About Us

Be Practical. Make It Work.

We at EBG Consulting have our eye on your bottom line. We help your business and technical teams get product requirements right so your projects start smart and deliver the right product at the right time.

Based on many years of experience in a variety of domains, we specialize in calibrating your current practices to help you produce timely, quality results. EBG is a leader in helping traditional business and IT teams incorporate collaborative requirements practices into agile planning. We help you learn and leverage industry-proven practices. We closely follow the latest industry trends and research, and we adapt those that provide clear benefits. EBG's practical, integrated approach improves your teams' productivity.

How Is EBG Different?

Expertise. Partnership. Credibility, Quality. Read more.

Ellen Gottesdiener

Ellen Gottesdiener, Principal Consultant and Founder of EBG Consulting, Inc., is a requirements expert who works with both traditional and agile teams to help them deliver the right product at the right time. Her first book, Requirements by Collaboration: Workshops for Defining Needs (Addison-Wesley, 2002) describes how to use multiple models to elicit requirements in collaborative. Her second book, The Software Requirements Memory Jogger (GOAL/QPC, 2005) is the "go to" industry guide for requirements good practices.

Ellen is a Certified Professional Facilitator (CPF) and has extensive experience as a professional workshop facilitator, focusing on helping projects start smart through facilitated workshops.

Ellen is a Certified Scrum Master (CSM), an agile coach, and agile trainer with a passion about agile requirements. She works with large, complex products and helps teams elicit just enough requirements to achieve iteration and product goals.

She is an expert reviewer for the International Institute of Business Analysis (IIBA) Business Analysis Body of Knowledge® (BABOK®), a member of the IIBA® Endorsed Education Provider committee, and advisor for several industry conferences.

(For more on how EBG Consulting contributes to the IIBA, click here).

Ellen writes articles for numerous online and print journals, has contributed to chapters to several books and speaks at a variety of conferences (e.g., Agile 20xx, Agile Development Practices, IEEE Requirements Engineering, ProjectSummit/Business Analysis World, Project World & World Congress for Business Analysis, Software Development Best Practices).

Ellen is a practitioner who works on client projects and also delivers training seminars.

Ellen also writes a free monthly eNewsletter, "Success with Requirements".

Before founding EBG, Ellen spent 13 years as a manager, team leader, developer, and trainer with a major insurance and financial services organization.

You can email Ellen at: ellen@ebgconsulting.com.

Mary Gorman

Mary Gorman, Vice President, Quality & Delivery at EBG Consulting, assists project teams to explore, analyze, and build robust business and system requirements. Mary has over 25 years experience working with many organizations, including numerous Fortune 100 companies, as a consultant, mentor, trainer, facilitator, process engineer, developer, and analyst. Mary is a CBAP™ (Certified Business Analysis Professional™).

Mary is a frequent and popular speaker at numerous conferences (e.g., ProjectSummit/Business Analysis World, Project World & World Congress for Business Analysis, Software Development Best Practices) as well as at IIBA chapters. She writes regularly on requirements topics for StickyMinds.com, RequirementsNetwork.com, and other resources and sites for the business analysis community.

Mary serves on the Body of Knowledge® (BABOK®) Committee of the International Institute of Business Analysis (IIBA) and is leader of the Elicitation subcommittee. She also serves on the team responsible for creating the certification exam for the Certified Business Analysis Professional ™(CBAP™) .

(For more on how EBG Consulting contributes to the IIBA, click here)

You can email Mary at: mary@ebgconsulting.com.

Susan Burk

Sue Burk, senior associate at EBG Consulting, enables business and technical organizations to meet business needs better through excellence in requirements analysis. She has more than twenty-five years of experience in working with business, application development, data management, and business intelligence teams—and with centers of excellence and competency centers—as a practitioner, trainer, mentor, modeler, and facilitator.

She specializes in working with organizations whose information and application assets are manifested in a combination of contemporary, legacy, and purchased implementations. She enables them to achieve a more uniform and integrated approach to problem definition and solution. She focuses on helping them overcome the fear-uncertainty-doubt factors associated with making changes in their practices. She enables teams to take a more iterative, risk-driven approach to their initiatives. She is also a Certified Scrum Master and supports teams adopting agile and lean practices.

Sue’s presentations on analysis, modeling, and facilitation topics have been featured for more than seventeen years at user groups throughout the United States, including the Data Management Association (DAMA) and the International Institute of Business Analysis (IIBA). She also shares her knowledge and experience on requirements topics as part of Tech Target’s “Ask The Expert” series. You can email Sue at: sue (at) ebgconsulting.com.

Paul R. Reed, Jr.

Paul R. Reed, Jr., Senior Associate with EBG Consulting has assisted many organizations with their application assessment and development needs. He is a Certified Scrum Master and is author of "Developing Applications with Java and UML" and "Developing Applications with Visual Basic and UML" both published by Addison-Wesley.

Paul delivers EBG Consulting's requirements training, including Analysis Modeling and Agile Requirements. Paul also leads seminars worldwide on such topics as use cases analysis, object-oriented design, Unified Process, and agile methods. He is a popular speaker at many noted industry events (e.g., Project Summit/Business Analysis World, Software Development West, BEA World, and the Software Developer conferences, Software Development Best Psractices, and UML World).

Paul excels at mentoring small teams using agile techniques to capture, validate and certify requirements. In addition, Paul uses his extensive background in software design and construction to help teams transition analysis artifacts to sound design in the context of constrained, iterative, and incremental lifecycles.

You can email Paul at: paul@ebgconsulting.com.

EBG's Clients

For over 17 years, EBG has served clients in a wide variety of industries including banking, financial services, government, healthcare, insurance, media, office equipment and services, pharmaceuticals, and publishing .

Here are some of our clients:

Abbott Labs, Aera Energy, AFLAC, Allegis Group, Allstate, American Financial Group, Ameritrade, Armstrong Industries, Appro Systems, Blue Cross/Blue Shield of Florida, Blue Cross/Blue Shield of Minnesota, Broad Institute, Cambridge Interactive Development Corporation, Cegeka, Chubb & Sons, City of Seattle, Cisco Systems, Digineer, Discount Tires, Eli Lilly and Company, E BSCO Publishing, Elsevier, Emerson Climate Technologies, ESPN, Farmer's Insurance, Galyan's, Gardner Group, GE Energy, GSI Commerce, Harley Davidson Credit, Harvard Pilgrim Health Care, Health Dialog, HealthStream, JP Morgan Chase, Kemper Insurance, Lexmark International, Mayo Clinic, MedPlus, Microsoft, National Institute of Health, NCAA, Northwestern Mutual, OGIS-RI Japan, Omgeo, PepsiCo, Pitney Bowes, Roche Diagnostics, RSM McGladrey, Inc., Sallie Mae, Schlumberger, Sealed Air, Shoplocal, St. Jude Hospital, State of Indiana Department of Corrections, Standard & Poors, State of Washington Department of Transportation, Telecom New Zealand, TexelTek, The TJX Companies, Thrivent Financial for Lutherans, Unum, Ultimate Software, U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, Vanderbilt University Medical Center, The Vanguard Group, Inc., Verizon, Vertex Pharmaceuticals, Wendy's, Wolters Kluwer

How We Help You Deliver the Right Product at the Right Time

Skills acquisition. Collaboration. Application and Adaptation. Read how we help you get results.

**What our clients say before working with us**

Trouble delivering ROI. Struggles with business analysis and requirements exploration. Strained business IT relationships. Sound familiar? Read our client comments

What our clients say after working with us

Our clients share their outcomes with you. Read more