Module in Strategic Business Analysis

Prof. Lorenzo B. Cabili, CPA, LlB, DM

Faculty, College of Business Administration

1 Foundational Concept of Business Analysis

“There’s no shortage of remarkable ideas, what’s

missing is the will to execute them.”

- Seth Godin

Overview
Welcome to our first module. The scope of this module provides business analysis framework
that would help you understand this distinct discipline. Business analysis touches all levels of
organization. One cannot undermine the role of business analysts; they can be found in all facets
of the organization—projects, programs, strategic planning, operations, and other initiatives. In
this complex world of business, where every organization is in dire need to achieve their goals;
business analysis plays an important role in improving processes and systems in an organization.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

At the end of this module, you should be able to:

 discuss the value of business analysis and the impact it has on the organization
 explore the six knowledge area of business analysis
 explain the levels of business analysis
 identify the roles and skills of business analysts
 Defining Business Analysis

Business Analysis (BA) is the set of task and techniques used to work as a liaison among
stakeholders in order to understand the structure, policies, and operations of an organization, and
to recommend solutions that enable the organization to achieve its goals.

Value of Business Analysis

 Setting expectations: BAs help stakeholders define a solution for their problem. After a
solution has been defined, expectations are set.

 Improving estimation: Performing BA helps define what needs to be accomplished.

Having the clearer picture lets organizations do a better job of estimating what their
solutions will cost and how long they’ll take to implement.

 Better aligning projects with goals/objectives: BA professionals work on both the “why”
and the “how” pieces, they can see when a solution is no longer aligned with the goals
and objectives.

 Reducing project defects: BA activities details the rules, process, and user interactions of
the solution. This detail helps provide clear direction for the people developing the
solution and those testing the solution to help ensure that defects are reduced and caught
before the solution is implemented.

 Smoothing the transition to production: Transition as it relates to projects is all about

moving from the development and test environment, where you’re building the solution,
to the production environment, where the users are actually using the solution.

 Reusing requirements and reducing duplicate solutions: For every initiatives, BAs
should be careful not to duplicate requirements underway in a different areas of the
company.

 Improving communication within the team: BA activities boil down to communication,

since one role of business analyst is to elicit and communicate the true needs of the
business so that right solution can be delivered.

 Increasing customer satisfaction: BAs help address the inevitable changes a company
goes through and can help mitigate any problems customer may feel as a result of
those changes.
 MIND CHALLENGE # 1

Mr. Chan is working on a project where the goal was to reduce

employee time on a specific process for a utility company and
therefore reduce salary costs associated with that process. He
identified many parts of the process that could be automated,
thereby reducing employee hours spent on the process. At one
point, he asked how many people performed a particular part of
the process and how often, only to find out one person did it
three times per year. Automating the part of the process would
cost P500,000.00 and save approximately 30 minutes of work
time and P600.00 salary cost per year. Do you think that
automating this part of the process is align to the goal of
reducing cost of the organization? Should Mr. Chan convince
everyone to automate or not to automate? Briefly discuss your
insight on this.
 Business Analysis Knowledge Areas

Knowledge areas define what business analysts need to understand and the tasks they should
perform. They do not represent project phases, and their activities are not intended to be
performed in a linear fashion. Tasks from one or more knowledge areas may be performed in any
order (such as in succession, simultaneously, or iteratively), provided that the necessary inputs to
each task are available.

The six knowledge areas are:

Business Requirements Solution

AnalysisElicitation Planning Management Enterprise RequirementAssessment
& and Analysis AnalysisValidation
Monitoring Communication

Business analysts are the BEaRERS of good news!

Business Analysis Planning and

Monitoring

Solution Assessment Requirements

Elicitation Enterprise Analysis Validations Management and
Communication

Requirements

Underlying competencies

8
Figure 1.1 Relationships between knowledge areas
 AREA 1 Business Analysis Planning and Monitoring

This is where the business analyst plans how to approach the business analysis effort. The
business analyst’s task list for this particular knowledge area consists of:

 Determining the business analysis approach for the project

 Performing stakeholder identification, analysis, and categorization
 Defining the business analysis activities to be performed
 Addressing business analysis communication requirements
 Planning the requirements development and management process
 Managing and reporting on the business analysis effort

AREA 2 Elicitation

Elicitation defines how business analysts work with stakeholders to identify and gather
requirements and understand their needs and concerns. The business analyst ’s task list for this
knowledge area consists of:

 Building a detailed elicitation schedule for a specific activity

 Meeting with stakeholders to conduct the elicitation activity
 Documenting and recording the elicitation results
 Confirming elicitation results with key stakeholders

AREA 3 Requirements Management and Communication

Requirements Management and Communication defines how the business analyst

approaches communicating requirements to stakeholders. The task is done by:

 Managing the solution scope and requirements

 Managing requirements traceability
 Maintaining requirements for reuse
 Preparing requirements packages
 Communicating requirements

AREA 4 Enterprise Analysis

Enterprise Analysis focuses on how the business analyst identifies the business needs
driving a project by performing problem definition and analysis. The business Analyst’s task list for
this knowledge area includes translating business strategy into proposed new business solutions by:

 Defining and understanding the business problem or opportunity

 Assessing capability gaps in the organization
  Determining the most feasible business solution approach
 Describing the resulting solution scope
 Developing a business case for the proposed solution

AREA 4 Requirement Analysis

Requirements Analysis describes how the business analyst progressively elaborates and
prioritizes stakeholder and solution requirements. The business analyst’s task list for this
knowledge area consists of:

 Prioritizing the relative importance of the requirements

 Organizing requirements
 Specifying and modeling requirements
 Defining assumptions and constraints
 Verifying requirements
 Validating requirements

AREA 5 Solution Assessment and Validation

Solution Assessment and Validation focuses on assessing and validating proposed, in

progress, and implemented solutions before, during, and after the project life cycle. The
business analyst’s task list for this knowledge area consists of:

 Assessing the proposed solution

 Allocating stakeholder and solution requirements
 Assessing organizational readiness
 Defining transition requirements
 Validating the solution
 Evaluating solution performance

Take your time, you may rest a bit and get energized before doing the
next activity.
 MIND CHALLENGE #1

What is your take on the issue that organizations

use business analysis as a competitive advantage? Does
the organization really benefit from it?

Levels of Business Analysis

Business Analysis has four main levels within a company, these are:

This is the level at which strategic company decisions happen and

then trickle down through the company, impacting policies and
procedures at all levels. The enterprise level is the collective
whole of a company viewed from the highest perspective.
Enterprise Activities at this level include:
Level
Defining the business needs
Eliciting goals and product analysis
Mapping the current and future state of the company
Defining business case
Defining solution
 This is the collection of distinct business or general regions
that make up a company The business analysis tasks you do
under this level include:

 conducting strategic plan development

 facilitating strategic goal setting sessions
Organizational
 defining success metrics
Level  understanding how workflow is used to
implement changes
replicating some enterprise analysis activities

At this level, you now getting into more specific areas such as
departments within the company’s regions or divisions. Focus is
now on developing a program area to achieve the goal of the
organizational or enterprise level initiatives. A more detailed
Operational Level business analysis activities include:

new product case development

process modelling across operations area
feasibility studies
product definition
project vision definition

This is the level at which you execute projects to deliver support or

enable the company’s organizational areas and/or operational
functions to achieve their objectives. Therefore the business analysis
profession is highly focused on the project area. Activities on this
level remain the same:
Project Level
planning your analysis work for the project
Scoping the project
eliciting and analyzing business problems
verifying your solutions
developing transition requirements
 MIND CHALLENGE #2

1. Working with senior leaders at enterprise level is a challenge for

starters, you get only a limited amount of time with these folks; in
large organizations, they may be spread across different offices,
which makes getting the group together when necessary extra
difficult. For these reason, supposing you work with them as BA,
what actions or approaches will you make to overcome such
challenges at enterprise level?

Skills of Business Analysts

When performing business analysis, analysts need to be equally proficient in several skills based
on the project they are working on. The following spells out a few skills needed to succeed at
business analysis.

Interpret Directions
 Adapt quickly and understand directions given to him

Problem solving skills

 Be able to solve problems as they occur and propose solutions to
a business problems

Critical thinking skills

 Be able to evaluate multiple options in front of you so that you can
address business needs.

Communication skills
 Be able to facilitate stakeholders engagement
 Facilitation skills
 Skills needed to guide and direct key parts of organizing work
with groups of people such as meetings, planning sessions and trainings.

Listening skills
 They listen as much as they communicate by absorbing and
analyzing the information given to them.

Presentation skills
 Be able to confidently stand up and speak to groups of people
about the project.

Time management skills

 Be able to manage time correctly and prioritizing business activity
that needs to keep up with.

Documentation skills
 Be able to provide a range of documents and provide these clearly
and concisely such as they are easy to understand.

Stakeholder management
 Be able to manage stakeholders so that you can set right
expectations and get their input and support for the project.

Modelling skills
 Need to have expertise in modelling and the supporting tools that
enable you to convey vast amounts of information.

Technical Know-How
 There are plenty of tools that business analyst should have at their
disposal to do well on their role.
 MIND CHALLENGE #3

Abraham Maslow, once said, “I suppose it is tempting, if the only tool

you have is hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail.” What is
your understanding on this concept? How do you associate it with the
skills of a business analyst or on your personal perspectives?

We’re you able to answer the learning activities? Congratulations for a job
well done! You are now ready for the next session. If there are still topics
which are not yet clear to you, you may go back to your readings.
This module has provided you the basic concept of business analysis. Business analysis is
a discipline that helps identify business needs and determine solutions to business
problems. It has six knowledge area that includes business analysis planning and
monitoring, elicitation, enterprise analysis, requirement analysis, requirement
managements and communication and solution assessment and validation.

In performing business analysis, it engages on the four levels within the company:
enterprise level, organizational level, operational level and project level. Activities
performed in business analysis depends on the level to which one is involve in.

Business analyst should possess skills on understanding directions, problem solving

skills, critical thinking skills, communications, facilitation skills, listening presentation
skills, time management skills, documentation skills, stakeholder management, modelling
skills and technical know-how. These skills are all fundamentals for a business analyst to
succeed.

References:

Kupersmith, K & Mulvey, P., Business Analysis for Dummies

Weese, S., Wagner, T., CBAP CCBA Certified Business Analysis Study Guide