Business analysis is the set of tasks, knowledge, and techniques required to identify business needs and determine solutions to improve or enhance business process.

It is often best achived by people external to the company who can ask direct and pertinent questions without the users feeling obliged to answer in a politically correct manner.

Business analysis as a discipline has a heavy overlap with requirements analysis sometimes also called requirements engineering, but focuses on identifying the changes to an organisation that are required for it to achieve strategic goals. These changes include changes to policies, processes, and information systems.

There are several methodologies for business anlysis but generally the engagement will consist of the business analyst completeing a range of interview type questions with relevent people in the organisation. This is then often followed by a work-shop that includes futher clarification of processes and some further brain-storming sessions as appropriate. These techniques are based on industry best practise and include:-

This 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 4 attributes. 4 attributes of MOST: -

• 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. 4 attributes of SWOT: -

• Strengths - What are the advantages? What is currently done well?
• Weaknesses - What could be improved? What is done badly?
• Opportunities - What good opportunities face the organisation?
• Threats - What obstacles does the organisation face?

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

The deliverable is dependent on the outcome but often consists of a 25 page document that summarises the following:-

Enterprise analysis - Identification of the needs of the business as a whole, its strategic direction, and recommending 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 analysis - A list of user requirements in enough detail to allow them to be successfully to be used as a design basis for the project and architect team.

Solution Recommendation - Based on the user requirements and budget contsraints, Rain Dance can recommend impartial solutions or recommend next steps.

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.

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