You are a startup or a small company. Or, you are a small division in a large company. You have brilliant, motivated people on your team. Yet you are facing a lot of challenges managing your projects.
Often, you are expected to be a Business Analyst, a Project Manager, and a Technical Lead, all rolled into one.
Don’t worry…”
“…You are not alone, dear friend! Most companies face these challenges on a daily basis.”
In fact, you are being expected to be “THE Business Analyst of the Future”.
Successfully managing software development projects is a challenge faced by the largest of companies and surveys have shown for years that mind-boggling number of software projects fail each year.
We will focus our articles on creating a recipe for successfully executing software projects.
The multiple roles of “THE Business Analyst of the Future” that we mentioned above can take on different meanings in different companies. So, let us define what each means in the context of our articles.
Business Analyst: The person who talks to the client, understands the business requirements, and communicates the specifications to the development and QA teams in the best possible format. This person also helps in usability and functional testing.
Project Manager: This is the person who plans the execution, manages the resources and the scope, monitors the progress, and ensures that project is being executed within budget. In other words, this is the “Spreadsheets guy or gal” of the project.
Technical Lead: This person is in-charge of the development activities. He or she defines best coding and design practices, ensures compliance with them, manages various versions of the code, designs the database and is responsible for a quality output meeting the specifications.
These tutorials are meant to help you if you frequently don one or more of these roles and are finding the going tough.
In addition, these tutorials are extremely useful to
- webpreneurs with a brilliant idea and little money and even less time to execute and launch
- independent managers who are hired to manage programmers from all corners of the world and deliver the project without glitches
- Programmers who are asked to develop rock solid applications and are intent on doing more than coding for the success of the projects and the clients
You will also find these lessons useful if you are facing one or more of the following situations:
- You are asked to manage projects of 1-10 people and deliver within 3-9 months. So, there is a lot less time to plan and document than you would ideally like.
- The business folks do not have clarity on the requirements. They want to get started and refine as they go along.
- You need to build a prototype really fast, showcase it to various stakeholders, or to investors for funding, and then move to the main software development.
- You need to respond to RFPs and need to have an edge over your competitors.
By no means is this an exhaustive list of situations for which these tutorials are useful. But we are sure you got the idea.
To summarize, when you have limited money, time and resources and still need to deliver a top class software application or product, there is very little room for error. You need to plan and execute with precision. These tutorials are about that.
By the way, to benefit from these lessons, you need not be a trained, certified kinda business analyst or a project manager. In fact, you can become THE Business Analyst of the Future without knowing the SDLC processes inside out, and without having a PMP certification from PMI or a Six Sigma black (or any other colored) belt.
We believe that these tutorials can be used by any intelligent person with the right attitude. We do not demand prior knowledge, although there is no denying the fact that such knowledge is useful.
A word to the high achievers managing such projects and the certified folks - You are the drivers of a company’s growth but our focus is on helping people who find themselves in situations and roles described above.
We encourage you also to go through the series of articles we will be posting on the subject. Next time you need to build a prototype really fast, we are sure you will be pleasantly surprised at how these simple techniques can prove to be so effective.
And while we are at it, let us just keep it simple.
“We will focus more on the practical aspects than on theory.”
You can learn the complexities of the subject on the go. And learn you must, for we would only be scraping the tip of the iceberg. But in doing so, we will make the process easier for you.
We will also list many resources at a later time during the course that you would find useful both for learning and to find necessary tools to help you manage your projects effectively.
This is in addition to the tools we will describe while discussing various aspects of software development in this course.
So let us dive straight into the details in the next lesson.
Next Article in this Series
Skills you must have to be “THE Business Analyst of the Future”…No, the list does not include “formal training”
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