Business Analysis is the discipline of identifying business needs and determining solutions to business problems. In our experience, solutions often include a systems development component, but may also consist of process improvement or organisational change or strategic planning and policy development.

Business Analysis as a discipline has a heavy overlap with requirements analysis but focuses on identifying the changes to an organisation that are required for it to achieve strategic goals. These changes include changes to strategies, structures, policies, processes, and information systems. Examples of business analysis planning include:

Industry/Enterprise analysis or company analysis
• Focuses on understanding the needs of the business as a whole, its strategic direction, and identifying initiatives that will allow a business to meet those strategic goals.

Requirements planning and management

• Involves planning the requirements development process, determining which requirements are the highest priority for implementation, and managing change.

Requirements elicitation

• Describes techniques for collecting requirements from stakeholders.

Requirements analysis

• Describes how to develop and specify requirements in enough detail to allow them to be successfully implemented by a project team.

Requirements communication

• Describes techniques for ensuring that stakeholders have a shared understanding of the requirements and how they will be implemented.

Solution assessment and validation

• Describes how the business analyst can verify the correctness of a proposed solution, how to support the implementation of a solution, and how to assess possible shortcomings in the implementation.

We are also able to provide in-house training on all of these techniques, should you require it.

This technique is used to perform an external environmental analysis by examining the many different external factors affecting an organisation.

The six attributes are:

• Political (current and potential influences from political pressures)
• Economic (local, national and world economy impact)
• Sociological (ways in which a society can affect an organisation)
• Technological (effect of new and emerging technology)
• Legal (effect of national and world legislation)
• Environmental (local, national and world environmental issues)

This technique is used to perform an internal environmental analysis by defining the attributes of MOST to ensure that the project you are working on is aligned to each of the four attributes.

The four attributes are:

• Mission (where the business intends to go)
• Objectives (the key goals which will help achieve the mission)
• Strategies (options for moving forward)
• Tactics (how strategies are put into action)

This is used to help focus activities into areas of strength and where the greatest opportunities lie. This is used to identify the dangers that take the form of weaknesses and both internal and external threats.

The four attributes are:

• Strengths - What are the advantages? What is currently done well? (eg. key area of best-performing activities of your company)
• Weaknesses - What could be improved? What is done badly? (eg. key area where you are performing poorly)
• Opportunities - What good opportunities face the organisation? (eg. key area where your competitors are performing poorly)
• Threats - What obstacles does the organisation face? (eg. key area where your competitor will perform well)

This technique is used to enable prompt thinking about what the business is trying to achieve. Business perspectives help the staff to consider the impact of any proposed solution on the people involved.

There are six elements:

• Customers - Who are the beneficiaries of the highest level business process and how does the issue affect them?
• Actors - Who is involved in the situation, who will be involved in implementing solutions and what will impact their success?
• Transformation Process - What processes or systems are affected by the issue?
• World View - What is the big picture and what are the wider impacts of the issue?
• Owner - Who owns the process or situation being investigated and what role will they play in the solution?
• Environmental Constraints - What are the constraints and limitations that will impact the solution and its success?

This is often used in a brainstorming session to generate and analyse ideas and options. It is useful to encourage specific types of thinking and can be a convenient and symbolic way to request someone to “switch gear". It involves restricting the group to only thinking in specific ways - giving ideas and analysis in the “mood” of the time.  Also known as the Six Thinking Hats:

• White: Pure, facts, logical.
• Green: Creative, emotional.
• Yellow: Bright, optimistic, positive.
• Black: Negative, devil’s advocate.
• Red: Emotional.
• Blue: Cold, control.

Five Whys is used to get to the root of what is really happening in a single instance. For each answer given a further 'why' is asked.

This is used to prioritise requirements by allocating an appropriate priority, gauging it against the validity of the requirement itself and its priority against other requirements.  MoSCoW comprises:

• Must have - or else delivery will be a failure
• Should have - otherwise will have to adopt a workaround
• Could have - to increase delivery satisfaction
• Would like to have in the future - but won't have now

This technique is used when analysing the expectations of multiple parties having different views of a system in which they all have an interest in common, but have different priorities and different responsibilities.

• Values - constitute the objectives, beliefs and concerns of all parties participating. They may be financial, social, tangible and intangible
• Policies - constraints that govern what may be done and the manner in which it may be done
• Events - real-world proceedings that stimulate activity
• Content - the meaningful portion of the documents, conversations, messages etc that are produced and used by all aspects of business activity
• Trust - trusting (or otherwise) relationship between all parties engaged in a value system