A Quick Reference to Business Analysis

A Quick Reference to Business Analysis

[First Edition]

By

Aniket S Sharma

SMASHWORDS EDITION

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Published By:

Aniket Sharma on SMASHWORDS

A Quick Reference to Business Analysis

Copyright © 2013 by Aniket Sharma

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Dedicated to all aspiring Business Analysts

A myth buster for those who believe domain experience is the only way to enter Business analysis

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Preface

The role Business analyst was introduced when we entered the current millennium. Before the introduction of the role BA, the responsibilities were controlled by system analysts or project managers or tech-leads. The business analysts have now found a valuable place in the organizations and the BAs are the people who understand the business processes more than the IT concepts. The business analyst is a bridge between the business unit and solution provider. The BA identifies the requirements and communicates to the stakeholders and helps the organization with the implementation.

During the nineties with the evolution of new techniques in the IT world, the business users came closer to the real system development. This introduced a new role called business analyst, with the understanding of the business who can act as a co-ordinator or a link between the business users and the developers. The term business analyst was then evolved but the actual role was developed in early 2000s. This change and introduction of new role has resolved many issues pertaining to the over budgeting and wrong estimation of the projects. The business analysts supervise the complete development cycle and keep the track of the progress and report any variances. This helps the early diagnosis of the problem resulting in mitigating the ill-effects of the wrong implementation or planning. The different surveys conducted worldwide have proved that more than 50% projects are either incorrectly estimated to cost and time or implemented with wrong requirements. The business analysts overcome this situation with their expertise and skills of analysis.

This book covers maximum details of the tasks of a business analyst and helps the aspiring BAs in learning the new techniques. The book also helps the managers and the tech-leads to understand the business analysis. This book is a result of references from the research work, blogs, papers and books written by various renowned business analysts and skilled professionals.

The business analysts have lot many things to do apart from managing the requirements and thus different fundamental skills like communication, leadership, management, conflict management and others are to be groomed regularly as per the demand. This book covers the details of these fundamental skills as well following the discussions on different aspects of business analysis.

Happy Reading!!!

Acknowledgement

I would like to express my gratitude to various people who have supported me during the course of journey for completing this work, many thanks to my friends who encouraged me in compiling my scattered writings into a book. Special thanks to the followers of my blog for their support and acknowledgement they extended continuously; to my family for bearing me while I was busy writing.

Big thanks to my wife – Varuna for being a continuous guide, supporter and reviewer of my work without complaint. Without you this work would certainly be not the reality.

Last but not the least I would like to express my gratitude for all those people who believed in me and in my aspirations.

Chapter One Business Analysis

Over the last few years, one role which has emerged prominently with a promise to provide outstanding value to the organizations is a business analyst. The business analysts align the business requirements with the organizational needs and bridge the IT and the business. The business analysts are not by birth but by the process. The business analysts act as liaison between different stakeholders in order to manage the requirements throughout the business life-cycle for the changes to be implemented in business processes, techniques and information systems. The business analysts are responsible for eliciting, documenting, analyzing and communicating the requirements while working with these stakeholders.

Business analysts are not bound to any definition or statement and they have lots more things to perform apart in time with quality. While most organizations have the designation Business Analysts and hire a high-profile Business Analysts to fulfil the demands but there is always a lack of clarity about the work should be given to business analysts. There are always many questions unanswered like, who are business analysts? What is business analysis? What do business analysts do? What should be the minimum qualification to be a BA? And many others

A senior product user, subject matter expert (SME), senior developer, project manager or anyone with the inclination towards the business processes can work in the capacity of a business analyst in any organization. Business analysts on one hand bridge the gaps in understanding the business and technical requirements; support the customers on the other hand by making them understand the progress of the implementation. Customer satisfaction is also the part of the role of a business analyst and those working in service management understand the importance of the CSI (discussed under service management section, chapter 6).

With the enhancement of new functionalities, technologies and IT trends the new business models are introduced and implemented to connect the customers, suppliers and other stakeholders. These emerging trends beget the new capacity of business analysts in different organizations and the responsibilities of the business analysts vary depending on the organizations’ structure and requirements. Some organizations offer the role of a business analyst who is either a domain expert or individual worked on the same product for quite long but it is a myth that a person with these qualities only can be an eminent business analyst. Today when different tools and techniques are developed which help the business analysts to perform the regular activities the domain expertise I believe; should not be given a higher rating as the person who is skilled in the techniques of the business analysis and has expertise in using different tools can work across the domains and switch to different domains very easily.

The business analysis has certainly taken the organizations to a notch higher and has evolved out as a specialist discipline or a stream which really offers the value to the organizations. Every enterprise looks for better and effective solutions and they are ready to switch to different changes. The business analysts are responsible for these changes with which the organizations are benefiting and are the owner of the deployment of the technologies favoring the work.

The demand of the business analysts in the IT and non-IT industry is increasing gradually and it requires the regular work on the personal and professional skills including the technical knowledge. This helps the business analysts in assisting the organizations in solving the issues and problems more effectively and efficiently. The organizations also these days understand the importance of the role of the business analysts and appreciate the efforts of the business analysts which help them in working comfortably.

Why Business Analysis

In the past many years a trend of outsourcing has been developed around the globe. The trend came into the market in order to achieve the targets in the most cost effective ways. Thus many IT giants look for several other small firms for outsourcing. This outsourcing not only results into cost effective solutions but also sometimes fulfilled the need of expertise at multi-levels. The outsourcing business model has undoubtedly acted like a catalyst in order to increase the competitive edge in the IT. With these outsourcing the major IT organizations were in the need of someone who can be a liaison between different stakeholders to understand the requirement and who can explain the requirements to the people involved in the development; the person who can write down the business requirement in most effective and simple manner in order to make it clear and concise. Organizations also want help in finding potential solutions to business issues and opportunities. These factors beget the role of business analysis and a designation of business analysts.

These people wearing the hat of business analysts share multiple responsibilities and with the course of development the roles and tasks keep changing. If we relate the work of a business analyst with the life cycle of development (the details are mentioned in Chapter 6), we can come to know that right from the planning phase the business analyst becomes active and his contributions continue till the delivery of the project. In the course of different phases he has to wear different hats and sometimes face criticism for the decisions, after all he is also a human. But the qualities which pull him out of the bunch are the analytical skills and foresightedness; the intensity and continuous striving attitude to deliver the best and above all maintaining the relations.

The business analysts are the root of any development (Tree) and they support the different changes (stems) and the core requirement (trunk) throughout the development cycle.

There are many organizations which hire external consultants to provide expert advice throughout the business life cycle; but again these consultants cost heavily and sometimes on the daily basis. In order to cope up with this extra business costs, the organizations prefer to have someone from the internal staff who can keep an eye on these business developments. Using an internal staff as an analyst not only cost less but it also speeds up the pace of the implementation. No matter these business analysts lack an external view point but these internal staffs understand the organization business and also they have to live with the impact of their suggestions.

Business Analysis – Choose your path

With the growth of technologies and techniques, every sector is now growing and the intellect of the people working in these sectors is increasing. With the involvement and growth of outsourcing industry the platter is always full with different ideas and a volunteer is needed to segregate the most correct ones (as no idea is right or wrong till the brainstorming is done on the same). This need of having someone skilled professional is catered by business analysts. Business analysts act as a liaison between different stakeholders and maintain the spirit of collaboration by managing the ideas and requirements. They need to take care of every idea pitched during different sessions of elicitation and document the most correct ones in understandable format. Business analysis is not inbuilt ability and certainly it can be taught and learned. There are different knowledge areas of business analysis which can be learned with the course of time but I firmly believe that self-evaluation is needed before stepping into the career of a business analyst. Recognize your skills and groom them to grow in the field of business analysis instead of dying like an elephant whose hind leg is tied with a chain since he was an infant and he could not recognize his strength. Think like that golden eagle which despite of grown with the chickens recognized its strength and have flown in the sky.

• If don’t get create an opportunity:

Julia was a software developer in her organization but she