Pierson Requirements group is also dedicated to seeing the business hopes and dreams of others come true. In that vane, this months blogs will be discussing online tips from well known companies.

1. Clearly define your business idea.

“Pierson provides quality hands-on Instructor-Led face-to face classroom training with critiquing and mentoring from experienced senior instructors. Pierson’s training classes can be customized to align with your organization’s terminology, life cycle and templates. Modules on the class outline can be customized and combined with modules from other classes.

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

When writing your business plan, knowing what to inculde and what to leave out is perhaps the most important key to making sure that investors or banks will see how together you are.

Training with the intructors either face to face or online with Pierson Requirements Group that key can be explained and achieved.

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. 

The Requirements Gathering and Writing Training Seminar, using JAD and a use case driven approach, focuses on how to build UML diagrams, document and facilitate for requirements projects. The workshop provides training in facilitation, diagramming and writing techniques needed for project scoping, gathering requirements and developing a solution. The seminar focus is on:

• Requirements management and facilitation techniques
• Writing business and system use cases with agendas and scripts for facilitating
• Project Life Cycle using JAD and UML diagrams
• Managing the testing of the solutions and building test cases
• Package software evaluation and selection process
• Practical experience in facilitating and building UML diagrams for scoping sessions, requirements gathering sessions, and design focus groups

Each seminar participant receives a Seminar Handbook with sample agendas and scripts for conducting problem statement/scoping sessions, requirements definition sessions and design focus groups. A JAD Procedures Guide is also provided. Maximum of 10 students.

The problems most companies have with software development are due to poor requirements rather than coding. Developers know how to code but the business requirements are most often incomplete and don’t effectively communicate the business needs. The lack of effective requirements gathering and writing leads to 82% of the software re-design and maintenance efforts causing companies to waste millions of dollars a year on ineffective software implementations and lost product to market opportunities (based on a study done by James Martin).

Surveys of Pierson Requirements Group’s customers have found that using Pierson’s training and implementing collaborative requirements techniques has lead them to a savings of 25 – 40% of time and cost over the entire project or 3 to 4 months out of a year long project. Pierson Requirements Group provides both on-site and virtual instructor led training classes. The next scheduled Requirements Gathering & Writing is September 22 – 24 and October 4 – 6. For more information, contact jmatthews@piersonrequirementsgroup.com or click on the link http://www.piersonrequirementsgroup.com/contact.php.

http://www.prlog.org/10863376-pierson-requirements-group-announces-virtual-business-requirements-gathering-writing-class.html

Last week’s blog outlined some popular online blogs that highlight tips and tools that can greatly help small business share helpful ideas without costing a penny.

This week another site shows 12 web tools that make the day to day operations easier and more streamlined. The applications talked about were:

VoxOX – An application for ‘wrangling’ your email, phone, and social media accounts to one place; LuckyCal – A calender integrating tool; Fonolo – An application that navigtes the phone trees of big companies cutting down your wait time; and many others including one for reducing your carbon footprint.

It’s important to understand the free and cheap resources available online when you are starting a business or even working with a well established company. Spending a little time on certain projects can yield a huge return in information and education. Everyone could use to save money and the world wide web is here to help you do it!

Pierson Requirements Group is a company aimed at getting your business started and/or helping your company run better. They too have great ways and ticks of the trade that they are willing to share with those who need them. Contact them today and see how they can help you with online and public seminars as well as business analyst training.

In this economy it’s hard to stay affloat and ahead of the game. This past year so many companies have gone out of business and the ones that are predicted to go under this coming year are astonishing. T Mobil, Reader’s digest, and Blockbuster are but a few of the listed companies that are in too much trouble to dig out of.

However, one of the best ways to make sure you have a superior company with better customer service is to constantly test and re-test your employees and your methods.

Employing a business analyst within your company is a great way to keep day to day tabs on what is being done well and what needs improvement. These individuals are sharp, focused, and diligent. The great ones are trained by Pierson Requirements Group.

Pierson aims to make you and your people run at their absolute best through targeting weak areas, retraining and even overhauling of old processes and methods.

Review the many ways in which they can offer your business the tools needed to stay in the black for years to come by making sure no one out there does what you do better or more efficiently.

Contact Pierson Requirements Group for more information on seminars and training classes today.

Starting a business of any kind can be a very different experience depending on the amount of help you get and how muc experience that help has. With the current economy it is difficult to strike out on your own, but the consultants and methodology used by Pierson Requirements Group can really help you understand what you are getting into and the best steps to take toward success.

They use Joint Application Development or JAD. This is a technique used for gathering business software requirements. The purpose of JAD is to bring together the technical/creative team and the business community in a structured workshop setting to extract consensus based software requirements. This is accomplished by using a trained JAD facilitator and customized, planned agendas to assist the participants in arriving at complete, high quality requirements.

Another method employeed frequently by Pierson Requirements Group is Rapid Application Development or RAD which is a process that speeds the delivery of functionality to end-users by segmenting software into pieces for delivery rather than delivering all of the software functionality in one large implementation. It is an iterative process utilizing a spiral methodology and is also customer driven following an evolutionary process using continuous application engineering in a time-boxed fashion with a dedicated professional team. The goal of the iterative approach is to reduce the time between requests and delivery of Business Application Software.

Pierson Requirements group can take some of the sting and frustration generally associated with the start of a company out of the equation. Contact their offices for more information.

A system analyst is someone within a company who researches problems, makes plans for a solution, and deals with the intricacies of developmental plans for meeting business or other requirements. A well trained analyst should be familiar with several different types of approaches to problems. Also they should be familiar with a variety of programming languages, operating systems, and different types of hardware and software to be used within a company.

” Because they often write user requests into technical specifications, the systems analysts are the liaisons between vendors and IT professionals. They may be responsible for developing cost analysis, design considerations, and implementation time-lines.” – Web Definition

The Pierson Requirements group aims to get your analyst to the top of his or her game by providing the best possible approach to all of these areas of expertise. They have training courses such as  a 2 day course entitled ‘Project Management Training’.

The Introduction to Project Management class offers training in the basic skills that a Project Manager would use to effectively manage an IT Project. The participants will learn how to scope and plan projects for IT initiatives. The seminar focus is on:

• How to be an effective project manager and what skills are required
• How to define the project vision and scope
• How to create and manage an effective project plan
• How to manage the project communication process
• Each seminar participant receives a Seminar Handbook with sample templates, checklists, procedures guide and a solution set.

Iterative Development is a process that speeds the delivery of functionality to end-users by segmenting a system into pieces for delivery, rather than delivering all of the system functionality in one large implementation. The iterative process utilizes a spiral methodology and is also customer driven following an evolutionary process using continuous application engineering in a timeboxed fashion with a dedicated professional team. The goal of the iterative approach is to reduce the time between requests and delivery of Business Application Systems. Some of the primary characteristics of iterative development projects are:

·         There is a strict deadline for basic functionality

·         Can be released in increments

·         Uses techniques such as time-boxing, dedicated teams and focus sessions

·         Business users are involved throughout the project and JAD is used

·         Total project time is usually 3 – 6 months