Overview of Business Analysis

Introduction

• What is the role of a business analyst?
• Review the major tasks performed by the business analyst.
• Define the essential skills needed to perform their tasks.
• Identify other project participants and their roles.
• Discuss how the business analyst interacts with these participants.

Managing Project Scope

• What are the key components of a project initiation document?
• Business analysts must understand why the project is being done so that they can focus their analysis work in the appropriate areas. BAs should be involved in the development of project scope.
• Manage the change control process to ensure that once the scope of the project has been approved, all project participants will operate within the scope or formally approve any scope changes.
• Keep your business analyst within the scope of the project.

Documenting Requirements

• Understand what is a requirement and why is it important to gather and document requirements.
• Learn the recommended approach to categorizing requirements. Why should requirements be categorized? Who uses each category? Why is it difficult to create distinct categories?
  • Business requirements
  • Functional requirements
  • Technical requirements
• Understand the difference between analysis and design or "business" vs. "technological" requirements. Why is it necessary to understand the business problem before deciding on a solution?
• The requirements package. Review the components of the requirements package and look at a sample of the structured text, diagrams, and format.
• Overview of the core requirements components: data, process, externals, business rules. Why is it important for business analysts to document each component?

Planning the Analysis Work

• Assist business analysts with identifying the sources of information, scheduling information gathering sessions, getting user commitment, scheduling requirements reviews.
• Discuss how a business analyst should collect, organize, and maintain project information.
• Determine the project type and which requirements are appropriate.
• Assist business analysts in deciding the appropriate requirements format for the project.
• Use the project scope documentation to estimate the time required to complete business analysis.
• Understand the project and business risks to help keep business analysts focused in the right areas.
• Understand the user and stakeholder viewpoints and goals for the project.
• Make analysis tools available for the business analyst.

Managing the Requirements Process

• Supporting the requirements gathering process.
• Resolve project issues and problems by working with the project sponsor.
• Assisting the business analyst with complex requirements.
• The importance of formal requirements peer reviews.
• Project success factors.

Current Industry Trends

• Application development project trends.
  • Why do 80% of all projects fail to meet the business unit's original objectives?
  • Analysis and testing are the most resource intensive activities - make the best use of these resources.
  • What happened to methodology?
  • Working with fewer IT personnel, off shore and contract programmers, outsourcing companies.
  • Globalization causes the rate of change in business to increase.
• Introduction to the business rules approach.
• Current status of UML and the Object Oriented approach.
• The importance of enterprise systems and reusability.
• Where do business analysts come from? Who makes a great business analyst?