Hi, everybody!
Happy 5W-1h Sunday.
Here’s your dose of Who? What? Why? Where? When? How?, a curation of articles, podcasts and videos that piqued my curiosity this week.
Enjoy!
WHO needs to work from the office?
The last forty years have taught us that the technology that most disrupts established industries is speed. The speed of connection to peers, to suppliers and most of all, to customers. The speed of decision making, of ignoring sunk costs and of coordinated action. The internet has pushed all of these things forward, and we’ve just discovered, the office was holding all of them back.
The end of the office | Seth Godin (Text at Seth’s Blog)
WHAT are we negotiating for?
When you order pizza from the menu: Is it customary to expect extra-toppings to be free? Is it customary to tell the chef that the cooking time is too long? Is it customary to play the restaurant off against the pizza parlour down the road?
Negotiating Pizza | Joe Newbert (Text at Newbert’s Blog)
WHY aren’t we prototyping this?
No matter how skilled the requirements analyst is or how informed and cooperative the customer participants are, the first set of requirements they develop will be only approximately correct. It takes a process of iterative refinement and validation to accurately understand the requirements for any nontrivial product.
Perfect Your Requirements and Designs With Prototypes | Karl Wiegers (Text at Modern Analyst)
WHERE should I improve to solve problems?
Rather than rushing to solve every problem and risk being inundated by poorly defined challenges that invite low-value solutions, the top business analysts develop the valuable skill of asking better questions to improve efficiency, reduce risk, and drive sustainable success.
The #1 reason organizations fail at problem-solving (and how business analysts can fix it) | Adriana Beal (Text at Analyst’s Corner)
WHEN should an idea be killed?
When his co-founder and team pushed forward the idea of analytics.js he believed the idea was doomed to fail and needed to be ‘killed’ as fast as possible. Instead of trying to convince his founders of his perspective, he proposed that they create a landing page and upload it to hacker news to test interest.
Focus on Evidence, Not Opinions. | Alex Osterwalder and Peter Reinhardt (Video at Strategyzer)
HOW can I become a more effective business analyst?
The 7 habits of highly effective BAs guide you in establishing thresholds and protocols for your analysis finish line and helps you determine how far you are from the finish line. These 7 habits provide you with a compass that guides you to determine when to hit the breaks and/or when to accelerate your analysis.
The 7 Habits Of Highly Effective BAs | Priyanka Agrawal (Text at BA Times)
And, as always, please give feedback on Twitter. Whose piece above stood out for you? What would you like more or less of? Other ideas? Please let me know. Just send a tweet to @joenewbert and put #5W1H at the end so I can find it.
Keep growing.
Joe
P.S. Where are you being negotiated?