Daily Journaling Tips

I am very impatiently waiting for my invitation to join the Grid, 

(they have started inviting 100+ members to join every day as of October 2015... based on the average users signed up every day since they started and my member number of ~14900, I should have access by February 2016)

and found myself randomly looking at what other people have done since they started their web sites.

While doing to, I found a site that had/has some tips on daily journaling. Essentially, it goes like this: Use a template. Simple, right? And the recommended template she used was Michael Hyatt's.

I think this is a good idea that I want to remember.

Yesterday

What did I do yesterday?

[I don’t chronicle everything, of course. I just hit the highs and the lows—those activities or events I want to remember later.]

What lessons did I learn?

[I try to distill my experience down into a couple of lessons I want to remember. It’s not what happens to us but what we *learn* from what happens to us.]

Now

What am I thankful for right now?

[I journal in the morning, and this is one practical way I can begin my day with a sense of abundance and gratitude.]

How am I feeling right now?

[Feelings aren’t the be-all-end-all, but they are an important clue. In the past, I just ignored or suppressed my them. This gives me an opportunity to check in on myself.]

Today

What did I read today?

[I record a list of anything I’ve read since I last journaled, including Bible passages. Occasionally, I record a lesson or insight.]

What are my plans for today?

[I preview my schedule and my major tasks for the day, mostly to get focused on what needs to be done.]

What one thing must I accomplish today?

[I like to know the one thing I must get done, even if I don’t accomplish anything else. This helps me prioritize.]

Question of the Day Podcast

Not sure I have a whole lot to say about this, but I'm really enjoying these podcasts. A couple of guys sitting in a room, talking about stuff, not pretending to know everything about everything, but always offering up opinions...

Makes for interesting listening. And prompts me to think about things I don't always think about, which is a good thing, in my opinion.

Update:

I just learnt that this particular podcast is/was #1 on iTunes... apparently, I'm not the only person that enjoys it!

Loving my job today!

I mean, it's got to be great when you are sitting in a room full of health care providers from multiple provinces, patients, and system vendors talking about how we can move to a future state of a complete, accessible health record.

"What's going to happen?"

"Something wonderful."

2010

BABOK v3 - Got my copy!!

I'm very excited about this, as it happens; for the last three years, I have been getting pressure to become a CBAP (Certified Business Analyst Professional) through the IIBA, and I am more than a little resistant to the idea. Part of the pressure has been due to the fact becoming certified will slot me very firmly in the Senior Business Analyst category, which is good for both me and my consulting company, and the rest of the pressure is due to the fact that a new version of the BABOK was in the works, and "everyone should really get certified before it changes because it will be much more difficult afterwards" blah blah blah.

I get it, change is scary. And I should probably be more focused on the advancement of my career than I actually am.

At any rate, I renewed my IIBA membership yesterday, and downloaded my copy of the BABOK v3.0 today. All I have done is look through the table of contents and skim the "Summary of Changes from BABOK Guide v 2.0" and I am very excited.

Based on what I've read so far, this update has addressed a few key things that were missing (in my opinion) from the previous version, namely:

• How business analysts are involved in the design phase of an initiative
• Requirements Life Cycle Management, as opposed to just Requirements Analysis
• Strategy Analysis instead of Enterprise Analysis

There are a few others, but those are the ones I'm really excited about at first glance. 

In addition to those changes, there are updates to the underlying competencies that a business analyst should have, and some more very useful techniques have been described - for example:

• Backlog Management
• Business Case
• Prioritization
• Process Analysis
• Roles and Permissions Matrix

... I'm telling you, this is VERY exciting stuff!!!

And now you have a better glimpse of my geeky side. In case it was missing before.

It's THAT time of year again

<< Becoming a better business Analyst - Part 2

And by "THAT" I mean the time of year when I am forced to undergo an annual peer-, self- and supervisor/manager performance review.

On top of which, I have been asked to perform a peer review of a co-worker's business analysis artifacts.

All of which has brought back with emphasis the series of posts that I started last year about becoming a better business analyst.

I have had occasion this year (more so than most) to notice when someone's skill is not quite up to par, and now that I find myself needing to perform a formal self-review, here is my feedback about how I actually rank when looking at those underlying skills (as identified in the BABOK® Guide, Version 2.0) that all business analysts should have.

I just signed up for Snapchat

Sigh.

I really thought I had found all my social media outlets, and was done.

Facebook is good for me - I live very far from my family, and in some ways I can stay connected with them that way; Instagram, also good - I can take pictures, post them there automatically and have that add to my Facebook feed. Twitter I am taking a break from; haven't quite had the "aha" moment that some people get that causes them to become regular tweeters...

Snapchat, though?? I had absolutely no use for that in my social media repertoire.

Until today, when I read an article that led me to the Snapchat blog where I found "Discover".

And so now, I am a Snapchat user.

Anatidaephobia

The pervasive, irrational fear that, somewhere in the world, a duck is watching you.

Nellie Bly - a new-found personal hero

I am not quite sure how, but I managed to reach the age of 38 and never hear of Nellie Bly.

Now that I know about her, I feel this to have been a serious gap in my education.

Once again, I owe this expansion in my knowledge to Google, who today, May 5, 2015, featured a doodle honoring Nellie Bly, about whom a Google search returns the following descriptions:

• Daring Journalist
• Victorian Sensation
• Daredevil Reporter
• All-around Feminist Bad-Ass
• Trailblazing Journalist

And so, at a very high-level, here is what I know (and appreciate) about Elizabeth Jane Cochran/Cochrane, who wrote under the pseudonym of Nellie Bly for Joseph Pulitzer at New York World.

1. Her nickname as a girl was "Pinky" because she wore the color so much.
2. She rejected the idea that a women's place was only in the home, and her response argued how important it was for women to be independent and self-reliant.
3. Becoming a journalist, she rejected the traditional roles of fashion, society, and gardening, and under her own initiative, became a foreign correspondent from Mexico. Eventually, she had to leave the country to avoid arrest for criticizing the government.
4. She went undercover in an insane asylum in order to shed light on reports of abuse and neglect within the system, leading to a grand jury investigation and an overhaul of the system.
5. She set the first world record for traveling around the world in just over 72 days.
6. She married a millionaire manufacturer 42 years her senior, became the president of his company, and invented the stacking garbage can and a milk can. The company eventually went bankrupt due to embezzlement by employees.
7. She returned to journalism, became a war correspondent on Europe's East Front, and covered the Woman Suffrage Parade of 1913.

* All of the above points are from Wikipedia.

For future reading, here is a website with links to her articles: http://www.nellieblyonline.com/herwriting

Constraints

We should probably talk about constraints, and how they affect certain aspects of business analysis, namely requirements documents. The context of this discussion will be software application development.

A constraint is “a limitation or restriction.”

Typically, as a business analyst, there is a section of each document that is called “Constraints” and it has a list of items that the audience of the document needs to remember as they read it because they have a direct impact on the application that will be developed. This article is not about those constraints.

I do believe there are some constraints that get forgotten about, and those are the ones around the documents themselves.

In my opinion, which I invite you to counter, certain documents have constraints which are necessary to ensure that the document fulfills its purpose. As an example, a constraint of a requirements document is that it is not a “living” document. Design, by comparison, is a “living” document.

Pinterest - Picked for you

Loving this new feature!!!

I am still trying to figure out where to pin some of the things it thinks I will like, but that is because I love landscapes and travel and colour, and I pin places I actually want to go to a board called "Places I want to go" and then I pin all kinds of pretty landscapes to another board called "Things I want to Paint" and so it confuses Pinterest a bit, I think.

For now, I've created a new board called Inspiration, and that's where I'm pinning the things I want to pin that were picked for me that don't quite fit my painting or traveling goals.

Still love the new feature, though - it has widened my Pinterest horizons significantly, showing me things I never would have seen from my original feed.