Curiosity drives the business analyst's discovery of an organization’s needs.

When business analysts start on a project, they become curious about the organization, its values, goals, and needs from solutions. The organization’s values, goals, and needs create the context for their curiosity about the deeper needs.

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Your First Deliverable: Curiosity (Key Story)

Your First Deliverable: Curiosity excerpts:

• Katherine expresses genuine curiosity about Emily's job, asking specific questions about her challenges. Emily responds in kind with curiosity, discovering that she and Katherine have more in common than she thought. Katherine persuades Emily to continue that professional curiosity with the customer. Emily's curiosity pleasantly surprises the customer team by showing her interest in their project, as well as her technical expertise.
• Develop curiosity about what a customer needs from your solution and encourage stakeholders to have the same curiosity about customer needs.

Develop Trust While Developing a Solution

Develop Trust While Developing a Solution excerpts:

• Emily felt overwhelmed. She made a habit of paying attention to people and their needs, but had not received such positive attention until now. She said, "Thank you so much. I loved working with everyone here and learned a lot. I realize that it took longer than expected to deliver the prototype, and appreciate you taking the extra time to make sure that we had a successful outcome." The team stands up and applauds. Emily earned the respect of the team, starting with her curiosity and attentiveness.

Discovery with a C.A.U.S.E.

Discovery with a C.A.U.S.E. excerpts:

• You capture all of their data access needs. You move on to their day-to-day processes, capturing every business need they share, even those not required for the initial implementation. You maintain your curiosity, asking them, "what else?" until they have nothing left to share. The tension on the call settles down.