(Source: PMI Business Analysis for Practitioners – A Practice Guide)
- Goals and Objectives
- Corporate strategies translate goals identified in business plans into actionable plans and objectives.
- Goals are typically broad-based and may span one or more years. (organization or strategy level, long-term)
- Objectives, on the other hand, are used to enable goals; these are more specific and tend to be of shorter term than goals, often with duration of 1 year or less. (project or tactical level, short-team/less than 1 year)
- Objectives describe business value; requirements describe how to achieve it.
- Problem Analysis
- the first step of problem analysis is to clarify the need by finding the root cause.
- the second step is describing the problem or situation so everyone in the organization sees the need in the same way.
- fishbone & five why
- Situation Statement
- a clear, agreed-upon business need is the foundation of the entire project.
- creating a situation statement is a way to get consensus on the business need.
- Market Analysis
- Competitive Analysis
- Benchmarking
- Job Analysis
- used to identity the job requirements and competencies required to perform effectively in a specific job or role
- Decomposition Model (aka decomposition diagram)
- Business Analysis: used to identify business analysis tasks, activities, and deliverables by detailing out the business analysis work.
- Stakeholder Analysis: used to analyze the organization with the goal of discovering stakeholder groups.
- IT Projects: to break down solutions into solution components to further understand their features.
- Solution Evaluation Metrics and Acceptance Criteria
- Business goals and objectives
- Key Performance Indicators
- Customer Metrics
- Sales and Marketing Metrics
- Operational Metrics
- Functionality
- Measurable Acceptance Criteria
- nonfunctional requirements
- service-level agreement
- Evaluation Techniques
- Surveys and focus group
- Results from exploratory testing and user acceptance testing
- Results from day-in-the-life (DITL) testing
- Results from integration testing
- Expected vs actual results for functionality
- Expected vs actual results for nonfunctionality requirements
- Outcome measurements and financial calculation of benefits