Now obviously the best BA bookshelf is a couple of hundred meg of articles on your USB key, but failing that physical books are nice too. Probably the best bang-for-buck in any training budget can be had by buying a nice collection of books for your team and getting them to read them.
It doesn't matter if they all get lost (they will) the impact of a $50 books is bigger than a $1500 training course, and doesn't require any lost billing-days. So what should you buy?
Get a one good book each on:
What requirements are: Karl Eugene Wiegers, Requirements 2nd Ed
How to use User Stories: Mike Cohn, User Stories Applied
Process Modelling: Bruce Silver, BPMN Method & Style (Haven't actually read it, but everything Mr Silvers says is gold so I have no problem recommending it blind)
How to run a good Workshop: EGB, Requirements By Collaboration
Use Cases: Alitair Cockburn, Writing Effective Use Cases (What else?)
Enterprise Arch: W. Ross, Peter Weill, Enterprise Arch as Strategy
I suppose you could thrown in something on data modelling as well - but seriously if you have the head for data modelling you're fine, and if you don't a book isn't going to help. Same for UI design. For the record I have a head for data modelling, but I always need help with User Interfaces (Thomas! Mahesh!).
And this post is not proof-read because I don't have time. I'm going to try and post more often now, which means less quality too.
Amazon List Here
Great list Harris. I'd heard of Cockburn's book, but I'm not familiar with the rest. Probably something a developer like myself should be well across as well.
ReplyDeletePlanning on blogging more over at davidbolton.net too. Remind me if I don't ;)