The Business Analysis Handbook

Techniques and Questions to Deliver Better Business Outcomes

Helen Winter

• Publisher: Kogan Page
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9780749497057
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Commerce
• Subtopic: Stratégie commerciale

FINALIST: Business Book Awards 2020 - Specialist Book Category
FINALIST: PMI UK National Project Awards 2019 - Project Management Literature Category The business analyst role can cover a wide range of responsibilities, including the elicitation and documenting of business requirements, upfront strategic work, design and implementation phases. Typical difficulties faced by analysts include stakeholders who disagree or don't know their requirements, handling estimates and project deadlines that conflict, and what to do if all the requirements are top priority. The Business Analysis Handbook offers practical solutions to these and other common problems which arise when uncovering requirements or conducting business analysis. Getting requirements right is difficult; this book offers guidance on delivering the right project results, avoiding extra cost and work, and increasing the benefits to the organization. The Business Analysis Handbook provides an understanding of the analyst role and the soft skills required, and outlines industry standard tools and techniques with guidelines on their use to suit the most appropriate situations. Covering numerous techniques such as Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN), use cases and user stories, this essential guide also includes standard templates to save time and ensure nothing important is missed.

01

Preparation for business analysis

Introduction

Business analysis (BA) has evolved over time to cover a wide subject area. It is a broad concept, and the scope of its application can be hard to define to people outside of the profession. It is still relatively new to some industries. There isn’t a dedicated business analysis qualification at universities, so some people might not even be aware of it as a career.

Some people will find after reading this chapter that they are already performing some of the functions of a business analyst; others might realize they have the skills to succeed in this role. In this chapter I will outline my journey, along with techniques and questions to deliver better business outcomes to help you understand business analysis and be the best business analyst.

You will get an understanding of why business analysis is important, as causes of project failure often can be remediated by good business analysis such as understanding the customer’s problems and requirements and ensuring this is carried through for all stages of the change taking place.

There is more than one approach for dealing with change in projects. There is much talk about companies moving to agile, but it might not always be appropriate, as there are differences in circumstances. This chapter will enable you to understand what waterfall and agile are and when they are appropriate.

I’ve then concluded this chapter with typical challenges found in business analysis. It can be a fulfilling career but is not suited to everyone. Therefore, it is important for anyone considering a career in it to be aware of the challenges they will face.

Questions covered in this chapter about preparing for business analysis

This chapter answers the following questions:

• What is business analysis?
• How did I become a business analyst?
• What are some tips on becoming a business analyst?
• What skills are needed for business analysis?
• What are the reasons for having business analysis?
• What are the different project methodologies and when is it best to use each one?
• What are the different types of roles in business analysis?
• What are the different business analysis artefacts?
• What are the main challenges facing someone who does business analysis?

What is business analysis?

Business analysis helps in defining the scope, quality and completeness of solutions to implement change in a business whilst meeting the business’s needs. It is about being able to use techniques to identify the right questions to ask to maintain the vision of the business, and to identify the problems to be resolved, the business requirements and the solution requirements. It ensures all of these are understood between all the stakeholders involved and that they are documented. Business requirements set out what the business wants. Solution requirements show how each of the business requirements can be met. This provides a lower level of detail so that whoever takes the solution forward knows how to make it happen. Many tools and techniques have been developed over the last 20 years not only so we can understand what questions should be asked but also to help remove ambiguity, uncover missing information and ensure a common understanding.

In an IT context, business analysis provides guidance to developers for developing solutions and helps architects select the right set of systems and toolsets to meet business requirements. It is important to remember that not all requirements need an IT solution, and it is just as important for business analysis to include defining business solutions. This may involve helping the business define how it is going to meet requirements and assessing the impact. Examples of business solutions could be new business processes, changes to documentation and changes to a target operating model.

These days a lot of cloud products are selected off the shelf. Therefore business analysis work also helps in finding the right off the shelf solutions and feeds into the procurement process.

Business analysis can involve the sourcing of information required to make decisions by observation and collecting metrics to prove or disprove hypotheses before they become a project. See Chapter 3 for more detail on the techniques to ensure a project will solve the right problem and that it is worth doing.

Business analysis provides a structure for being able to provide traceability from the solution to the requirements and vision, knowing what to test and measuring whether the solution was successful and whether the benefits expected were met.

Its outputs can be reused longer-term to enable the business to have the knowledge to incorporate the solutions as usual practices and for similar future projects. The impact is that any future changes to the solution can be incorporated faster, because the thinking, processes, business rules and quality of the solution are documented in some form and readily accessible. It can be very expensive for example to pay an IT developer to work out what a system does by looking at the code and working it out. Having how the system works available in a format that can be understood by a wider audience will provide less reliance on technical expertise later. This is applicable when modifying an existing system, as opposed to a greenfield project implementation where the source code does not yet exist.

How did I become a business analyst?

My journey to becoming a business analyst started when I chose to do a business information technology degree at Staffordshire University in the UK. The technical and business skills along with the experience I gained on this course allowed me to get my first job as a consultant at a major consultancy. This job involved a mixture of business analysis, system analysis, development and configuration of the company’s business intelligence software. I loved going into different industries and understanding their different reporting needs.

After this, I worked as a developer at the financial regulator, but missed the interaction with the stakeholders from my previous role. I was fortunate though to find mentorship there from a business analyst, obtained additional qualifications in the form of the International Diploma in Business Analysis certified by the British Computing Society and worked my way to becoming a business analyst.

Working at the financial regulator gave me lots of experience working on very large and complex projects, because their projects often had to account for all financial companies. This is where I picked up many structured techniques to ensure that all scenarios are identified to cater for each of the circumstances different-sized companies and ways of working bring. Examples of techniques used were context diagrams, process modelling and use cases.

Eventually I took a business analyst job at a utilities company. The biggest lesson I learnt with utilities was around putting together business cases and business transformation.

After a few years I got a job working in Birmingham city centre back in finance. You might be interested to know that the manager who hired me said that she specifically liked the fact that I had worked in an unrelated industry because it proved I had cross-transferable skills.

My next career move was to an insurance company. I was responsible at one point for leading 12 business analysts on a customer services transformation project. I also moved into the business architecture team for a while before deciding to move back into the business analysis team to lead on a large actuarial change programme. This is why I have lots of tips in later chapters for overcoming technical jargon.

I then decided to set up my own consultancy company. I got to utilize my skills with facilitating workshops, estimating and scoping, contributing business cases, process modelling, requirements gathering, utilizing data warehousing knowledge and logical data modelling, among others. I also got to expand on skills such as target operating models and creating knowledge handover frameworks.

I also set up a blog that I called businessbullet.co.uk to help other business analysts or those interested in business analysis. This has become very popular, and I’ve been able to help a number of people over the years. It also helped me to understand and remember the lessons I had learnt, as it meant having to analyse and articulate what went well and what to avoid.

What are some tips on becoming a business analyst?

Here are some tips based on what I have learnt throughout the journey in my career based on how I have done it and how I have mentored others. This is applicable for both a career change and a first step into the world of work.

Trainee positions/related roles

If you are not in work there are many opportunities to find jobs that can act as a stepping stone to business analysis, jobs that already include business analysis or even jobs that are trainee junior positions. There are many companies that are willing to recruit junior business analysts and provide them with coaching and training. The benefit to the companies is that they get to mould their recruits in the way that suits them best. For these positions they are looking for people with a willingness to learn, an aptitude to get on with others and confidence. My first job was as a consultant, and that included having to do business analysis as part of my role.

Volunteering and shadowing

If you are working and aren’t currently involved in business analysis, the best way to get involved is to make yourself known and volunteer to shadow other business analysts if possible. Shadowing others may also allow you to carry out some BA tasks with a business analyst’s guidance and supervision if you can build trust and rapport with the business analyst. If you can do this, read up about some of the techniques business analysts use and, if you get to try them out, make sure you ask for feedback. Identify opportunities to run your own small project to identify improvements and make use of modelling processes. It is very rare for people to say no if you offer to help. Another idea is to offer to help minute a meeting, watch how the facilitator does it and as you build confidence up volunteer to help organize or run a meeting. There are tips on running meetings and how to avoid some of the most common pitfalls in Chapter 2.

Researching business analysis

Find out as much as you can about business analysis. It covers a wide area, and it may be the case that you will want to focus on a particular area of it. This chapter will give you a good overview as to the breadth of business analysis and the type of roles within it.

Making your intentions clear

If you work for a company that has a business analysis team, make sure you let your manager know that you are looking for opportunities to get exposure to business analysis and arrange to chat to the business analyst manager. Both may be able to make recommendations to you of courses to go on and may be able to arrange for you to have some involvement in business analysis. They may also be able to arrange a secondment, which is a fixed period for being part of the team to try it out. When the secondment ends you may have to go back to your old job but then at least you have experience you can demonstrate when a permanent position comes up. If you get the opportunity to do a secondment make sure you ask for written feedback from the people you work with not just for your own development but also to show proof of your capabilities and experience.

Qualifications

There are two main professional bodies related to evidencing capability in business analysis. These are the British Computing Society (BCS) and the International Institute of Business Analysis (IIBA). You will need to work out which qualification route to take. You only need to do one. I cannot emphasize enough how important it is to learn about the techniques and tools available, and both qualifications provided by these associations will provide good coverage. You may be able to put together a business case for your company paying for some of the courses, as business analysis covers a wide area and still may be suitable for your current role. I was able to put a business case together at my company to gain the BCS qualification before obtaining the role of business analyst.

Project work exposure

See whether you can get involved with project work to give yourself some exposure to it. Project wor...