Sam Cordes

I am Sam Cordes, a senior business analyst with 30 years of experience across government, utilities, education, mining, and health. I have spent three decades helping organisations understand their problems before reaching for solutions, which is the core discipline of business analysis and the hardest thing to do well. In 2024 I founded Ash, a free AI built on everything I have learned across those 30 years. Ash is a virtual business analyst you can ask anything, whether you are a practising BA looking for a quick answer, a project manager trying to understand a concept, or someone who has never had the title but does the work every day. The Business Analyst’s Toolkit has been my platform for sharing practical BA knowledge since its early days. It has always been about giving analysts the tools and clarity they need to do their best work. Ash is the natural evolution of that purpose, taking three decades of domain knowledge and making it available to anyone who needs it, on demand. I am based in Coffs Harbour, New South Wales, and I work at the intersection of business analysis, AI, and practical knowledge design.

AI Assistant Built for Business Analysis Methodology

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If you are mid-project and reaching for an AI tool to help you structure a requirements document or work through a complex business rule, the tool you pick matters more than you might expect. An AI assistant built for business analysis methodology starts from a completely different knowledge base than a general-purpose text generator. This article explains exactly where that difference shows up in real BA work, and what to look for when choosing the right tool.

How Companies Hire Business Analysts: The Real Process

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The formal hiring process and the real decision-making process run in parallel, and they rarely line up perfectly. Understanding how companies hire business analysts means knowing what each layer of the process is actually filtering for. This article breaks down what happens behind the scenes and what you need to do differently to get shortlisted and hired.

Business Requirements Document vs Functional Requirements Document

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If you are sitting with a project in front of you and someone has asked for either a BRD or an FRD, the distinction matters more than most people realise. This article explains exactly what each document does, when you need it, and how to make the right call for your specific situation. Drawn from 25 years of BA practice across government, utilities, health, and enterprise environments.

AI Assistant to Write a BRD: How Ash Guides You

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If you need to use an AI assistant to write a BRD and you have a deadline bearing down on you, this article walks you through exactly how a conversational approach works in practice. It covers what Ash asks, what you need to bring into the session, and what a real mid-project example looked like when a stakeholder conflict surfaced mid-draft. You will finish reading with a clear picture of how to turn your workshop notes into a document ready for review.

Business Analyst Scope Creep Governance: Survival Guide

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When project governance is weak, scope creep flows directly through the BA’s work. This article gives you the specific tools to hold scope boundaries, escalate effectively, and protect your requirements even when formal structures are not functioning. Drawn from real BA practice across government, utilities, and shared services environments.

Business Analyst Documentation vs Analysis: The Real Job

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Too many BAs invest most of their energy in producing artefacts and not enough in the thinking that should sit behind them. This article draws a clear line between business analyst documentation vs analysis, shows what genuine analytical work looks like in practice, and gives you concrete steps to shift how you work right now.

Business Requirements Document Template Word

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A business requirements document template in Word gives you the structure, but it will not tell you what to write inside each section or how to handle the friction that comes once stakeholders start reviewing. This article walks you through how to complete every section of a BRD template in Word, drawing on real project experience including a government case management system that went through twelve revision cycles before approval.

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