Community Updates

If you wonder what MVP looks like…

This May in Warsaw was packed with multiple events and good weather. In #BArszawa, we had an informal BA coffee talk #7, where we discussed various topics, from renewing a driver's license and taking a mortgage to non-functional requirements. And we love to talk about non-functional requirements as no one else.

Later in May, we met with the magnificent Ekaterina Sadovskaya, who shared her experience on “Mitigating the deadline challenges.” Everyone does not like deadlines, so that is a hot topic. Managing stakeholders’ expectations and being very cautious with dependencies is very important. After the speech, we had a group therapy where we worked through a painful past experience and discussed a technique of non-committing to anything.

Lovely people

Special thanks to Tatyana Pribolovets and Akveo for providing us with a WeWork event space!

Announcements

DataArt Summer IT Camp starts on June 3, so you can apply till June 2nd. There will be multiple webinars, workshops + free courses about AI and cultural differences. Don’t miss it!
There will be a huge offline event in Warsaw: “Women In Tech Summit,” with an amazing lineup of speakers and panelists.
The BArszawa meetups and this blog will take a pause during the summer. So we can recharge batteries and return to you with more insightful and inspirational events for the 2024 fall-winter season. But we will still continue with BA coffee talks, + there will be one secret event in mid-summer. Stay tuned for the latest updates in our Telegram chat.

Featured Article: A few words about (the death of) UML

by Ilya Zakharau

Recently, we discussed in our Telegram chat whether UML (Unified Modeling Language) is dead or never alive (link 1 and link 2). We agreed that it is more likely dead, but learning it is still useful. And no one prohibits you from using it in daily BA activities. However, UML is dead as an industry standard.

When I started my path in Business Analysis about a decade ago, I studied UML, expecting to use diagrams as a primary way to communicate requirements visually. I was surprised that neither my colleagues (software developers, architects, quality assurance) nor customers knew it. They could instinctively read those diagrams but didn’t know the notation.

At that time, on some projects, C4 diagrams (Context, Container, Component, Class) were mandatory artifacts to pass a system for acceptance testing. But that felt like an outdated bureaucratic demand as those were drawn post-factum by a junior developer with a corresponding quality.

That made me realize that UML might still be around for Business Analysts, but something is wrong with it on a larger scale.

So, what happened with UML? Let’s dive into history because to understand where to lead, we need to understand how we got there in the first place.

In the 1990s, there was a popular idea about replacing traditional boring software development with fancy visual tools where ordinary people would be able to define everything with diagrams. That sounds very familiar, isn’t it?

There was a company called Rational Rose, which became a leading tool for visual modeling and design using object-oriented techniques. They used a proprietary notation that, in the mid-90s, resulted in UML.

In 2003, Rational Software was acquired by IBM for a lot of money, and it became part of IBM's software development portfolio and integrated into the IBM Rational suite of tools. Where found it corporate death.

A key point here is that UML originally was a vendor-driven notation, and when it ended up trapped in IBM’s hand, it lost its relevance for the general software development audience. In some countries, like Russia, UML is still around because IMB had a strong position there from the 1990s to the 2010s. Thus, UML is carved in stone in some corporate minds, but that doesn’t make it alive.

A different story with BPMN (Business Process Model Notation), which is driven by the Business Process Management Initiative (BPMI), a community of professionals. So now it has a great ecosystem that is definitely alive compared with its older brother (UML).

As a BA, should I learn UML? Why not, it won’t hurt. Some types of diagrams are still used (Activity, State-machine, Sequence) but do not strictly follow formal notation. It also can be the first step before diving into more complex notation (and alive) notation.

So I recommend making yourself familiar with i, but don’t invest much time learning it (as I did). Unless it is a job requirement or you work with some IBM legacy.

Useful Materials

Handmade Business Analysis Synopsis. I’m the laziest person (the “I” here means Stepan) on Earth, and when I see such things, it’s like finding a treasure. So, I’ve collected several pictures from its author (Anna Kastsevich) LinkedIn to gather as a synopsis on 1 page. I hope you like the result.
Product Manager Interview Case. This is just another interview case to train the Product mindset.
Our valuable member, Antanina Harshkova, talks on a very important topic of anxiety and mental health of a Business Analyst in her speech “How to overcome anxiety and start doing business analysis.” We usually tend to shut down and overlook our emotions, which ends up with huge stress and depression. Tonya suggests strategies on how to monitor your emotions and deal with anxiety.

Recently, the BArszawa delegation attended an “On the Spot Development” meetup about Cybersecurity. The last speech about the hidden risks of AI security from Shai Alon, Director of AI Innovation at Orca Security, is top-notch. The speaker unveils the potential vulnerabilities of AI models on the stage. That shows that AI brings new opportunities (~~to lose your job~~) and critical security changes. Must watch for everyone.

Our traditional rubriс where Ilya Zakharau desperately promotes his articles: “About My Writing Routine,” with recipes on how to structure and write articles on professional topics, “Product Manager: Year Three” is the last chapter of the annual whining on the hard fate of product managers.

Divio’s Documentation System is a framework for categorizing and structuring your product documentation. These are the best guidelines on documentation I (Ilya) have ever read. It inspired me to reshape the documentation of the service my team owned; since then, we have had the best docs in the entire organization.

The blog edition contributors:

Stepan Sazanovets

Ilya Zakharau

Thank you for being with us,

See you in September!

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About BArszawa

Meetups, coffee talks and valuable content for BA, PO, and PMs

BArszawa Blog #7 (December’24)

BArszawa Blog #6 (September'24)

BArszawa Blog #5 (May’24)