Business Analysis Course: Lesson Six

1. Business Analysis Course: Lesson Six Writing

2. BA Writing:Top Five Reasons People HATE to Write 1. I’m bad at it. 2. When I’m done and somebody reads it I feel stupid. 3. It’s hard to do. 4. I’ll never learn how to do this, so why bother? 5. Isn’t that why there are Technical Writers?

3. BA Writing:Relax- Writing is Really: • Just like talking, except a bit more formal and organized. • A lot easier is you have some guidelines, a format, an example and a spell checker. • Which is what we’re going to provide you now. • And remember: It’s a whole lot easier to edit than it is to write.

4. BA Writing:Why People HATE to Write • Plan • Write • Rewrite -Steve Kessell Curtin University of Technology

5. The First CommandmentThou Shall Always Address the Audience's Needs • A 1992 study showed that nearly one half of the American population does not read well enough to find a single piece of information in a short publication. • A lower level of reading ability is not necessarily a sign of a lower level of intelligence. • Information you are selling can be conveyed clearly at any grade level for any audience. -WordsWork Consulting, IncWatertown, MA 02472

6. Identify Your Audience • Technical? a primary BA audience • Business? a primary BA audience • Management? a secondary BA audience • End User? • Sys Admin?

7. The Second CommandmentKnow of Which Yea Speak, Lest Your Reader Will Know Yea for a Fool. With this technique, the System would automatically save every validated Scope, Product List and/or Simulations in a temporary storage area of the database under username_date_time_stamp. The System would purge these records automatically at predefined intervals. End users will be able to save permanent Scopes, Product Lists and Simulations under unique names associated to the end user and Project. When the end user wants to compare Simulation Results of invalid Scopes or Product Lists, System may then ‘drop’ the invalid file of the older Simulation and substitute the valid file instead for the ‘invalid’ Simulation. The System must prompt the end user to allow the swap or modify the invalid file. System must then allow the end user to save and associate the modified Simulation Results (with the modified Scope or Product List) as required -Scot Witt, White Paper, April, 2006

8. The Third CommandmentCare for Use Cases and Make Them Fruitful to Multiply Scope: ATM Level: User Goal 1. The card gets inserted. 2. The card information gets validated. 3. The transaction information gets collected and validated. 4. The cash is issued, card returned, cash removed, account debited, screen reset. -Alastair Cockburn

9. Another Bad Use Case (Withdraw Cash) (WEUC) • 1. Customer runs ATM card through the card reader. • 2. ATM reads the bank id and account number. • 3. ATM asks customer whether to proceed in Spanish or English. • 4. Customer selects language. • 5. ATM asks for PIN number and to press Enter. • 6. Customer enters PIN number, presses Enter. • 7. ATM presents list of activities for the Customer to perform. • 8. Customer selects "withdraw cash". • 9. ATM asks customer to say how much to withdraw, in multiples of $5, and to press Enter. • 10. Customer enters an amount, a multiple of $5, presses Enter. • 11. ATM notifies main banking system of customer account, amount being withdrawn. • 12. Main banking system accepts the withdrawal, tells ATM new balance. • 13. ATM delivers the cash. • 14. ATM asks whether customer would like a receipt. • 15. Customer replies, yes. • 16. ATM issues receipt showing new balance. • 17. ATM logs the transaction. Alastair Cockburn

10. The Fourth CommandmentKeep Business Rules Simple unto All the Rules of Your Life • Must be written and explicit. • Must be written in plain language. • Must be independent of procedures and workflows (e.g. multiple models). • Must be built on facts, and facts should build on concepts as represented by terms (e.g. glossaries). • Must guide and influence behavior in desired ways. • Must be motivated by identifiable and important business factors. • Must be accessible to authorized parties (e.g. collective ownership). • Must be single sourced (no links, no dependencies, no references, etc) . • Must be specified directly by those people who have relevant knowledge (e.g. active stakeholder participation). • Must be managed. -Agile Modeling, Scott W. Ambler

11. The Fifth CommandmentMaintain Active Voice and Keep it Wholly • Passive voice is pompous. • Passive voice gets in the way. • Passive voice requires your reader to spend too much decoding to figure out what you tried to say. • It’s only good to use ten minutes before class when you have a 10 page paper due and only 9 ½ pages done.

12. The Sixth Commandment:Santa Is Not the Only Clause • "One sometimes wonders if the influence of books is inverse proportion to their clarity. Write simply and you may soon be forgotten. But combine just the right mixture of ambiguity, obtuse allusion, complex theory and authoritarian tone and you create a work which successive generations of scholars can debate and reinterpret forever, thus ensuring the potential of influence if not influence itself. " -David Godfrey writing about Harold Innis’ communications theory

13. The Seventh Commandment:Presentation Art: The Art of Gladness Only “Romanitic” would show on a spell check with capitals disabled: And Honestly, what Is on the Rise that is taking the Reading world by storm, are these Romanitic thug Books about the Boyfriend that lives a life of Crime and the girlfriend that is trying to deal with It. Or the Cheating man etc." - Brand new college instructor’s first writing assignment results from a 19 year old: http://mimsies.blogspot.com/2005/09/my-first-day-and-some-really-bad.html

14. The Eighth Commandment:Suffer Not Tables, Bullets and Numbered Lists, They Are As Lilies • Numbered Lists: 2 or more, shows a sequence or order. • Bulleted Lists: 2 or more- shows association. • Table: 3 or more, displays data

15. The Ninth CommandmentWriteth As Thou Speaketh Else Pomposity Resulteth • What’s a lyric? • Wrong • From Dictionary.com: Of or relating to a category of poetry that expresses subjective thoughts and feelings, often in a songlike style or form; Relating to or constituting a poem in this category, such as a sonnet or an ode.

16. The Tenth CommandmentConsider Information Mapping • Multi-Audience • Summaries • Chunking • Labeling • Headers • Formatting