ModernAnalyst.com

I came across modernanalyst.com a while ago, but was unimpressed. Quite apart from the name (which sounds to me like it should be a BBC television series from the open university from around 1982, populated by men in checkered shirts with beards discussing the philosophical differences between this and that), it was entirely lacking in content.

Luckily for me, I noticed a link to an article on the site about trends in business analysis for 2009 and although this particular article was not so great - "analysts are at the centre of all successful IT projects" seemed to be the underlying tone - it forced me back onto the site, which has been greatly enhanced.

It is full of interesting articles, a load of useful templates for download and a pretty active forum. It is this forum that I think will be valuable - it is all too easy to forget that there are people out there with exactly the same issues and concerns that you have, and there really is no need to reinvent the wheel - it is enough of a challenge to get one's head around the business, so leave the process templating to the world at large and profit from it!

They also seem to have affiliated themselves with the IIBA (International association of business analysis) - another organisation that I had been unimpressed with until fairly recently. The latest version of the "BABOK" that they produced is much improved - although it is still a bit heavyweight and "stodgy" (for want of a better word) and it looks like they are getting positive feedback for their analyst accredidation scheme.