business analysis techniques Archieven

7 November 2025

Why Good Business Analysis Starts with Holistic Thinking

Every business analyst has seen it happen: a new system is launched to streamline processes, yet productivity drops, morale falls, and support calls skyrocket. The problem isn’t the technology. It’s the thinking. Too often, organizations approach change as a linear upgrade, assuming that fixing one component will automatically improve performance.

22 November 2025

A Practical Guide to the Business Change Lifecycle

When I work with organizations on change initiatives, one pattern repeats itself. Teams often jump straight into solution mode. They rush into selecting tools, writing user stories, or planning training, without first understanding what is changing and why. Over time, I learned that the best results come from following a clear, structured approach: the Business Change Lifecycle.

13 March 2026

The Volere Snow Card

Business analysts often face a common challenge when gathering requirements. Stakeholders tend to focus on solutions instead of their actual needs. As a result, important requirements can stay hidden. At a recent workshop, someone brought up this exact problem. His stakeholders kept talking about solutions instead of the problem they wanted to solve.

1 April 2026

Rapport Is Not Small Talk

Rapport is one of those business analysis skills everyone agrees is important, yet it is often described so vaguely that it becomes useless. We hear that good analysts should “build trust,” “connect with stakeholders,” or “develop strong relationships.” All true. But what does that actually look like in the moment?

14 April 2026

14 April 2026

Beyond Power and Interest: Adding Attitude to Your Stakeholder Analysis

In our previous post, we explored Mendelow’s Matrix, a fundamental tool for mapping stakeholders along two dimensions: power and interest. By now, you know which stakeholders to manage closely, which to keep informed, which to keep satisfied, and which require minimal effort. That is already a significant step forward in your stakeholder engagement planning.

21 April 2026

21 April 2026

Beyond Good Intentions: The Mechanics of Rapport in Stakeholder Conversations

The techniques in this post draw on concepts from Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP), developed by Richard Bandler and John Grinder in the 1970s. While NLP as a discipline is debated, several of its communication techniques, like mirroring, pacing, and sensory awareness, are widely used in coaching, negotiation, and stakeholder engagement.

28 April 2026

28 April 2026

Stop Writing Vague Requirements: A Beginner’s Guide to EARS Templates

EARS stands for Easy Approach to Requirements Syntax. It was developed by Alistair Mavin and colleagues at Rolls-Royce as a lightweight approach to writing clear, consistent, and testable textual requirements. The approach uses a small set of keywords that signal the structure of each requirement: what kind of situation it applies to, what triggers it, and what the system must do in response.

5 May 2026

Harmon Matrix – Not Every Process Needs Redesign

You have just finished a stakeholder meeting and three department heads all want process improvements, preferably yesterday. Finance is pushing for a procurement redesign. Operations wants the reporting workflow fixed. HR is asking for an onboarding process review. The requests are legitimate, but the organizational bandwidth is limited. Where do you start?

11 May 2026

Why Your SWOT Analysis Is Only Half Finished

Most business analysts have filled in a SWOT matrix at some point. Strengths in the top left. Weaknesses beside them. Opportunities and threats below. You end up with a tidy grid, a room full of sticky notes, and a slide that summarizes where things stand. And then the meeting ends, the matrix gets filed, and the insights are quietly forgotten.

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