2. Business Analysis Techniques Flashcards
2.1 Investigating and documenting business situations 2.2 Stakeholder analysis and business perspectives 2.3 Modelling Business Activities 2.4 Business Events 2.5 Business Rules 2.6 Gap Analysis
Who might be the main stakeholders in a Business Analysis project?
Anyone affected by the change
+ Users of a system to be introduced/changed
+ Managers
+ Domain Experts, Sponsor, Developers, Testers
+ Regulators
How might the stakeholder perspectives influence the direction you take in a Business Analysis project?
+ Would identify conflicts in business objectives that would need to be resolved
+ Would identify constraints on what can and cannot be considered
+ Provides the basis of understanding and prioritising requirements
+ An agreed set of perspectives that aren’t drastically different will provide the basis for creating a consensus business activity model
+ Clarification of who owns the business system identifies the main decision maker (s) who must approve significant changes
Describe the approach you would take to help a manager who thinks that the current IT does not work very well and doesn’t support the business area.
+ Investigate and document the current business situation that the IT system contributes to (interviews, rich pictures etc.) because problems may be systemic and/or multifaceted
+ Carry out Stakeholder perspective analysis to establish different ideas about the system and reconcile these
+ Build BAMs for each perpective
+ Consolidate the BAMs
+ Use consensus BAM to conduct Gap Analysis
+ Identify shortcomings of the existing system and
possible improvement
+ Draft a business case
+ Discuss with manager and create a PID to establish objectives, scope, constraints, authority and resources for the project
How might you carry out gap analysis?
+ Compare documentation of the existing business system with the consensus BAM
+ Identify areas of activity where the work is carried out inefficiently or not carried out at all (and relevant to the business/project objective)
+ Carry out activity assessments on these activities, and for those activities with multiple actors, identify problems with As Is processes and draft high level Should Be processes for these and activites that don’t exist
+ Identify gaps between desired view and current systems from a more holistic perpective using POPIT
+ Derive a list of options for improvement
Name and describe at least one technique used to document the existing business situation.
+ Rich Pictures
Use of pictures and symbols in a free flowing way to explore:
Structure of the situation (this could be published org chars or working relationships between people and departments)
Stakeholders (their beliefs/opinions which are derived from their complaints/criticism about the business situation)
Processes (high level sequence of work, info or document flows between people and departments)
Values and beliefs ( What is deemed less important and the main focus of the business)
Culture (blame culture/supportive/conflict/forward looking/silo mentality)
+ Minds Maps+ Meeting reports
Free flowing way to capture info about a situation: main idea is at he centre and sub topics are the branches. more lower level sub topics are the twigs
+ Fishbone diagram
Root cause analysis where the main problem is the head of the fish, each bone of the fish’s body with high level category of factors affecting the problem: e.g. 4 Ps. The small bones identify for each category, factors hat may be affecting the problem
+ Context Diagrams
Shows the scope of the business situation and major business interactions. Mostly used to record context of IT systems
+ Requirements List
Used at this stage to capture any business requirements that arise
Name the categories of stakeholders.
Customers, Owners, Regulators, Employees, Project Team, etc.
Name and describe a technique used to analyse and prioritise stakeholders.
Power/Interest Grid
+ Helps prioritise stakeholders by attaching a weight to them based on heir level of interest in the project and the amount of power they have to further or obstruct it.
Identify strategies for how you will ensure ongoing stakeholder communication and management
High Power/No Interest
+ Watch - regularly check for any potential change in their position on the grid
High Power/Some Interest
+ Keep Satisfied - either to prevent them from taking a more direct interest in the project if their attitude is that of a blocker/opponent/critic, or to get them more actively involved if they are a champion/neutral or supporter.
High Power/High Interest
+ Constant active management - these have the power to make or break the project. Find some personal wins for them from the project, or find a powerful counter-force to outweigh their negative influence like another senior high power/high interest stakeholder
Some Power/Low-High Interest
+ Keep on side - Frequent positive communication needed along with involving them more in the project where necessary. Regulators/some middle or senior managers. Their interests may/may not be directly affected.
Low Power/Low Interest
+ Ignore
Low Power/Some-High Interest
+ Keep informed - effort needed to sell the project. Reiterate reasons/benefits for the change, consequences of not changing. Frequent focused communication about progress. These usually feel powerless to shape the direction of the change, though directly affected and this may lead to passive resistance
What is the rationale for understanding business perspectives?
+ Helps an analyst understand why a business system exists and its target audience
It helps us avoid overlooking stakeholder priorities and needs thus preventing us recommending inappropriate solutions
+ It helps us to identify conflicts and inconsistencies between stakeholders and their perspectives
+ Identifies the business owners who can authorise changes to the business system
What is a technique to analyse business perspectives and what are the steps involved
CATWOE
+ Identify the WORLDVIEW of the stakeholder. This is based on their beliefs about why the the business system exists, its values and priorities
+ Identify the TRANSFORMATION i.e. from the stakeholder’s point of view, the main business activities/tasks that turn inputs into outputs
+ Identify the OWNER of the business system
+ Identify the CUSTOMERS. The worldview and transformation can help with this
+ Identify the ACTORS. The roles required to carry out the transformation
+ Identify the main ENVIRONMENTAL factors affecting the business system (PESTLE)
+ Rewrite the CATWOE into a few sentences that summarises the stakeholder perspective of the business system (Root Definition)
+ Present the root definition with the stakeholder to confirm that their perspective has been understood
What would be your approach to resolving conflicts in business perspectives?
+ Create BAMs for the perspectives of key stakeholders
+ Identify and document differences across the BAMs
+ If differences are drastic, host a workshop where stakeholders can discuss their different opinions and decide on the most appropriate activities to take forward to form a consensus BAMs
+ If there is deadlock, the business sponsor may be called upon to decide between different views to take forward
What is the rationale for modelling a conceptual view of activities from a defined perspective (creating BAMs)?
It enables the business analyst to explore overlaps and differences between stakeholder perspectives.
It helps the analyst understand the business activities needed to materialise a consensus perspective and therefore assess whether such activities are already in place, in place but partially working or not in place.
It helps identify options to improve the business system.
How will you go about building a BAM and consensus BAM?
+ Firstly, identify 2-3 doing activities
+ Then, identify enabling activities. These are activities that obtain the resources so that doing activities can take place.
+ Then, identify planning activities. These deal with (i) making decisions about resources (ii) setting expected levels of performance
+ Then, identify monitoring activities. These are activities that check whether or not the system is operating at the required level of performance levels which were set during planning activities
+ Identify controlling activities. These are activities that may need performing if monitoring activities show that measures are not being met or performance expectations are too high/low.
What is the relationship between the business perspective and the BAM?
The BAM show the business activities needed to materialise a stakeholder perspective.
Furthermore,
The WORLDVIEW of the stakeholder perspective shows the stakeholder’s values and priorities and can therefore help with planning activities. Specifically with choosing what to measure when setting performance levels
The TRANSFORMATION of the stakeholder perspective corresponds with the doing activities
Outline the process for gap analysis.
+ Review documentation on existing business situation (rich pictures, meeting minutes, ‘as is’ process models etc.)
+ Review the activities on the consensus BAM
+Assess the priority of each activity on the consensus BAM. Those activities that are in place and working unsatisfactorily and those not in place should be given higher priority
+ Examine the relevance of each activity based on whether or not the activity supports the business and project objectives
+ For activities that do, conduct a business activity assessment and for activities not within scope, highlight potential problems with the activity but don’t go into any detail and exclude from the rest of the study.
+ After identifying the business event(s) for each activity in the business activity assessment(that’s in place but done unsatisfactorily or not in place), draw ‘as is’ process models for activities with multiple actors, to determine how each activity is performed
+ Analyse gaps between the ‘as is’ state and the desired state through the lens of POPIT to Identify a holistic set of options for improvement
People: Recruitment, Training, Appraisal, Reward
Organisation: Responsibilities, Boundaries, Resources
Processes: Too complex, not communicated, handoffs,
IT: Relevant, Integrated, Usable, Adaptable, Scalable
+ Assess the feasibility of each option to create a shortlist of 3-4 options to be carried forward to the business case
