business analyst toolkit 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.

13 November 2025

13 November 2025

The Analyst as Sense-Maker in the VUCA World

In today’s VUCA (Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, Ambiguous) world, business analysts play an important role as sense-makers. Rather than providing straightforward answers, analysts are increasingly called upon to interpret ambiguity, surface patterns, and guide organizations through uncertain situations.

3 March 2026

3 March 2026

Choosing the Right Elicitation Technique

There is a well-documented pattern in requirements engineering that most experienced practitioners will recognize the moment they hear it and quietly wince. Research (2014) from the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid found that when an analyst faces an elicitation challenge, they tend to reach for the technique they know best, regardless of whether it is the most appropriate one for the situation.

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?

7 April 2026

Rapport Is a Skill

In the first post in this series, we watched Anna, a business analyst, meet Marcus, a skeptical IT Director, in three different versions of the same corridor conversation: same setup, same 10 minutes, three very different outcomes. In one, she built a strong connection. In another, she lost him entirely. In the third, she stumbled but recovered.

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?

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