What is Business Analysis?
Let’s first understand the definition of Business Analysis.
Business Analysis is the discipline of recognizing needs and finding the solution for the business problems and understands how to overcome from such problems. In other words, Business Analysis is a set of tasks and techniques which work as a connection between all the stakeholders. These help them to understand organization’s policies, structure and process. These techniques also recommend the best fit solutions for the business in achieving its goals.
Business analysis is all about understanding that how your organization is functioning and meeting its purpose of existence. It also entails in defining the abilities the organisation needs and provide products to the all external stakeholders. Here you will have to understand how the goal of an organization connects to specific objectives and you will also have to make a detailed plan to help achieve the goals and objectives. In business analysis, you will define how stakeholders and different organizational units interact with each other.
Organisations can conduct business analysis to get an overview and feedback of the present state of the firm. You might use Business Analysis to identify your business needs too. More often, the analysis is performed to state & confirm solutions which ultimately meet the business needs.
Business Analysts main task is to analyze and synthesize information provided by the immense group of people who majorly interact with the firm. It may include firms Customers, Executives, Staff and IT professionals that send this information. Business Analysts do not only focus on the expressed desires but draw the actual needs of the stakeholders. Business Analyst facilitates communication between organizational units some times.
Now days following eight steps business analysts generally follow.
Each of the following steps is important for the business analysis.
- The Orientation
Generally people thinks that as soon as business analysts start contributing to the assigned projects and start making the positive impact. Business Analysts also get involved while the project is ongoing. It is essential that Business Analysts contribute some time to get oriented with the projects. They should be fully clarified with the scope, requirements and business objectives clearly allow them to spend some time to collect some basic information.
Following are the main responsibilities of the Business Analyst should have in first step:
- Role of a Business Analyst should be clearly defined.
- Shaping all the primary stakeholders in the project.
- Project History should be clearly defined and understood by the Business Analyst
- Existing systems and processes understanding
- Identification of Business’s Primary Objective
Most of the time business analysts start defining the project by the scope and this can cause problems. It is more effective to understand the business needs and objective before defining the scope of the project.
The responsibilities in this step are as follows :
- Identification expectations of the primary stakeholders’ in the organisation.
- Merging of all conflicting expectations. The business community generally begins the project by sharing and understanding of the objectives.
- Business Objective should be defined at the first stage while defining business scope.
- Analyst also needs to make sure that the business objectives are clear and achievable.
- Scope Defining
Define very clear and complete statement as scope of the business. Clear Scope will definitely serve as a progress concept and help the team to understand the business needs. Here, we need to remember, scope is not a tool to implement the business plan. Rather, it not guides all the steps of the business analysis process.
This step has the following responsibilities for the business analysts:
- Solution defining – a method that find the nature and extent of technology and the process changes which should be made.
- Clear scope statement Drafting and review it with the stakeholders.
- Creation of Business Analysis plan
Creation of business analysis plan will provide clarity to the end to end process of business analysis.
This plan will itself answer several questions.
- Following are the main responsibilities of plan involved while creating a business analysis plan are:
- Business Analysis deliverable choice should be most appropriate types.
- Proper defining the specific list of deliverable for business analysis. The list should cover full scope and identification of the all stakeholders.
- Business Analysis deliverable should have definite timelines to accomplish the goal.
- Requirements Documents should have proper draft
In this step the clear and actionable detailed requirements of the plan are important. This requirement document should have all the details for implementation team, so that, they devise the solution.
The most important responsibilities are involved in this process :
- Collection of all the information required
- Information should be analysis for making the first draft
- Validation of the deliverable with proper review
- All gaps should be filled up by asking questions.
- Support to the technical implementation
In a firm technical implementation team develop, customize and deploys software or hardware on a typical project.
Following are the main duties of the business analysts in this step :
- Final solution & design should be reviewed.
- Updating the Requirements Documentation and repackaging time to time.
- Meeting and understanding the importance of technical requirements of the quality assurance professionals
- Readiness to answer of all the questions and help solve certain problems.
- Change management in the requirements.
- User Acceptance Testing (UAT) efforts when possible.
- Help the organisation in implementation of the solution
It is also observe that sometimes a business cannot use the solutions appropriately. Resulting into difficulties into attain the original objectives. Business Analyst must be involved in this final step to extend support to the business. The main aim of this step is to ensure that all members are prepared to accept the changes made.
Business analysts responsibilities in this step are :
- Analysis and developing of the interim business process documentations. These documents generally state exactly what changes in the business process should be made.
- Support with training to the end users. All end users must understand all the process and procedural changes. The analyst should also collaborate with training staff to train the end users.
- business users collaboration
- Study of the value created by solution provided
Throughout of the business analysis process, a lot of steps are involved and various business outcomes and details are discussed. Solution to all type of big and small problems. Many relationships are built, and changes are managed in the entire journey. You should try not to lose track amid the steps. Stop and assess the value created by the solution provided.
The key responsibilities involved in this last step are:
- Evaluation of the actual progress.
- Results orientation to the project sponsor. Results communication to the Project and other team members of the company is also essential in some cases.
- Follow-up of the projects.
- Once business analyst completes this last step, it is also expected that the company will find more opportunities. It will help the business to improve and lead to additional projects.
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