Business analysis is a professional disciplineKathleen B Hass, Richard Vander Horst, Kimi Ziemski (2008). From Analyst to Leader: Elevating the Role of the Business Analyst Management Concepts, 2008. . p94: "As the discipline of business analysis becomes professionalized" focused on identifying business needs and determining solutions to business problems. Solutions may include a software systems development component, process improvements or organizational changes and may involve extensive analysis, strategic planning and policy development. A person dedicated to carrying out these tasks within an organization is called a business analyst or BA.
Business analysts are not limited to projects involving software system development. They may also collaborate across the organization, addressing business challenges alongside key stakeholders. Whilst most of the work that business analysts do today relates to software development / solutions, this is due to the ongoing massive changes businesses all over the world are experiencing in their attempts to digitise.
Although there are different role definitions, depending upon the organization, there does seem to be an area of common ground where most business analysts work. The responsibilities appear to be:
To investigate business systems, taking a holistic view of the situation. This may include examining elements of the organisation structures and staff development issues as well as current processes and IT systems. To evaluate actions to improve the operation of a business system. Again, this may require an examination of organisational structure and staff development needs, to ensure that they are in line with any proposed process redesign and IT system development. To document the business requirements for the IT system support using appropriate documentation standards.
In line with this, the core business analyst role could be defined as an internal consultancy role that has the responsibility of investigating business situations, identifying and evaluating options for improving business systems, defining requirements, and ensuring the effective use of information systems in meeting the needs of the business.
Sub-disciplines
Business analysis as a discipline includes requirements analysis, sometimes also called requirements engineering. It focuses on ensuring the changes made to an organisation are aligned with its strategic goals. These changes include changes to strategies, structures, policies, business rules, processes, and information systems.
Examples of business analysis include:
Enterprise analysis or company analysis Focuses on understanding the needs of the business as a whole, its strategic direction, and identifying initiatives that will allow a business to meet those strategic goals. It also includes:
Creating and maintaining the business architecture Conducting feasibility studies Identifying new business opportunities Scoping and defining new business opportunities Preparing the business case Conducting the initial risk assessment
Requirements planning and management Involves planning on how the business analyst will go about gathering the requirement, in what order, using which techniques, which stakeholders, and the schedule that s/he will follow. Requirement management on the other hand involves the process business analyst will follow to maintain a finalized requirement up to date, including any requested changes in the requirements.
Requirements elicitation
Describes techniques for collecting requirements from stakeholders in a project. Techniques for requirements elicitation include:
Brainstorming Document analysis Focus group Interface analysis Interviews/questionnaire Workshops Reverse engineering Surveys User task analysis Process mapping Observation/job shadowing Design thinking Prototyping
Requirements analysis and documentation Describes how to develop and specify requirements in sufficient detail to allow them to be successfully implemented by a project team.
Analysis
The major forms of analysis are:
Architecture analysis Business process analysis Object-oriented analysis Structured analysis Data warehouse analysis, storage and databases analysis
Documentation Requirements documentation can take several forms:
Textual – for example, stories that summarize specific information Matrix – for example, a table of requirements with priorities Diagrams – for example, how data flows from one structure to the other Wireframe – for example, how elements are required in a website, Models – for example, 3-D models that describes a character in a computer game
Requirements communication Describes techniques for ensuring that stakeholders have a shared understanding of the requirements and how they will be implemented.
Solution assessment and validation Describes how the business analyst can verify the correctness of a proposed solution, support the implementation of a solution, and assess possible shortcomings in the implementation.
Techniques There are a number of generic business techniques that a business analyst will use when facilitating business change.
Some of these techniques include:
PESTLE
This is used to perform an external environmental analysis by examining the many different external factors affecting an organization.
The six attributes of PESTLE:
Political (current and potential influences from political pressures) Economic (the local, national and world economy impact) Sociological (the ways in which a society can affect an organization) Technological (the effect of new and emerging technology) Legal (the effect of national and world legislation) Environmental (the local, national and world environmental issues)
Heptalysis This is used to perform an in-depth analysis of early stage businesses/ventures on seven important categories:
Market opportunity Product/solution Execution plan Financial engine Human capital Potential return Margin of safety
STEER
It is essentially another take on PESTLE. It factors in the same elements of PESTLE and should not be considered a tool on its own except when an author/user prefers to use this acronym as opposed to PESTLE. STEER puts into consideration the following:
Socio-cultural Technological Economic Ecological Regulatory factors
MOST This is used to perform an internal environmental analysis by defining the attributes of MOST to ensure that the project you are working on is aligned to each of the four attributes.
The four attributes of MOST are:
Mission (where the business intends to go) Objectives (the key goals which will help achieve the mission) Strategies (options for moving forward) Tactics (how strategies are put into action)
SWOT A SWOT analysis is used to evaluate the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats of a business, or organisation. The analysis involves identifying and analysing the key internal and external factors that impact the organisation’s ability to achieve its goals and objectives.
The four attributes of SWOT analysis are:
Strengths – What are the advantages? What is currently done well? (e.g. key area of best-performing activities of the company) Weaknesses – What should be improved? What is there to overcome? (e.g. key area where one is performing unsatisfactorily) Opportunities – What good opportunities face the organization? (e.g. key area where competitors are performing poorly) Threats – What obstacles does the organization face? (e.g. key area where competitors will perform well)
CATWOE This is used to prompt thinking about what the business is trying to achieve. Business perspectives help the business analyst to consider the impact of any proposed solution on the people involved.
There are six elements of CATWOE:
Customers – who are the beneficiaries of the highest level business process and how does the issue affect them? Actors – who is involved in the situation, who will be involved in implementing solutions and what will impact their success? Transformation process – what processes or systems are affected by the issue? Worldview – what is the big picture and what are the wider impacts of the issue? Owner – who owns the process or situation being investigated and what role will they play in the solution? Environmental constraints – what are the constraints and limitations that will impact the solution and its success?
de Bono's Six Thinking Hats
This is often used in a brainstorming session to generate and analyse ideas and options. It is useful to encourage specific types of thinking and can be a convenient and symbolic way to request someone to "switch gears". It involves restricting the group to only thinking in specific ways – giving ideas and analysis in the "mood" of the time. Also known as the Six Thinking Hats.
White: pure facts, logical. Green: creative. Yellow: bright, optimistic, positive. Black: negative, devil's advocate. Red: emotional. Blue: cold, control.
Not all colors/moods have to be used.
Five whys
Five whys is used to get to the root of what is really happening in a single instance. For each answer given, a further 'why' is asked.
MoSCoW This is used to prioritize requirements by allocating an appropriate priority, gauging it against the validity of the requirement itself and its priority against other requirements.
MoSCoW comprises:
Must have – or else delivery will be a failure Should have – otherwise will have to adopt a workaround Could have – to increase delivery satisfaction Won't have this time – useful to the exclude requirements from this delivery timeframe
VPEC-T
This technique is used when analyzing the expectations of multiple parties having different views of a system in which they all have an interest in common, but have different priorities and different responsibilities.
Values – constitute the objectives, beliefs and concerns of all parties participating. They may be financial, social, tangible and intangible Policies – constraints that govern what may be done and the manner in which it may be done Events – real-world proceedings that stimulate activity Content – the meaningful portion of the documents, conversations, messages, etc. that are produced and used by all aspects of business activity Trust – between users of the system and their right to access and change information within it
SCRS
The SCRS approach in business analysis claims that the analysis should flow from the high-level business strategy to the solution, through the current state and the requirements. SCRS stands for:
Strategy Current state Requirements Solution
Business Analysis Canvas The Business Analysis Canvas is a tool that enables business analysts to quickly present a high level view of the activities that will be completed as part of the business analysis work allocation. The Business Analysis Canvas is broken into several sections.
Project objective Stakeholder Deliverable Impact to target operating model Communication approach Responsibilities Scheduling Key dates
The Canvas has activities and questions the business analyst can ask the organization to help build out the content.
Business Process Analysis