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SharePoint is a very common big corporation content management tool and in the right hands, it can be quite powerful. I want to point out that SharePoint, is NOT a requirements management tool,  but if it’s all you have, then you have to make the best of it (Creative Thinking at its finest ladies and gentlemen). Now … I can spend days droning on and on about all the different features that SharePoint has that would work for business analysis, so I’m gonna stick to my top 5.  (Don’t forget to also check out Top Requirements Management Tools, to Make You A Battle Ready Business Analyst!)

Top 5 Features for Managing Requirements (and Agile Backlogs) on SharePoint

Below are out-of-the-box features that you should be able to use on even basic installations.

#5 Managing Business Requirements and Backlogs with Lists Views

Lists are essentially tables that you can use in a variety of ways in SharePoint. You can add and modify your requirements attributes (requirement ID, requirement, additional details, impacted systems, business owners, etc).  This is great when you need to organize your requirements or when stakeholders want to make sure all of their needs are covered.

#4 Exporting Requirements to Excel

If you’re working on a giant complex project with many working parts, different business analysts, and huge amounts of stakeholders, then exporting into a tool like Excel makes slicing and dicing and getting analytics on your requirements that much easier. If you have office 2007 or earlier, you can even edit the list from excel and sync it back to SharePoint. For some reason, they don’t allow it in Office 2010 (I was quite sad to lose that feature)

#3 Requirements Traceability with Look-Up Columns

Requirements traceability is one of the biggest pains in the butt to keep track of without a good tool.  You can add a column type called “look up”, pick the business requirements list, and then select which columns you want to show up in the function specification list. This way, you can see a filter to see how each business requirement is being met or for impact analysis and so forth.

#2 Discussions for Keeping Track of Decisions

One of the best things you can do for yourself is to not allow discussions via email. Require all questions and discussions to happen strictly via SharePoint discussions. This will ensure that all of your project decisions are stored someplace where anyone can see them. It’s also a good way to make sure all questions have been answered. Personally, I enhanced my discussion boards by adding fields for “who should be responding” and “is the question resolved”, so everybody can see what is open, unresolved, and needs their attention.

#1 Workflows to Make Everything Run Smoother

SharePoint has some default workflows (like emailing a person if they are assigned to something) or you can get fancy and write your own. I found them most useful for discussions as well as when using SharePoint as an Agile Backlog tool. When a requirement was complete, the development set a status that triggered an email to the product owner (business analyst, i.e. Me). I then had my own set of statuses that either triggered an email to the development team (if it failed) or to the business unit for final validation (if it passed). We did something similar for discussions and I would say it completely changed our efficiency and generally made everyone happier.

One of the most technical skills for a business analyst is learning how to use Structured Query Language abbreviated “SQL” (pronounced sequel). When browsing business analysis job listings, it is one of the few technical skills listed for the role. One question that gets asked often is “Do you need to have it”. So in this video, I quickly describe what is it and if it is actually that important.

If you want to learn or practice SQL, check out LearnSQL.com. They have a set of over 65 hands-on SQL courses. No need to install anything on your device, everything happens through your browser. All LearnSQL.com courses are interactive and based on real-life business scenarios, meaning you’ll be writing SQL queries and seeing them in action instantly.

LearnSQL.com

I’d like you to all also keep in mind that I’m excluding requirements management software in general because many of those require hefty licensing and aren’t really meant for a solo job. They are enterprise-wide tools (some of which are amazing), but not feasible for a lone business analyst trying to simplify his life.

Elicitation = Note Taking

Evernote

For me, elicitation involves a lot of note taking and Evernote is fantastic because you can access all your stuff from a browser, which is great, but you can also download apps for your mobile devices as well as desktops. Evernote is designed for note-taking, so it has a lot of great features like if you create a new note during a meeting on your calendar, it automatically titles it the same as the meeting (I’ve only tried this on the mobile apps). It has an Outlook plugin too and I love “Clearly” which is a chrome plugin that allows you to view articles without all the other frames and ads and clip them like that (cleaned up), directly to your Evernote notebooks. Also, It’s FREE!

Requirements Analysis: Modeling and Diagramming

LucidCharts, Gliffy, and Creatly

If you go to either of the websites for the above tools, you will quickly see that they are VERY similar. The all have everything you would need for business analysis modeling including wireframing, process modeling, data flow diagrams, and data models, you name it. The only things that stuck out to me was that LucidCharts has a more interactive wireframing capability (with different states), and Creatly has infographic capabilities, which are cool but are usually more for marketing. In any case, all of them would be great for a business analysis consultant who doesn’t want to be tied to a single machine. All of these have limited free versions, and are also all less than $10 per month for the full individual version

Requirements Management: Communication and Collaboration

Google Docs

I like Google Docs because you can easily share and collaborate online and you can work on the same document at the same time as someone else. It has all the things you need out of an office suite: Word processing, Spreadsheets, and Presentations. Google also has a drawing tool, but tools that aren’t meant for diagraming can sometimes be more of a pain than anything else, so I still recomend the above tools for diagramming.

Got Any Other Great Tools?

I’d love to hear about them and check them out and I’m sure our fellow BAs would too! Comment below or add your comments to this related post on Facebook.