Business Analysis Basics

• http://www.modernanalyst.com/Community/ModernAnalystBlog/tabid/181/Default.aspx
• http://benwarsop.wordpress.com/
• http://practicalanalyst.com/
• http://www.b2ttraining.com/blog/
• http://agileanalysis.blogspot.com/
• http://www.bridging-the-gap.com/

As social media become more and more important to the lives of business analysts, I thought I would provide you with a list of business analysts and business analysis subject matter experts to follow on Twitter. Click on the links below to explore their Twitter profiles. My profile can be viewed at http://twitter.com/cmcspiritt.

• http://twitter.com/iagconsulting
• http://twitter.com/lerzah
• http://twitter.com/jonbab1
• http://twitter.com/JenniferBanzon
• http://twitter.com/bainsight
• http://twitter.com/GreySkinnedBoy
• http://twitter.com/DougGtheBA
• http://twitter.com/alexpapworth
• http://twitter.com/dwwright99
• http://twitter.com/ModernAnalyst

If you have any others you think I should include in the list, please let me know.

Business Analysis Planning and Monitoring

• Knowledge area that covers how business analysts determine which activities are necessary in order to complete a business analysis effort.
• Covers identification of stakeholders, selection of business analysis techniques, the process that will be used to manage requirements, and how to assess the progress of the work.

Elicitation

• Describes how business analysts work with stakeholders to identify and understand their needs and concerns, and understand the environment in which they work.
• The purpose of elicitation is to ensure that a stakeholder’s actual underlying needs are understood, rather than their stated or superficial desires.

Requirements Management and Communication

• Describes how business analysts manage conflicts, issues, and changes in order to ensure that stakeholders and the project team remain in agreement on the solution scope, how requirements are communicated to stakeholders, and how knowledge gained by the business analyst is maintained for future use.

Enterprise Analysis

• Describes how business analysts identify a business need, refine and clarify the definition of that need, and define a solution scope that can feasibly be implemented by the business.
• This knowledge area describes problem definition and analysis, business case development, feasibility studies, and the definition of solution scope.

Requirements Analysis

• Describes how business analysts prioritize and progressively elaborate stakeholder and solution requirements in order to enable the project team to implement a solution that will meet the needs of the sponsoring organization and stakeholders.
• Involves analyzing stakeholder needs to define solutions that meet those needs, assessing the current state of the business to identify and recommend improvements, and the verification and validation of the resulting requirements.

Solution Assessment and Validation

• Describes how business analysts assess proposed solutions to determine which solution best fits the business need, identify gaps and shortcomings in solutions, and determine necessary workarounds or changes to the solution.
• Describes how business analysts assess deployed solutions to see how well they met the original need so that the sponsoring organization can assess the performance and effectiveness of the solution.

Underlying Competencies

• Describes the behaviors, knowledge, and other characteristics that support the effective performance of business analysis.

Domains

• Domains are an area undergoing analysis

Solutions

• A solution is a set of changes to the current state of an organization that are made in order to enable the organization to meet a business need, solve a problem, or take advantage of an opportunity.
• Examples of solutions and solution components include software applications, web services, business processes, the business rules that govern that process, an information technology application, a revised organizational structure, outsourcing, insourcing, redefining job roles, or any other method of creating a capability needed by an organization.
• Business analysis helps organization define the optimal solution for their needs, given the set of constraints (including time, budget, regulations, and others) under which that organization operates.

Requirements

• Condition or capability needed by a stakeholder to solve a problem or achieve an objective.
• A condition or capability that must be met or possessed by a solution or solution component to satisfy a contract, standard, specification, or other formally imposed documents.
• One of the key objectives of business analysis is to ensure that requirements are visible to and understood by all stakeholders.
• A requirement may describe the current of future state of any aspect of the enterprise.
  • Requirements Classification Scheme
  • Business Requirements
    • Higher level statements of the goals, objectives, or needs of the enterprise.
    • Describe why a project has been initiated, the objectives the project will achieve, and the metrics that will be used to measure its success.
    • They are developed and defined through enterprise analysis.
  • Stakeholder Requirements
    • Statements of the needs of a particular stakeholder or class of stakeholders.
    • They describe the needs that a given stakeholder has and how that stakeholder will interact with the solution.
    • Stakeholder requirements serve as a bridge between business requirements and the various classes of solution requirements.
    • They are developed and refined through requirements analysis.
  • Solution Requirements
    • Describe the characteristics of a solution that meet business requirements and stakeholder requirements.
    • They are developed and defined through requirements analysis.
    • They are frequently divided into sub-categories:
      • Functional Requirements
        • Describe the behavior and information that the solution will manage
        • Describe the capabilities the solution will be able to perform in terms of behavior or operations
        • Non-functional requirements
          • Capture conditions that do not directly relate to the behavior or functionality of the solution, but rather describe environmental conditions under which the solution must remain effective.
          • Also knows as quality or supplementary requirements
          • Often include requirements related to capacity, speed, security, availability, and the information architecture and presentation of the user interface.
  • Transition Requirements
    • Describe capabilities that the solution must have in order to facilitate transition from the current state of the enterprise to a desired future state, but that will not be needed once that transition is complete.
    • They are differentiated because they are always temporary and cannot be developed until both an existing and new solution are defined.
    • They typically cover data conversion from existing systems, skill gaps that must be addressed, and other related changes to reach the desired future state.
    • They are developed through solution assessment and validation.

• Business analysis is a set of tasks and techniques used to work as a liaison among stakeholders in order to understand the structure, policies, and operations of an organization, and to recommend solutions that enable the organization to achieve its goals.
• Business analysis is performed to define and validate solutions that meet business needs, goals, or objectives.
• The business analyst is responsible for eliciting the actual needs of stakeholders, not simply their expressed desires.
• Business analysts often play a central role in aligning the needs of business units with the capabilities delivered by information technology, and may serve as a “translator” between those groups.