As I was growing up, I quickly realized something about myself… I am not naturally organized.
In high school, while other students had their organization systems of folders, notebooks, and a planner, I was the person with a pile of papers at the bottom of my backpack, always trying to find that piece of homework I completed the night before.
Unfortunately, throughout high school and even college, I never did develop a good system that worked for me. Sure I would attempt to stay organized and put some grand scheme in place, but I would always find myself eventually getting complacent and not following through.
Fortunately for me, as I became a Business Analyst, I was able to turn the corner and become organized. and it was all because of one small, but extremely powerful piece of software.
Before I reveal my secret software, let’s explore why organization is important for a Business Analyst. It is pretty simply really, one of the common reason projects fail is due to missed and inaccurate requirements.
It is not simply the Business Analyst’s job to elicit the requirements, but more importantly it is to document them. An undocumented requirement will never be solved for.
Regardless of how bright you are and how good your memory is, you will forget some of the important details and your projects will suffer. Hey, maybe the miss can be identified early enough that it doesn’t cause much of an impact, but likely not.
Don’t leave it to chance. Use the Business Analyst’s secret weapon, Microsoft OneNote.
OneNote gives you the ability to, among other things, take notes, make sketches, mark action items, import meeting details, attach documents, and instantly email your notes out to anyone who needs to be kept in the loop.
If you haven’t used OneNote before, it can be a bit intimidating. There are a ton of features and the abilities of the application continue to grow.
While you can certainly learn the application on your own and fumble through trying to understand how it all works, I instead recommend taking some training to really unlock its potential in a fraction of the time.
I thought after four years working with it I knew everything about OneNote. Instructor Brian Culp certainly proved me wrong.
In his OneNote – Like a Boss training course, not only does he do an outstanding job to cover the basics and make you feel comfortable with the navigation and terminology, but has also taught me, the wily veteran of OneNote, several features of the software I had no idea existed!
Whether you have never used OneNote before or consider yourself a seasoned user, I highly recommend you check out the OneNote – Like a Boss training course.
Your future stakeholders will thank you!
– Written by Jeremy Aschenbrenner, The BA Guide
