The iPad became available for the first time here in Canada yesterday, and of course I pre-ordered one. In fact, I’m composing this post on it. As I get my thoughts together I will post my ideas on how it could become a useful tool for business analysts. I do think there’s some real potential here for this kind of computing as the right apps get developed. Right now there are some that are almost useful but in one way or another not quite right.

In particular, I’m thinking of some of the note-taking and brainstorming applications. They hove the ability to allow you to take notes in a session, capture associated diagrams, record audio, and so on…but most of them are aimed at students and so don’t feel quite right. There are no tools to help develop visions or business cases, track the status of a requirement or feature, and so forth, even though it wouldn’t take that much to add some basic support for those. If I had the time I might do it myself.