Sam Cordes A software requirement specification is the document that determines whether your development team builds the right thing or spends months building the wrong one. This article walks through how to structure, write, and get sign-off on an SRS that holds up under pressure. If you have an SRS to produce right now, this is where to start.
If you are starting out in business analysis or trying to move to the next level, the right free resources can close skill gaps faster than any paid course. This article walks through six genuinely useful tools from Bridging the Gap, covering skills assessment, requirements discovery, process templates, use cases, interview preparation, and career orientation. Each one is free to access and immediately applicable to real work.
The right business analysis templates let you stop formatting and start analysing. This guide covers which templates belong in your toolkit, how to adapt them across methodologies, and the real risks of using them poorly. Read it before you open another blank document.
Business analysis challenges are not abstract concepts — they are the daily friction that slows projects down and tests your confidence. This article gives you concrete strategies to handle the most common ones, drawn from real BA practice across government, utilities, and enterprise environments. Read it when you have a specific problem in front of you and need to act.
The responsibility of a Product Owner goes well beyond maintaining a backlog. This article breaks down what the role actually demands in practice, where it overlaps with business analysis, and how to perform it effectively on a real project, including when stakeholders push back hard.
This glossary includes key terms, definitions and concepts related to business analysis, and is an invaluable resource for professionals in this field. It serves as a common language between practitioners from different countries, domains and organisations who may use slightly different words or phrases for the same concept.
The product manager vs product owner distinction trips up even experienced business analysts, especially when both titles appear on the same project. This article breaks down where each role sits, how they behave differently across delivery methodologies, and what you can do right now to work more effectively with both. Includes a concrete worked example with a real point of friction.
Defining and tracking business analyst performance metrics is something most BAs either skip entirely or do badly. This article walks through how to select, plan, and use meaningful metrics on a real project, including what to do when a stakeholder challenges your measurement approach.
Non-functional requirements are the most consistently underdone section in any requirements specification. This guide gives you a structured category framework to work through on every project, concrete elicitation techniques that actually get stakeholders talking, and a real worked example showing where NFR coverage can fall apart and how to recover it.
If you are mid-project and trying to make sure you have covered every quality attribute the system needs to meet, this non functional requirements checklist is built for that task. It covers the six core NFR categories I return to on every engagement, with specific elicitation questions, a ready-to-use template, and guidance on cloud and SaaS scenarios. You can work through it section by section and have a solid NFR set drafted by end of day.
Business analyst problem solving is less about knowing the right methodology and more about developing a mental framework that keeps you focused on the actual problem rather than the nearest available solution. This article walks through the three areas that make the biggest practical difference: problem identification, elicitation, and audience-focused communication. I have drawn on 25 years of BA practice across government, utilities, and enterprise environments to show what this looks like when it gets complicated.