Business Analysis Techniques

Business Analysis Techniques varies from situation to situation and there are three different approach/methods to it which we need to understand prior to techniques
First we need to understand what BA technique means,
Business - Understanding the need of the product,
Analysis - Design a solution to the problem identified while developing a product,
Technique - Approach or method to be utilized for achieving the goal of product.

• PESTAL - Political, Economical, Social, Technological, Legaal, Environmental



• MOST - Mission, Objectives, Strategy, Tactics.



• SWOT

Business Analysis techniques varies from category to category. In this article we would be explaining the brief understanding of BA techniques in reference to BABOK guide. BA techniques can be categorized into various categories such as,

1. Elicitation
2. Planning
3. RAD - Rapid Application Development
4. Requirement LCM (lower of cost or market)
5. Solution Evaluation
6. Strategy

Elicitation:
In requirements engineering, requirements elicitation is the practice of collecting the requirements of a system from users, customers and other stakeholders.The practice is also sometimes referred to as "requirement gathering".
The term elicitation is used in books and research to raise the fact that good requirements cannot just be collected from the customer, as would be indicated by the name requirements gathering. Requirements elicitation is non-trivial because you can never be sure you get all requirements from the user and customer by just asking them what the system should do OR NOT do (for Safety and Reliability). Requirements elicitation practices include interviews, questionnaires, user observation, workshops, brainstorming, use cases, role playing and prototyping.
Before requirements can be analyzed, modeled, or specified they must be gathered through an elicitation process. Requirements elicitation is a part of the requirements engineering process, usually followed by analysis and specification of the requirements.
There are various types of elicitation techniques, such as;

• Collaborative Games

Uses game playing techniques to collaborate in developing common understanding of a problem or a solution. Involves strong visual or tactile (activities) elements such as moving sticky notes, writing on whiteboards, or drawing pictures. A neutral facilitator guides the game flow.

• Document Analysis

Document analysis helps in understanding context of a business need, or understanding how existing solutions are implemented. Based on business analysis information being explored, purpose, scope and topics to be researched are determined. Background research comprises of reviewing materials like marketing studies, industry standards, guidelines etc. Document analysis about an existing solution may comprise of reviewing business rules, technical documentation, previous requirements, problem reports etc. to determine how existing solution works and reason for implementing it way it is.

• Focus Group

Focus groups are typically 1 to 2 hours in length and has 6-12 attendees. Can be utilized during any product life-cycle state: Exploratory, under development, ready to launch, or in production.
For a product ‘under development’, focus group’s ideas are analyzed in relationship to stated requirements. This may result in updating existing requirements or uncovering new requirements.
For a ‘to be launched’ product, focus group may influence how to position product in market.
For a product ‘in production’, focus group may provide direction on revisions to next release of requirements.
Focus groups may also serve as a means to assess customer satisfaction with a product or service.

• Interviews

Most common form of elicitation technique where interviewers ask questions to stakeholders. Effective interviewers control discussions, understand needs from all stakeholders, probe deeper when needed and ensure completeness of answers.

• Mind Mapping

Articulates and captures ideas in a non-linear (tree) structure. Ideas are grouped as topics, sub-topics, further sub-sub-topics. Mind maps use words, images, colour, and connections to structure thoughts, ideas, and information.

• Non-Functional Requirement Analysis

Examines requirements for a solution that define how well functional requirements must perform. Also known as quality attributes or quality of service requirements. NFRs are generally expressed in textual formats as declarative statements or in matrices.

• Observations

Elicit information by observing activities and their context. 2 types of observations are:
• Active/Noticeable observation – Ask questions during process. Interrupts work flow but helps in gaining a quick understanding.
• Passive/Unnoticeable observation - Ask questions at end. Does not interrupt work.


• Prototyping

Provides an early model of final result, widely used for product design. Details UI requirements and integrates them with other requirements such as use cases, scenarios, data, and business rules. Stakeholders often find prototyping to be a concrete means of identifying, describing and validating their interface needs. Prototypes can discover desired process flow and business rules.

• Survey or Questionnaires

Administers a set of written questions to stakeholders and SMEs. Can elicit information from many people, sometimes anonymously, in a relatively short period of time. Can collect information about customers, products, work practices and attitudes. Survey questions are of 2 types:

1. Closed – Respondents select from available responses. Typically Yes/No, multiple-choice, rank order decision etc.
2. Open-ended – Respondents are free to answer questions as they wish. Useful when issues are known but range of user responses is unknown.


• Workshops

Requirements workshop, also known as JAD (Joint application design) session, is a highly productive focused event attended by carefully selected key stakeholders, and SMEs for a short, intensive period (typically 1 or a few days). Workshops may be used to generate new ideas for features or products, reach an agreement on a topic or review requirements.

Planning:
As the name suggests it is a method where the planning of the product cycle takes place, different methods are,

• Data dictionary

Data dictionaries comprise of standard definitions of primitive data elements, their meanings, allowable values and indicate how those elements combine into composite data elements. Used to manage data within a solution’s context. Often used along with ER diagrams.

• Estimation

Estimation techniques are used for better understanding of possible range of costs and efforts associated with any initiative. It is an iterative process. Used when it is impossible to determine exact costs.

• Functional decomposition

Estimation techniques are used for better understanding of possible range of costs and efforts associated with any initiative. It is an iterative process. Used when it is impossible to determine exact costs.

• Glossary

Comprises of key terms relevant to a business domain to provide a common understanding of terms. Contains definitions as well as synonyms. Glossary needs to be organized and be accessible to all stakeholders.

• Interface analysis

An interface is a connection between 2 components or solutions. Identify interfaces and interactions between solutions and/or solution components.Interface analysis defines:

• Why the interface is needed?
• Who will use interface?
• What information will be exchanged?
• When information will be exchanged?
• How frequently?
• Where information exchange will occur?
• How interface should be implemented?


• Item tracking

Captures and assigns responsibility for issues and stakeholder concerns. Items can refer to actions, assumptions, constraints, dependencies, defects, enhancements and issues.

• Organizational modelling

Organization modelling describes roles, responsibilities, and reporting structures that exist within an organization, and aligns those structures with organization’s goals.

• Stakeholder list, map, or personas

Stakeholder analysis involves identifying stakeholders affected by a proposed initiative or share a common business need, level of decision making authority, authority within domain and organization, attitude/interest towards change, and business analysis work.
Stakeholder map - Represent relationship of stakeholders to solution and to one another
Persona is a fictional character that depicts way a typical user interacts with a product. Although user groups are fictional, they are built in such a way that they represent actual users.

RAD - Rapid Application Development.
It is categorised into different methods such as,

• Concept modelling (Glossary)

Organizes business vocabulary, usually starting with glossary.

• Data flow diagrams

Show transformation of data from (data source such as external sources, activities and destination). Data used in DFDs should be described in a data dictionary. DFDs can be at multiple layers of abstraction.

• Data mining

Finding useful patterns and insights from large amounts of data. Results of data mining techniques are generally mathematical models. Data mining can be utilized in either supervised (user poses a question) or unsupervised (pure pattern discovery) investigations.

• Data modelling

Data model describe entities, classes or data objects relevant to a domain, their attributes and relationships among them. i.e. Class Diagram.

• Decision modelling

Show how repeatable business decisions are made using data and knowledge.

• Process modelling

Graphical model to describe sequential flow of activities. A system process model defines sequential flow of control among programs or units within a computer system.

• Scope modelling

Describe scope of analysis or scope of a solution. They serve as a basis for defining and limiting scope of business analysis and project work. Scope models show:

• In-scope: Elements contained by boundary (as seen from inside). E.g.: Functional decomposition.
• Out-of-scope: Elements not contained within boundary (as seen from outside). E.g.: Context diagram.


• Sequence diagrams

Sequence diagrams (also known as event diagrams) model logic of usage scenarios, by showing information (also known as stimuli, or message) passed between objects during execution of a scenario.

• State modelling

State models (also sometimes called a state transition model) describe and analyze different possible states (formal representation of a status) of an entity within a system, how that entity changes from one state to another and what can happen to entity when it is in each state. State models help to have a precise and consistent understanding of an entity that has complex behavior and complex rules about that behavior.

• Use cases and scenarios

Scenarios, and use cases describe how actors (a person or a system) interacts with a solution to accomplish one or more of that person or systems goals. Use case has 2 parts

1. Use case diagram
2. Use Specifications – Which contains one or more scenarios.

Although terms scenario, and use case are often used loosely, a scenario is generally understood to describe just one way that an actor can accomplish a particular goal, while a use case describes all possible outcomes of an attempt to accomplish a particular goal that solution will support. Scenarios are written as a series of steps performed by actors or by solution that enable an actor to achieve a goal. A use case describes several scenarios in form of primary, and alternate or exception flows.

Requirement LCM (lower of cost or market)
Requirement LCM comprises of various techniques which are as follows,

• Acceptance and evaluation criteria

Acceptance criteria describe minimal set of requirements to be met for a solution to be worth implementing. Typically Must Have requirements are Acceptance criteria. Typically used when evaluation only one possible solution and is expressed as pass or fail.
Evaluation criteria define a set of measures to rank multiple options based on their value for stakeholders. This allows a range of possible scores.

• Backlog management

Backlogs record, track and prioritize remaining work items. Is a planned approach to manage remaining work for project. In managed backlogs, items at top have highest business value and priority. Backlogs can be at different levels. Backlog items can be user stories, use cases, defects, change requests, risks etc. Use multi-phased prioritization approach to prioritize backlog items. Describe high priority backlog items in detail with an accurate estimate of relative size and complexity. Do minimal amount of work on low priority items; just enough to be able to understand work involved to complete it.

• Brainstorming

One or group of stakeholders deliberate on an idea to produce numerous new ideas in a non-judgmental environment, and to derive themes for further analysis.

• Business rules analysis

Business policies and rules guide day-to-day operations of business. They shape operational business decisions. A business policy dictates actions of an enterprise and people in it by broadly controlling, influencing, or regulating them. A business rule serves as a criterion for guiding behavior and making decisions in a specific, testable manner. Business rules analysis identifies, expresses, validates, refines, and organizes business rules. Business rules may be explicit or tacit. It requires a defined glossary. Business rules are usually expressed as a decision tables or decision trees.

• Lessons learned

Discusses and documents successes, failures and improvement recommendations for future phases or projects.Can include any format or venue that is acceptable to key stakeholders. Can be formal facilitated meetings or informal. Aka Retorspective

• Prioritization

Provides a framework for stakeholder decisions to understand relative importance of requirements. Importance may be based on value, risk, difficulty of implementation etc.

• Reviews

Communicate, verify and validate content of work products, formally or informally. Communicate review objectives in advance to participants.

• Roles and permissions matrix

Ensures coverage of activities by denoting responsibility, to identified roles, and to discover missing roles.

• User stories

User stories are a brief textual description, typically 1 or 2 sentences, of functionality that users need from a solution to meet a business objective. User story describes actor (who uses story), goal they are trying to accomplish, and any additional information to be critical to understanding scope of story. It is a tool for short-term capture and prioritization of requirements and not for long-term knowledge retention or to provide a detailed analysis. The only detail that needs to be included is information that reduces risk of misunderstanding by developers that create estimate.
User stories include:
Title: Active-verb phrase which describes activity that a stakeholder wants to carry out with system
Statement of value
2 common formats (non-mandatory) are:
"As a , I need to , so that ." As a PM, I should be able to upload MPP file to sync my project schedule.
"Given...When...Then." Given that I am a registered user, when I visit the web-site, then I should be able to access all the program content.
Conversation
Helps teams to understand feature and value it will deliver to stakeholder.
Acceptance criteria
Helps team to understand what solution needs to provide to deliver value for stakeholders.

Solution Evalutaion
Similar to all previous techniques this has different methods too, such as;

• Metrics and key performance indicators (KPIs)

Measure performance of solutions, solution components and other matters of interest to stakeholders. A metric is a quantifiable level of an indicator to measure progress. A target metric is objective to be reached within a specified period. An indicator identifies a specific numerical measurement representing degree of progress toward achieving a goal, objective, output, activity, or further input. A key performance indicator (KPI) is one that measures progress towards a strategic goal or objective.

• Process analysis

Analyzes processes for their effectiveness, efficiency, and identifies improvement opportunities.

• Root cause analysis (RCA)

Identify and evaluate underlying causes of a problem, looking into causes occurring due to people, physical or organizational effects. Used for:
  Reactive analysis: For corrective action.
  Proactive analysis: For preventive action.
4 key activities used in RCA are:


• Vendor assessment

Assess ability of a potential vendor to meet commitments wrt delivery and consistent provision of a product or service. When solutions or part of solutions are provided by external vendors (involved in design, construction, implementation, or maintenance of a solution), or when a solution is outsourced, identify specific requirements wrt 3rd party involvement. Ensure that supplier is financially secure, capable of maintaining specific staffing levels, committing appropriately skilled staff to support solution, etc. NFRs can be used to define service levels (SLAs) expected of a third party. Assess formally vendors using Request for Information (RFI), Request for Quote (RFQ), Request for Tender (RFT), or Request for Proposal (RFP).
RFI: Intent is to get information. Open to multiple solutions.
RFP: Intent is to get proposal when scope is understood.
RFQ / RFT: Solution is defined. Tell me the price.

Last but not the least, it has an important contribution to all the techniques and also helps to breakdown and have the best possible approach, this technique is   Strategy
This technique has various approaches which are describes in brief below,

• Balanced scorecard

A strategic planning and management tool to measure org. performance beyond traditional financial measures aligned to organization's vision and strategy.

• Benchmarking and market analysis

Benchmarking compares org. practices against best-in-class practices from competitor enterprises, in government, or from industry associations or standards.
Market analysis understand customers needs, factors influencing purchase decisions, and studies competitors.

• Business capability analysis

Describe ability of an enterprise to act on or transform something that helps achieve a business goal or objective. Capabilities describe outcome of performance or transformation, not how it is performed.

• Business cases

Provide justification for courses of actions based on value of proposed solutions, as compared to their costs, formally or informally. Spend time and resources on business case proportional to the size and importance of its potential value. Business cases do not provide intricate details.

• Business model canvas

Comprises 9 building blocks describing how an organization intends to deliver value.
As a diagnostic tool, use various elements of the canvas as a lens into current state of business, especially wrt relative amounts of energy, time, and resources currently invested in various areas. As a planning and monitoring tool, use canvas to understand inter-dependencies and priorities among groups and initiatives. In this capacity, canvas can be used to view where enterprise is investing, where a particular initiative fits, and any related initiatives.


• Decision analysis

Supports decision-making in dealing with complex, difficult, or uncertain situations. Examines and models possible consequences of different decisions.

• Financial analysis

Explore financial aspects (benefits and costs) of an investment. Consider:

• Initial cost with time frame of investments.
• Expected financial benefits with time frame.
• Ongoing usage and support costs.
• Risk factor.


• Risk analysis and management

Identify, analyze and evaluate uncertainties that could negatively affect value, develop and manage way of dealing with risks. Risks can be of various categories such as business risk, technology risk, organizational risk, and market risk.

• SWOT analysis

SWOT is an acronym for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. A framework for strategic planning, opportunity analysis, competitive analysis, business, and product development. Strengths and weaknesses are internal, while Opportunities and Threats are external. Can be performed at any scale from enterprise, division, business unit, project or even an individual.

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