Reply to: New business analyst site

[alex_papworth]

Made the change re project sponsor and planning to release a couple more articles over the next two days. I won't be doing anything too drastic on the overall structure yet though - need to do some investigation first

[wobbegong]

I prefer sites with tits.

HTH

In a nutshell. Good man!!



Good work though Alex (and welcome), I look forward to the 'new and improved' versions.

[alex_papworth]

Ouch - that hurt!

You are absolutely right - it's a key role for the BA. This would come under the 'people you keep sweet at all costs' category.
Might be interesting describing all the roles with their relative importance and influence as part of a more detailed article.

In my defence it was supposed to be a quick fly by of the roles. Nevertheless, I shall pull project sponsor out as a distinct role.

[PM-Junkie]

I like constructrive criticism. I'll need a bit of nice design and originality.

If you found the content useful and the site usable, would you use it as is? In other words, can I leave the nice design stuff to later or do you think that will directly impact on it's success?

All feedback gratefully received

Listing a project sponsor in "other possible roles" of a project is a major turn of for anyone who knows anything about projects, since the project sponsor is actually one of if not the most important role. They tend to pay the bills! I would expect a business analyst to be acutely aware of that.

[Jog On]

You can edit wordpress to behave like a traditional website and still retain the CMS and Google love (Google loves wordpress).

To start with you can create pages as opposed to posts and choose to display one as your home page instead of your most recent posts in a long list.

You can also choose how many posts to display on a page, add more catagories and divide it up a bit.

If you're comfortable with it you can edit your sidebar and get rid of the more 'bloggy' things to make it more like a site.

More and more people are turning to wordpress for full blown CRM website solutions as you can create edit a theme to look just like a professional site.

PM me if you want to know more and I can send you in the direction of some very reasonable resources to get a theme made up and designed - left hand/top navigation even!

[Bob Dalek]

I like constructrive criticism. I'll need a bit of nice design and originality.

If you found the content useful and the site usable, would you use it as is? In other words, can I leave the nice design stuff to later or do you think that will directly impact on it's success?

All feedback gratefully received

It was too dreadful to wade through. Perhaps when it's a bit more "sexy" (not necessarily full of tits, though by all means give it a try).

[Xenophon]

All feedback gratefully received

I prefer sites with tits.

HTH

[alex_papworth]

Advice taken on board

Thanks for the feedback - there's definitely some valid feedback and some themes. The usability is not great and something I'm going to have to tackle. Looks like I'll be hunting down something better than Wordpress as the current structure is going to impact its success.

For those of you who are interested, I was given this link on another forum http://www.useit.com/papers/webwriting/
regarding usability and found it very useful.

[Ravello]

I like constructrive criticism. I'll need a bit of nice design and originality.

If you found the content useful and the site usable, would you use it as is? In other words, can I leave the nice design stuff to later or do you think that will directly impact on it's success?

All feedback gratefully received

I might point a junior BA towards the site as a bit of background reading; as it currently stands though it's not (IMO) easy enough to dip in and out of to use it as a source of reference.

From what I read (3/4 of it) the content was pretty decent, but I suspect people would use it more if it was 'chunked' into bite-size pieces.

Personally, I'd like to see a bit in there about what defines Business Analysis versus Systems Analysis, but that's only as my client refuses to accept any distinction

Disclaimer: I'm a PM not a BA though so feel free to ignore as you see fit!

[Pinto]

I like constructrive criticism. I'll need a bit of nice design and originality.

If you found the content useful and the site usable, would you use it as is? In other words, can I leave the nice design stuff to later or do you think that will directly impact on it's success?

All feedback gratefully received

constructive

its

I think it needs another proofread to eliminate the apostrophe errors.

[Bear]

I like constructrive criticism. I'll need a bit of nice design and originality.

If you found the content useful and the site usable, would you use it as is? In other words, can I leave the nice design stuff to later or do you think that will directly impact on it's success?

All feedback gratefully received

I wouldn't use it as is - I'm not a fan of blogs for this sort of content. They're great for a diary, you know - 'This week I have been mostly doing....'

You don't need a full on CMS for a structured site - it doesn't take long to knock together a website for this sort of stuff.

[wxman]

There are thousands and thousands of blogs using that theme.

http://www.jroller.com/shareme
http://www.jroller.com/dlwhitehurst

etc etc.

Got to ditch it soon.

Yes and they are all dog slow to load
- puts me right off from the word go!

[alex_papworth]

I like constructrive criticism. I'll need a bit of nice design and originality.

If you found the content useful and the site usable, would you use it as is? In other words, can I leave the nice design stuff to later or do you think that will directly impact on it's success?

All feedback gratefully received

[minestrone]

There are thousands and thousands of blogs using that theme.

http://www.jroller.com/shareme
http://www.jroller.com/dlwhitehurst

etc etc.

Got to ditch it soon.

[Bob Dalek]

Not being deliberately nasty, but it's a bit too much like a dull Blog.

You need to pep it up.

Get someone who knows about web design to do it.