New webinar covers business analyst empowerment, hosted by voke, blueprint and HP

Theresa Lanowitz of voke Discusses Latest Research Showing How Requirements Definition and Management Can Enable IT Project Success; Case Study Demonstrates Results

Toronto, ON - August 20, 2008 — Tomorrow, August 21st, voke will unveil in detail the results of the voke Market Snapshot report on the Role of the Business Analyst in a webinar with Blueprint and HP. In this exclusive webinar, to be held at 11am PT/ 2pm ET on August 21st, participants will learn about the emerging role of the Business Analyst, and how to succeed and deliver value to the organization in this role.

Today more than ever, software projects must complete on time, on budget, and need to work seamlessly with existing applications. Global 2000 IT organizations are under tremendous pressure to maximize the impact of distributed resources in an effort to align IT and the business.

In this webinar, analyst Theresa Lanowitz of voke will explain how the Business Analyst is fast becoming the critical stakeholder to ensuring business and IT alignment by becoming the champion over project requirements. Lanowitz will discuss the recently unveiled voke Business Analyst research effort that includes:

• The role and practice of the Business Analyst in global IT organizations
• The correlation of project success to Business Analyst led practices of requirements definition and management
• The trends towards Business Analysts validating requirements before projects begin

"In a world where software is growing in importance to organizations of every kind, business analysts are of increasing importance to any enterprise, as they are the key conduit in delivering satisfaction by effectively defining and managing requirements to IT," said Theresa Lanowitz, founder of voke. "Today more than ever, the business analyst is critical to the success of the IT organization, and the business as a whole."

The webinar will also explore how empowering business analysts with a "requirements lifecycle" - visual requirements definition combined with risk-based requirements management - can ensure final application functionality maps directly to business needs.

"Business Analyst empowerment is a strategic imperative of Fortune 500 business organizations," said Matthew Morgan, Chief Marketing Officer at Blueprint. "The voke study articulates that organizations must optimize their requirements definition and management processes in order to make global IT projects successful. Distributed teams are here to stay, and a lifecycle approach to better business/IT collaboration delivers innovation, value, and efficiency."

The webinar will conclude with a live demonstration of the "requirements lifecycle" and discuss the ROI from a case study from a Fortune 500 financial organization that leveraged this approach to cut requirements definition time by 15%, cut test case creation time by 80%, reduce project waste/rework by 70%, and provided new levels of organizational agility for risk management.

To register for the webinar, please visit: http://www.requirementsnetwork.com/node/830

About Blueprint

Named a "Cool Vendor" in Application Development by leading analyst firm Gartner, Blueprint aligns business and IT teams by delivering the industry's leading requirements suite designed specifically for the business analyst. Blueprint solutions empower analyst teams to eliminate requirements misunderstanding by capturing, validating, and delivering precise business requirements to local or distributed IT application project teams. Blueprint's product line functions as a collaborative system for the requirements lifecycle, including requirements elicitation, elaboration, validation, and acceptance. Blueprint is a global provider, with presence in the United States, Canada, and Europe. For more information on Blueprint, visit http://www.blueprintsys.com.

Contact:

Zenobia Godschalk; ZAG Communications for Blueprint
zenobia@zagcommunications.com
(678) 799-8279