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.