What is Business Analysis?
International Institute of Business Analysis (IIBA) defines Business Analysis as:
“The practice of enabling change in an organizational context, by defining needs and recommending solutions that deliver value to stakeholders.”
Business Analysis at practice!
Business Analysis Process:
Business analysis is a process that aims to identify and define the requirements which must be fulfilled to achieve ‘business objectives/goals. Business analysis is carried out in every project irrespective of the industry to the project belongs, project size, project complexity or project type.
1. Plan Business Analysis Process:
Planning helps a business identify its goals and make tasks feasible.
Business Analysis Plan contains the following steps-
Requirement management plan.
List of the stakeholders from which the requirements will be gathered.
The techniques which will be used to extract requirements.
The templates of different documents that will be created as the of requirement gathering.
Documents validation and review process.
Mode of communications between the business analyst and the stakeholders.
Tracking and versioning details for the documents.
2. Define Scope:
The project scope covers what all is expected to be achieved by the project so to be considered complete and successful.
Description of the Project scope.
What is within the scope and what is out of the scope.
Deliverables to be achieved.
Criteria for the acceptance of the deliverables.
Assumptions & Constraints for the project.
3. Elicit Requirements:
Business Analysts must try to get as much information as possible regarding the requirements of the project. Elicitation is the part of the business analysis where a business analyst communicates and liaise with all the stakeholders, understand their needs and document the requirements of the solution that needs to be developed.
4. Validate the Requirements:
Once the requirements are collected, they must be validated against the business requirements/business case of the project. Some stakeholders might ask for the features that are out of the project scope. These requirements should be brought to note of the other stakeholders and discussed whether they should be discarded or could be part of future phases of the project.
The business analyst should closely work with the technical architects, technical leads and come up with a solution and it should be discussed and agreed upon with the stakeholders.
5. Analyze Requirements:
The Analyze Requirements is the elaboration of the ‘how’ business analysis process. Let’s see the things that are the part of this process:
Prioritize the requirements for their validity and any associated risks
Gather inter-dependencies between requirements
Create a data model & domain model
Create the process flow diagram
Create a process interface model
Deduce any technical or business constraints and related assumptions.
Validate the correctness of the requirements.
The ‘Analyze requirements’ process is an essence of the activities a business analyst does.
6. Documents Requirements:
Documenting requirements is an activity where both technical knowledge and writing skills are equally important. A business analyst should note that:
Requirements should be crisp, clear and concise.
Requirements should be written in a simple language.
In case of usage of technical terms, they should be defined in the glossary.
The documents should be versioned for ease of identification.
Documents should be reviewed for their correctness and exactness.
The document templates and nomenclature should be followed according to the Business Analysis plan/requirement management plan.
Requirement documents should be validated and approved by the key stakeholders
The different documents in which the requirements are stored are as follows:
To Conclude the business analysis process, the complete process of Business Analysis is centered around planning the analysis process, defining the scope, getting detailed requirements, validating their value against the project business case, analyzing how to achieve these requirements and lastly documenting them.
Business Analysis Certifications:
The most widely recognized Business Analysis Certifications,
Level 1 – Entry-level Certificate in Business Analysis (ECBA)
(minimum of 21 Professional Development (PD) hours within the last four years)
Level 2 – Certification of Capability in Business Analysis (CCBA)
(minimum of 3,750 hours of Business Analysis work experience in the last 7 years.)
Level 3 – Certified Business Analysis Professional (CBAP)
(minimum of 7,500 hours of Business Analysis Work experience in the last 10 years.)
(4,500 hours of business analysis experience & 35 contact hours of education in business analysis)
(There are no requirements, but candidates should have some practical experience of business analysis.)
Foundation Certificate in Business Analysis
Foundation Certificate in Business Change
Foundation Certificate in Commercial Awareness
Practitioner Certificate in Benefits Management and Business Acceptance
Practitioner Certificate in Business Analysis Practice
Practitioner Certificate in Data Management Essentials
Practitioner Certificate in Modelling Business Processes
Practitioner Certificate in Requirements Engineering International Diploma in Business Analysis.
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