Overview of the Services Provided

Welcome! My name is Thomas Eklund. Throughout this website you will find information on the database and report development, business analysis and project management services that I provide, work that I have done in the past and articles that I have written on the related topics.

Based on my over 9 years of IT experience, I can say that customized solutions that are truly built for the users needs can substantially increase application users productivity and effectiveness. Equally importantly, they make life easier and better for the people who use them.

How Can Business Analyst Increase the Value of the Outcome?

The work that I have done over the years as business analyst is very similar to what Mike Schaffner describes in his excellent article on the requirements for a business analyst.

In addition to working as a business analyst, I have also built the applications, reports, self-service report centers and other computer application functionality parts that are described on this website. So, I can look at things from different perspectives.

Keeping this in mind, I will say that business analyst being closely involved in the development process can help to ensure that the users needs are built into the application's functionality as needed, to increase the usability of the outcome, and to increase the probability that the outcome is delivered within the schedule and budget.

Further, the better the business analyst understands how IT solutions can help to move the company forward in a competitive marketplace, the better solutions can the business analyst provide as well that help to materialize business management and development related opportunities.

It should be the obligation of the business analyst to understand and document the users needs and to help to ensure, that the end result actually functions the way the users need and want. If the developers and programmers work without such insights, it is more likely that the outcome is driven by engineering thinking, rather than by usability and users needs.

Here are some examples.

• From application development basics to usability, reporting and data mining, understanding, documenting and verifying the users needs and workflows helps to increase the probability that the development project is successful.
• On a basic level, subject matters and their characteristics become tables and table fields, user actions and results that need to be generated determine the functionality, and information flows and workflows determine the user interface development aspects.
• When users needs and workflows drive the user interface design, the outcome tends to have higher usability. For an engineer, it may seem only natural to put functionality parts next to each other on the user interfaces, wherever there is space available. Application users, however, need the functionality parts to be available to them in accordance with their workflows, and the way they process information in the application usage processes.
• The less interaction there is with the users during the development and testing processes that also involve a competent business analyst, the more likely it is that some of the users needs are overlooked. In each such instance, once the application is ready to be used, the users may have to do more work than they otherwise would have to do. Multiply this pay the number of application usage instances and you can get big bottom line differences.
• Similarly, if application developers are the only quality controllers, they test their own application usage assumptions. The users, however, need their application usage processes to be tested for bugs and other problems. This is another area where business analyst's involvement is needed.

My Work as Business Analyst, Developer and Project Manager

Looking and evaluating objectives, problems and opportunities from different stakeholders perspective helps to provide effective solutions.

Accordingly, I approach project planning and implementation from the users needs, goals and milestone structure perspective. I identify the objectives and scope, cost-effective development steps, resource needs and other relevant variables.

In the process I use my experience from all the database application development fields, so that I can build effective bridges between the users needs and the development capabilities.

This way I can both develop myself and in a teamwork environment contribute to developing outcomes that adhere to the budget and schedule, have high quality and good usability and make the users more productive.

• I have hands-on experience as a project manager, business analyst and user requirements documenter, application architecture and navigation structure developer, user interface designer and usability engineer, table structure and other objects developer, programmer, quality controller and user trainer.
• As an analyst, developer and project manager, I am very good at workflow, information flow and business process identification and analysis, documentation and relevant application and solution development.
• On a self-taught MBA level I am familiar with different business management areas and concepts and I continue to learn more. In combination with my service oriented disposition, analytical skills and educational background, this increases my ability to translate the users needs and wants into computer applications and other types of IT and business solutions.
• Years ago I developed my skills from Excel power user to an expert-level Access developer-programmer. I have also worked with other technologies (SQL Server, SharePoint, MS Office suite, MySQL, Web technologies). I am very interested in learning additional technologies and in developing my skills further as an analyst.
• I have experience with materializing short-term, medium-sized and long-term projects. For example, custom developed blogging website front end user-facing functionality specifications, and the back end content management system specifications, and SalesGetter sales CRM application prototype took a lot of business analysis work to put together. These big and complex projects, and also other projects that I have worked on and applications that I have built are described in the next, Work History subsection, and throughout this website.
• Further, for two and a half years I worked on a self-funded creative thinking skills management project.
• Creative thinking skills management is closely related to all areas of project and business management, innovation, new product and service development, and to computer application functionality development.
• For documenting creative thinking processes from creativity usage perspective I used an approach that is similar to documenting subject matters and information flow (workflow) in IT business analysis cases for complex applications, except that for project specific rules I used US patent application filing guidelines.
• If you think that IT business analysis can be difficult, try developing documentation for how human creativity works! Without any precedent to go by, developing this project from scratch was a true challenge. I wanted to see, if it is even possible to document human creativity this way. I also wanted to see, if I can do this, so that I produce an outcome that can be used for explaining different type of creativity usage instances and processes.
• The outcome of this project, CreativityModel Method, is a scalable and programmable creative thinking skills management method that addresses goal oriented business creativity and self-expressive artistic creativity usage, so that both types of creative thinking skills can be combined as necessary. CreativityModel Method can also be used for building intelligently behaving computer application functionality, so that the results can be created with less resources than artificial intelligence engineering and expert systems require.
• This method and creativity management topics remain my hobby. However, this experience helped me to develop further my expertise with handling large amounts of complex information flows as a business analyst. Further, working on this project has helped me to enhance my business creativity and solution providing skills.
• Working independently on a big project that is based on an area of interest requires a lot of discipline and consistent effort. Persistence and dedication to getting results is also part of what I offer to my employer.

Next subsection provides an overview of my work history and descriptive examples of work that I have done as business analyst and database application, report and report center developer.