Analysing the current state Flashcards
What is background research. Why is it important and what are the four key sources ?
Allows Analysts to be informed
- Website for the organisation
- Company reports
- Procedure manuals and documentation
- Organisation chart
What may you find in each of these key sources ?
- Website for the organisation:
What organisation does, value and mission
Brand presentation and optics to customers
Potential view of products/services
Customer feedback/review
Company reports:
Financial position
P and L/Balance sheets
Procedure manual and documentation:
Prior research for projects, could include current process information and any procedure manuals.
Organisation chart:
Shape of organisation, Span of control, Structure of organisation, Centralized or decentralized business model
What are the advantages of a Workshop ?
- Gain a broad view of the area under investigation
- Increase speed and productivity
- Collaborative
- Easy to obtain buy-in and acceptance for the project
- Gain consensus view or group agreement
What are the disadvantages of a Workshop ?
- Extensive preparation time
- Undue influence of dominant personalities
- Authority limitations
What are the types of observation ?
Formal observation
Protocol Analysis
Shadowing
Ethnographic studies
What are the advantages of observation
- Greater understanding of the problems and difficulties faced by the business users
- Seeing tasked performed helps generate effective follow up questions for interviews
- In depth understanding helps aid development of effective business solution
What are the disadvantages of observation ?
- Individuals may behave differently if they know they are being watched
- Analyst only sees whats happening on an isolated occasion
What is formal observation ?
Involves watching a task being performed
What is protocol analysis?
Involves asking business staff to carry out a specified task and describe each step they perform while doing this
What is shadowing?
Involves following a member of staff for a period to find out hat a particular job entails
What is ethnographic studies ?
Involves spending an extended period of time within the target environment
- This approach can also be very useful when analysing complex business systems
where the staff members are highly expert in conducting their work and the business
rules are difficult to assimilate
State the potential advantages of interviews
- Building rapport
- Can acquire information about a business situation
- Yielding of important information
- Identify different stakeholder perspectives and priorities
- Obtain information on stakeholders personal concerns
- Opportunity to investigate new areas that were not previously mentioned
- Identify and collect examples of documents , forms and reports used by the clients
State the potential disadvantages of interviews
- Significant investment in time and budget
- Information elicited is often based on opinion. quantitative data may be required to substantiate information
-Different interviewees often hold different views and, where this is the case,
the business analyst needs to analyse the information gathered in order to
identify conflicts
What is scenario analysis ?
Involves telling the story of a task of transaction
When is scenario analysis most beneficial
When analysing or redesigning business processes as they help both the staff member and analyst think through steps followed to carry out a piece of work
