Ch 1 Introduction Flashcards
(21 cards)
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. Business analysis enables an enterprise to articulate needs and the rationale for change, and to design and describe solutions that can deliver value
When is business analysis performed?
Business analysis is performed on a variety of initiatives within an enterprise. Initiatives may be strategic, tactical, or operational. Business analysis may be performed within the boundaries of a project or throughout enterprise evolution and continuous improvement
What can business analysis be used for?
It can be used to understand the current state, to define the future state, and to determine the activities required to move from the current to the future state
I. Business analysis can be performed from a diverse array of perspectives, name a few.
II. What does perspective mean?
I. Agile
Business intelligence
Information technology
Business architecture
Business process management
II. A perspective can be thought of as a lens through which the business analysis practitioner views their work activities based on the current context. One or many perspectives may apply to an initiative
Who is a business analyst? What is a business analyst responsible for?
A business analyst is any person who performs business analysis tasks described in the BABOK® Guide, no matter their job title or organizational role. Business analysts are responsible for discovering, synthesizing, and analyzing information from a variety of sources within an enterprise, including tools, processes, documentation, and stakeholders. The business analyst is responsible for eliciting the actual needs of stakeholders—which frequently involves investigating and clarifying their expressed desires—in order to determine underlying issues and causes
The activities that business analysts perform include:
understanding enterprise problems and goals
analyzing needs and solutions
devising strategies
driving change
facilitating stakeholder collaboration
Other common job titles for people who perform business analysis include:
Business architect
Business systems analyst
Data analyst
Enterprise analyst
Management consultant
Process analyst
Product manager
Product owner
Requirements engineer
Systems analyst
What are the six knowledge areas of business analysis?
- Business analysis planning and monitoring
- Elicitation and collaboration
- Requirements life cycle management
- Strategy analysis
- Requirements analysis and design definition
- Solution evaluation
Define Business Analysis Planning and Monitoring
Business Analysis Planning and Monitoring: describes the tasks that business analysts perform to organize and coordinate the efforts of business analysts and stakeholders. These tasks produce outputs that are used as key inputs and guidelines for the other tasks throughout the BABOK® Guide
Define Elicitation and Collaboration
Elicitation and Collaboration: describes the tasks that business analysts perform to prepare for and conduct elicitation activities and confirm the results obtained. It also describes the communication with stakeholders once the business analysis information is assembled and the ongoing collaboration with them throughout the business analysis activities
Define Requirements Life Cycle Management
Requirements Life Cycle Management: describes the tasks that business analysts perform in order to manage and maintain requirements and design information from inception to retirement. These tasks describe establishing meaningful relationships between related requirements and designs, and assessing, analyzing and gaining consensus on proposed changes to requirements and designs
Define Strategy Analysis
Strategy Analysis: describes the business analysis work that must be performed to collaborate with stakeholders in order to identify a need of strategic or tactical importance (the business need), enable the enterprise to address that need, and align the resulting strategy for the change with higher- and lower-level strategies
Define Requirements Analysis and Design Definition
Requirements Analysis and Design Definition: describes the tasks that business analysts perform to structure and organize requirements discovered during elicitation activities, specify and model requirements and designs, validate and verify information, identify solution options that meet business needs, and estimate the potential value that could be realized for each solution option. This knowledge area covers the incremental and iterative activities ranging from the initial concept and exploration of the need through the transformation of those needs into a particular recommended solution
Define Solution Evaluation
Solution Evaluation: describes the tasks that business analysts perform to assess the performance of and value delivered by a solution in use by the enterprise, and to recommend removal of barriers or constraints that prevent the full realization of the value
Each task in the BABOK® Guide is presented in the following format:
Purpose
Description
Inputs
Elements
Guidelines/Tools
Techniques
Stakeholders
Outputs
What is the input section?
The Inputs section lists the inputs for the task. Inputs are information consumed or transformed to produce an output, and represent the information necessary for a task to begin. They may be explicitly generated outside the scope of business analysis or generated by a business analysis task. Inputs that are generated outside of the business analysis efforts are identified with the qualifier ‘(external)’ in the input list
What is the elements’ section?
The Elements section describes the key concepts that are needed to understand how to perform the task. Elements are not mandatory as part of performing a task, and their usage might depend upon the business analysis approach
What is the guidelines and tools section?
The Guidelines and Tools section lists resources that are required to transform the input into an output. A guideline provides instructions or descriptions on why or how to undertake a task. A tool is something used to undertake a task.
Guidelines and tools can include outputs of other tasks
What is the techniques’ section?
The Techniques section lists the techniques that can be used to perform the business analysis task
What is the stakeholders’ section?
The Stakeholders section is composed of a generic list of stakeholders who are likely to participate in performing that task or who will be affected by it. The BABOK® Guide does not mandate that these roles be filled for any given initiative
What is the outputs’ section?
The Outputs section describes the results produced by performing the task. Outputs are created, transformed, or changed in state as a result of the successful completion of a task. An output may be a deliverable or be a part of a larger deliverable. The form of an output is dependent on the type of initiative underway, standards adopted by the organization, and best judgment of the business analyst as to an appropriate way to address the information needs of key stakeholders.
As with inputs, an instance of a task may be completed without an output being in its final state. Tasks that use a specific output do not necessarily have to wait for its completion for work within the task to begin
