In This Issue
Industry Insight
Hot Jobs on LinkedIn & Facebook
Need a Laugh?
Chicago Telecom Professionals
Message from Richard McFarlane
Meet Our Consultants
Quick Links
Industry Insight
In its ongoing quest to acquire spectrum, Sprint is buying US Cellular markets including Chicago and St. Louis for $480m.

Hot Jobs on Facebook & LinkedIn    

We are now posting job opportunities on our LinkedIn page and our Facebook page. "Like" us today!

Need a Laugh? messages   
credit Star Tribune 
Chicago Telecom Professionals 
Do you work in the Chicago metro area or have colleagues who do? Check out Chicago Telecom Professionals, and join us for our next meeting.  Email for more info.
Please contact us any time with questions, feedback, or just to exchange ideas about telecom industry issues.  You can reach us at 847-782-1500 or [email protected].  For the latest information, visit us at www.atswireless.com. 

Sincerely,

Richard McFarlane
Alliance Telecom Solutions
Message from Richard McFarlane, President

 

 

I am sure we are all glad to have the election decided, whether your candidate won or lost. Definition is always better than uncertainty.

 

As we move into the season for more industry meetings, I am looking forward to attending the Telemanagement Forum next month. This is truly an international event, with over 60,000 people expected to attend. It is a chance to get outside our US-only view and hear about growth and innovation in other countries.

 

We will be meeting with vendors, service providers and people who study our industry in an effort to determine the issues on your mind as we move into 2013. We will be contacting many of you personally to hear your views if possible, while at the show. I welcome the opportunity to get your thoughts over a coffee. Please let me know if you plan to attend.


 

Meet our Consultants: Dan Shumaker

 

Alliance is fortunate to have experienced and articulate people as part of our consultant community.  Dan Shumaker has been doing  Business Analysis for nine years, and has written a thoughtful piece that we would like to share with you.  Here are Dan's thoughts, and I would welcome your comments.

 

****************dan

 

A Philosophy of IT Business Analysis 

 

The Importance of Mutual Understanding

I work in software development as an IT Business Systems Analyst. That means I help the business users of software, its developers, and all other stakeholders understand each other so well that the software delivered is what the business needs and wants.

 

The steps to facilitate that level of understanding involve a lot of conversations and documentation of the business expectations for the new or revised software - requirements - using a variety of documents and diagrams designed to facilitate mutual understanding. But it's easy to get caught up in delivering documents that record all that information and forget that the goal of this liaison role is mutual understanding, not mere agreement.

 

There can be a big difference between the two; project stakeholders often understand the information in those deliverables differently. My experience is that these differences in understanding are usually uncovered late in the software development project and are a major cause of project delays. And worse, the resulting software can miss the mark so far that it must be partially or fully discarded. Sometimes management becomes so frustrated that they purge development staff, abandon the whole project or outsource it - all for a want of mutual understanding that went undetected.

 

 

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To read the rest of Dan's piece, please visit our website.  I look forward to hearing what you think of his perspective.  To request Dan on your next project or to see his full profile, click here.