Chapter 3 - Business Analysis Planning and Monitoring

The process of Business Analysis Planning and Monitoring can be described in three steps as follows

• Input
• Tasks
• Output

Input: Inputs can be defined as a problem or opportunity faced by business. It is necessary to consider what is known about the need at the time of planning while acknowledging that understanding evolves throughout business analysis activities.

Tasks: Tasks can be subcategorized as follows:

• Plan Business Analysis Approach: Business Analysis approach describes the overall method to be followed during business analysis work and how the task will be performed and what will be the deliverables produced.
• Plan Stakeholder Engagement: Planning Stakeholder Engagement involves analyzing stakeholders minutely to identify all the stakeholders involved and their characteristics. It later helps to define the best collaboration and communication approaches for the task and to measure expected risk for shareholders.
• Plan Business Analysis Governance: This process generally defines how decisions are made about requirements and designs, including reviews, change control, approvals and prioritizing.
• Plan Business Analysis Information Management: The purpose of this process is to define an approach on how business analysis business will be stored and accessed.
• Identify Business Analysis Performance Improvements: In this stage, improvement processes are planned for business analysis work done.

Outputs: The outputs for the processes described above are as follows:

•  Plan Business Analysis Approach: It identifies the BA's approaches and activities to be performed with proper guidelines of who will perform the task, timing, and outputs expected.
• Plan Stakeholder Engagement: It provides with the list of stakeholders with the listing of roles and responsibilities for the change. It also identifies the collaboration and communication approaches the business analyst will utilize during the initiative.
• Plan Business Analysis Governance: It identifies the shareholders responsible for making decisions for the work done by business analysis. It also defines the process that will be utilized to manage requirement and design changes across the initiative.
• Plan Business Analysis Information Management:  It defines the process of how business analysis information will be stored, accessed, and utilized during the change and after the change is complete.
• Identify Business Analysis Performance Improvements:  It gives a detailed comparison of work planned versus work done and addressing issues to help understand the performance of the business analysis process.

Chapter 9 - Underlying competencies

Chapter 9 - Underlying Competencies  

The key concepts to be remembered are

1. Analytical thinking and problem solving skills are required for business analysts to analyze problems and opportunities effectively, identify which changes may deliver the most value. In analytical Creative thinking, Decision making, learning, problem solving, system thinking, conceptual thinking, visual thinking are the key features.

2. Behavioral characteristics are not unique to business analysis but they have been found to increase personal effectiveness in the practice of business analysis. Ethics, personal accountability, trusting, managing time and adaptability are necessary.

3. Business knowledge enables the business analyst to better understand the overarching concepts that govern the structure, benefits, and value of the situation. Acumen, industry knowledge, behaviour, knowledge for solution, methodology concepts are required.

4. Communication skills may be accomplished using a variety of delivery methods: verbal, non-verbal, physical, and written. Most communication methods deal with words, while some methods deal with movements and expressions. Types of communication are verbal, non verbal, written, listening.

5. Interaction skills are represented by the business analyst's ability to relate, cooperate, and communicate with different kinds of people. Keys of interacting are facilitation, leadership, teamwork, conflict resolution and teaching.

6. Tools and technology support requirements workflow, approvals, baselining, and change control. It enhances office production, business analysis and communication.

Chapter 2 - Business Analysis Key Concepts

Chapter 2 - Business Analysis Key Concepts

1. Business Analysis Core Concept Model
1.1 Change:
- The act of transformation in response to a need.
 - Change works to improve the performance of an enterprise. These improvements are deliberate and controlled through business analysis activities.

1.2 Need:
- A problem or opportunity to be addressed.
- Needs can cause changes by motivating stakeholders to act. Changes can also cause needs by eroding or enhancing the value delivered by existing solutions.

1.3 Solution:

- A specific way of satisfying one or more needs in a context. 

- A solution satisfies a need by resolving a problem faced by stakeholders or enabling stakeholders to take advantage of an opportunity.

1. 4 Stakeholder 

- A group or individual with a relationship to the change, the need, or the solution. 

- Stakeholders are often defined in terms of interest in, impact on, and influence over the change. Stakeholders are grouped based on their relationship to the needs, changes, and solutions.

1.5 Value

- The worth, importance, or usefulness of something to a stakeholder within a context. 

- Value can be seen as potential or realized returns, gains, and improvements. It is also possible to have a decrease in value in the form of losses, risks, and costs.

1. 6 Context

- The circumstances that influence, are influenced by, and provide understanding of the change.

- Changes occur within a context. The context is everything relevant to the change that is within the environment. 

2. Key terms:

2. 1. Business Analysis:  the practice of enabling change in an enterprise by defining needs and recommending solutions that deliver value to stakeholders.

2.2 Business analysis information refers to the broad and diverse sets of information that business analysts analyze, transform, and report.

2.3 Design is a usable representation of a solution. Design focuses on understanding how value might be realized by a solution if it is built. 

2.4 Enterprise is a system of one or more organizations and the solutions they use to pursue a shared set of common goals. 

2. 5 Organization

An autonomous group of people under the management of a single individual or board, that works towards common goals and objectives. 

2.6 Plan is a proposal for doing or achieving something. Plans describe a set of events, the dependencies among the events, the expected sequence, the schedule, the results or outcomes, the materials and resources needed, and the stakeholders involved.

2.7 Requirement: 

A requirement is a usable representation of a need. Requirements focus on understanding what kind of value could be delivered if a requirement is fulfilled. The nature of the representation may be a document (or set of documents), but can vary widely depending on the circumstances

2.8 Risk

Risk is the effect of uncertainty on the value of a change, a solution, or the enterprise. 

3. Stakeholder:

3.1 The business analyst is inherently a stakeholder in all business analysis activities. The business analyst is responsible and accountable for the execution of these activities. 

3.2 Customer uses or may use products or services produced by the enterprise and may have contractual or moral rights that the enterprise is obliged to meet.

3.3 Domain Subject Matter Expert is any individual with in-depth knowledge of a topic relevant to the business need or solution scope.

3.4 End Users are stakeholders who directly interact with the solution

3.5 Operational support is responsible for the day-to-day management and maintenance of a system or product. 

3.6 Project Managers are responsible for managing the work required to deliver a solution that meets a business need, and for ensuring that the project's objectives are met while balancing the project factors including scope, budget, schedule, resources, quality, and risk. 

3.7 Regulators are responsible for the definition and enforcement of standards.

3.8 Sponsors are responsible for initiating the effort to define a business need and develop a solution that meets that need.

3.9 A supplier is a stakeholder outside the boundary of a given organization or organizational unit.

3.10 Testers are responsible for determining how to verify that the solution meets the requirements defined by the business analyst, as well as conducting the verification process.

Chapter 1 – Introduction

Chapter 1 – Introduction

1. What is Business Analysis?
Business analysis is the practice of enabling change in an enterprise by defining needs, and recommending solutions that deliver value to stakeholders.

2. Who is a Business Analyst?
Anyone who elicits needs or performs other BA tasks regardless of their job title.