27 posts tagged with "Community & Insights"

Here is my writing routine: the way how I structure my research on various topics and then write an article.

It is not my usual type of content, but it might be helpful to someone. And yes, I need to fill the vacuum while working on two new writing pieces: a book review and a new topic.

Writing Tools​

I use Obsidian as a knowledge base and content management. It is free, keeps your data in your hands, not in a vendor cloud, uses Markdown for formatting, and has a variety of great plugins. 

The latter is handy as my blog is also built with the MkDocs engine based on the Markdown format. So, I keep writing and editing in Markdown, which is very convenient. I don't particularly appreciate it when each tool tries to reinvent the wheel with its custom formatting, which is incompatible with anyone else. With Markdown files stored on my local machine and my cloud storage, I can quickly grab them and migrate them to another tool.

I use the Zettelkasten technique in Obsidian when I research something and need to document some information and my thoughts to reference it later. You can find a lot of information about this approach. I keep my notes connected with tags and internal references where possible. Obsidian provides a nice graph where I can filter out some notes and track references.

Once a year, I clean up by editing, merging, or even deleting some notes. So, I try to keep the number of my Markdown notes from spreading. You can see a part of the notes graph in the attached image below.

A month has almost passed, so here is a new edition of the BArszawa blog, where I serve as a contributor and editor: BArszawa Blog - April’24 Edition

What is inside:

Last month, I started summarizing all my API-related posts, workshops, and webinars into extended and structured reading. That is usually a part of the Essays section, where you can find my recent Replacing Legacy series.

Reflecting on my past materials about API, I realized they were disconnected and lacked a logical narrative. However, I am proud to share that I am starting anew, from simple concepts to in-depth reviews of various Interface Definition Languages, showing significant improvement in my approach.

The new chapter, "Analysis," focuses on business analysis and aspects of requirements engineering. That was tough to write and edit, cutting pieces that did not fit and made text difficult to comprehend. Hopefully, I will get a satisfactory result.

I am happy to introduce the third edition of the monthly BArszawa blog, to which I contribute as an author and editor:

BArszawa Blog - March’24 Edition

This time, let's talk about "Team Topologies: Organizing Business and Technology Teams for Fast Flow," a book about organizational design written by Matthew Skelton and Manuel Pais.

Looking at the title, this book is not about product management or business analysis...

Yes, you are right. This book is about constructing teams and establishing their interactions. It is not about my day-to-day work, but it is an area of my concern. I tend to read general books about management more and more. So we will discuss more such books in the future.

How did you find out about "Team Topologies"?

I heard about it during the Platform Engineering fundamentals course brought by Tyk (I have a fancy certificate, by the way). There were a lot of references to that book, so I decided to add it to my reading list. It is funny, but "Team Topology" references many other sources but combines them into a solid idea.

The book basically addresses the most common problem, probably on the humanity level.

What kind of problem do you mean? We have plenty of those.

Communication. The lack of it, to be precise.

I am proud to present the second edition of the monthly newsletter made by BArszawa - the Business Analysis community in Warsaw. In one of the previous posts, I explained what this community is and my role in it.

Here is a link to BArszawa Blog - February’24 Edition

I act as an editor, combining some materials gathered by the Community OrgTeam, writing a foreword, and publishing on different media platforms.

Hoping you enjoy that post and find it helpful. Please feel free to share it with your friends and colleagues, support us, and visit us if you appear to be in Warsaw, Poland.

In 2023, I became a part of the fantastic local community of business analysts, product owners, and product managers who recently relocated to Warsaw. I soon joined the OrgTeam, and we made about a dozen meetups and coffee talks last year. In 2024, we started expanding our media presence, so now we have a blog with the first post available!

Overview​

Following a theoretical Part 1, I was glad to talk about more practical API-related things and ways they can be designed.

While preparing for the webinar, I expanded my knowledge of the FastAPI Python framework to design mocks. Some of them were not only displaying docs in Swagger UI but also worked kind of. My overall purpose was not only to talk about APIs from the Business Analysis perspective but to show them.

Following a theoretical Part 1 of the "Requirements & API" webinar, the second part will come on November 9 at 18:00 (GMT+2). Here is a LinkedIn event with a Zoom link.

Overview​

On October 26, 2023, I hosted a webinar for Business Analysts about API and the requirements specifics about that (announcement).

I was very excited about that opportunity. Even that part was based on my previous materials published here in my blog, and from the offline API workshop, I spent a lot of time polishing and re-structuring the content to fit a remote audience with different backgrounds.