Business Analysis Explained

 

Basic concepts according to the BABOK, necessary for the understanding of areas of knowledge of business analysis. Is "the role of a business analyst", "demand" and "types of requirements."

According to the BABOK, Business Analyst acts as an intermediary between all stakeholders, identifying, analyzing and approving requirements for changes to business processes, corporate policies and information systems." The business analyst must understand the challenges and opportunities presented to the business in the context of the specific requirements and recommend a solution that will enable the organization to achieve its goals. The key concept here is the requirement that a body of knowledge is defined as:

•   condition or characteristic is necessary to the person concerned (stakeholder) to solve a problem or achieve the goal;
•   condition, or characteristic that must be met by the system or system component to match the contract, standard, specification or other formal document;
•   documented representation of conditions or characteristics, as defined above.

 

This is a fairly abstract definition clarifies the concepts of the different types of requirements that are introduced in the BABOK depending on the area of solved problems by business analysts and methodologies applied to them. Provide high-level definition of the goals, objectives and needs of the organization. Business requirements allow us to describe the reasons for which initiated a project, the opportunities that this project should ensure and metrics that can measure its success.

 

•     User requirements. Describe the needs of the individual stakeholder or group of persons.
•     Functional requirements. Describe the behavior of solutions and information, which it will manage. Functional requirements describe the features that implements the system, in terms of the operations carried out by it.
•     Quality of service requirements. Determine the environmental conditions under which the solution must remain effective. In terms of functionality, these solutions are not directly related.
•     Assumptions and limitations. Identify those aspects of the problem areas that are non-functional requirements, but will impose certain restrictions or otherwise affect the project.

  

Working with different types of requirements are detailed in the descriptions of the areas of knowledge, which BABOK states for professional business analysis there are six:

 

•         analysis of corporate (enterprise analysis);
•         planning and management of requirements (requirements planning and management);
•         identification of requirements (requirements elicitation);
•         discussion of requirements (requirements communication);
•         analysis and documentation requirements (requirements analysis and documentation);
•         assessment and approval of solutions (solution assessment and validation).

 

Corporate Analysis implies a general idea of the current state and prospects of the business, needed to form the context of requirements and functional design specific initiatives or long-term planning. Actions in the corporate analysis enables business analysts to understand the organizational environment in which it operates, and to assess whether the planned projects provide a company-wide achievement of business objectives.

Corporate Analysis in some organizations is seen as an investment initiative to assess the feasibility of projects and the formation of business architecture and of itself is implemented as a project. In general, the actions and approaches described in the knowledge of corporate analysis, used by a business analyst at the pre-stage and in the initial stages of the project to implement solutions for business. These include the establishment of the business architecture, the study of the existing conditions for the optimal business solutions, identification and description of new business opportunities, the creation of a business case, conduct an initial risk assessment and training solutions. At the corporate level, the analysis is performed identifying and documenting business requirements.

 

Knowledge areas of business analysis

Field of knowledge of planning and requirements management describes all the tasks and resources that employs a business analyst in the planning and management actions for gathering requirements. The business analyst must determine such actions and how to implement them in the project according to the standards adopted by the organization, including identifying key role in gathering requirements, select the appropriate action to control the coverage requirements and manage communications on the status of the process of gathering requirements. It is necessary to take into account a number of factors, in particular to assess how the selected actions correspond to the unique circumstances of this particular project, as far as work is coordinated with the requirements of the other actions within the framework of the project. Need to ensure that the entire team responsible for requirements management, had a common understanding of the actions is to gather the requirements of that business analysts have the ability to track and necessary to respond to emerging requirements, to use all necessary resources (people and tools), and adequately reflect changes in requirements.

 

Eliciting requirements – A key objective of business analysis. The requirements are the foundation for the solution of business problems, so how they will be complete, clearly defined, correct and consistent, directly affects the quality and efficiency of future solutions. In this area of knowledge BABOK introduces standard methods to be used by the analyst to collect (or "identification") system requirements? – Business system, an automated solution, or both together. Solving business problems may involve the establishment of a new system or upgrading an existing one. Field of knowledge elicitation helps professional business analyst select appropriate methods and tools for gathering requirements, based on the applicability of a particular method in a particular organization, its key features, assess the strengths and weaknesses.

Area of expertise dedicated to the analysis and documentation of requirements, describes how the analyzes are structured and are specified needs of the stakeholders that need to be used in the design and implementation of solutions. The whole purpose of this activity is to identify and describe the characteristics of an acceptable solution to a business problem, by which the project team will be able to understand how to develop and implement the decision.

In this area of knowledge BABOK introduces methods and tools for structuring the raw data collected in the process of identifying requirements, identify gaps in existing information and identifying the possibilities for future solutions that must be documented. The results of the analysis process and documentation requirements will use the members of the project team to develop the estimates of time, resources and budget needed to create a solution that would fully meet the specified requirements. It is emphasized that the documentation itself is just one of several methods by which a business analyst would seek consensus among all stakeholders as to how and what the system should do. With the help documentation business analyst specifies the model and solutions in an iterative process of interaction with stakeholders seeks to ensure that the proposed requirements have led to the creation solutions that meet the needs, goals and objectives of the users.

Discussion of the requirements involves a set of actions that enable the court to render a wide audience and Other Residential results of the process analysis and documentation requirements. In fact, the discussion of requirements is a constant, iterative work that is performed in parallel with the processes of collecting, analyzing and documenting requirements. This activity is reduced to the interaction with stakeholders and experts responsible for implementing the project, in order to present them to the identified requirements in a clear manner and get their confirmation of the selected requirements.

In this area of expertise to the fore the communicative potential of business intelligence, his ability to select the format and structure of reporting requirements for a particular audience, determine the appropriate time to communicate with the right people and the best way to communicate for each situation. The ultimate goal? – Get confirmation on the whole set of requirements prior to implementing solutions.

Assessment and approval of solutions – Area of expertise includes business analysis tasks that help ensure that the created solution meets the needs of stakeholders, thoroughly tested and implemented optimally. Once agreement is reached, what should be the solution, a business analyst involved in the work of the technical team, helping her break-scale project into phases, check the results of the design and build an application that is convenient for users. If it is not about the development and the acquisition system, the role of a business analyst at this stage, according to the BABOK, is to help make the right decisions for setting up the packet and determine the requirements for the interface. Then, the business analyst is connected to the process of testing? – His job is to help interested individuals from the business in the user testing solutions. BABOK emphasizes that the business analyst is responsible for the compliance of the developed solutions to the tasks and evaluate the success of the project has been completed.

In addition to the areas of knowledge, in a separate chapter BABOK lists the "basic training" (Fundamentals) – General competencies, skills, techniques and knowledge that should own a business analyst, in order to effectively perform their tasks within the business analysis.

BABOK creators emphasize that body of knowledge is not a methodology, that is, determining the types of activities, tasks, and knowledge that should own a professional business analyst, this document does not give any guidance on the sequence of execution of these actions and the application of that knowledge. Proposed areas of knowledge are universal, their use allows a business analyst to work with projects of any size and complexity with any methodology of software solutions