Job Skills
Key Transferable Skills for Business Analysts
There’s always debate about which skills in business analysis are the most important and most transferable. The answers always seem to come back to these: Communications Skills Interpersonal Skills Technical Skills Research and Analytical Skills Organizational Skills If you join the International Institute of Business Analysis, you’ll have access to A Guide to the Business Analysis Body of Knowledge (the BABOK Guide) and the underlying business analysis competencies it lists. Here’s more detail on the transferable skills, which should help if… continue…
Would My Client Hire Me Next Time?
By Brad Egeland Have you ever asked your spouse if they would choose you again if they could do it all over? I have, but I have to be careful which day to ask. Likewise, have you ever wondered whether your client would hire you again? Was your performance such that they would want you? For most of us, I’m sure the answer is a resounding yes. But there are always those uncertain cases out there, some of them even… continue…
The Environments Needed for Smart SharePoint Development
What environments SharePoint developers utilize as a part of their solution delivery life-cycle is crucial. The model outlined below is meant to empower the developer to the greatest extent possible, while also safeguarding SharePoint. Every month, more enterprises begin using this approach. The Development Environment The Development environment should have only one server, even if your production SharePoint farm has multiple servers. The reason for this is simple: Visual Studio does not play nice when debugging a multiple-server farm. If… continue…
6 Stories to Help You Find Better Pay
With tech salaries rising to their highest level in a decade last year, it’s a good time to size up your marketability and maybe push your boss for a bit more money. But how? For starters, think location, location, location. What works in real estate can also play out when it comes to salary, since jobs in some metro areas yield better compensation than similar jobs in other locales. Surprisingly, Pittsburgh tech professionals reaped the largest percentage increase in pay… continue…
Programming Languages That Aren’t Worth Your Time
As we all know, it seems like new programming languages are created every week. But which ones aren’t worth wasting your time on? I looked at actual listings on Dice to try to spot some trends. In late April, I searched both the entire set of job listings as well as specific job titles to see what skills companies were actually looking for. Here’s what I found. First, it’s safe to say that the Web is the primary focus of… continue…
Adding Custom Fonts to Your Web Pages
The Need for Custom Web Fonts On the Web, fonts have traditionally been limited to those regarded as “Web safe,” which in turn leads to something of a generic look to most company pages. Fonts — that is, the style in which letters, numbers, punctuation and special characters are visually presented — have long been a way in which brands and businesses distinguish themselves in the marketplace. For example, the distinctive Coca Cola font has been nearly unchanged for over… continue…
4 Steps to Effective Change Control
Change control is something that is inevitable even with the most successful projects. I’m not sure I’ve ever worked on a project that didn’t have at least one modification made along the way. What’s critical is that you know how to manage change and ensure the project remains on track — and ultimately successful — despite it. When you’re starting a project, it’s important to ensure there is a change control process available. If the company you work for doesn’t… continue…
New Certification: HP Focuses On Embedded IT
Hewlett-Packard has created a certification, focused on skills needed to implement cross-department IT initiatives, as a way to achieve business goals. It’s another indication that technology departments — and technology staffers — are being incorporated into business units as opposed to being operations unto themselves. The Accredited Technical Associate-IT for Business certification (ATA-IT) will provide coursework and practical experience on business-driven technology initiatives. Last fall’s Business Intelligence Congress called for more real-world experiences in college curricula to prepare students for… continue…
Implementing Video and Audio in HTML5
By Dale Reynolds Since Tim Berners-Lee first published it in 1991, HTML has been the one and only way that clients and servers on the Web could communicate. Initially just handling text was sufficient, but over time Web pages became more complex and required new functions. Among the changes implemented were the tags that allow scripting languages to create dynamic pages, reduce interactions between clients and servers, and provide the kind of media-heavy websites that have become all-but ubiquitous. As… continue…
How to Build a Project’s Business Case
One of the many tasks business analysts are inevitably called on to do is create a business case. As defined by the Business Analysis Body of Knowledge, a business case justifies the investment required to deliver a proposed solution. A business case is part of the due diligence process. By measuring the benefits, costs and risks associated with the investment being made in a particular project or product, it assesses and evaluates the options available to solve the business issue.… continue…
Alice Hill
C.S. Magor
Cat Miller
David Brumbaugh
David Chie
Dawn Kawamoto
Don Willmott
Elisabeth Greenbaum Kasson
Gayle Laakmann McDowell
Lekan Oguntoyinbo
Leslie Stevens-Huffman
M Noivad
Mark Feffer
nick kolakowski
Stephen Lahanas
Susan Hall
Vincent Chow
