Business Analysis Methods

Introduction

Since no such articles were found at Habré, I decided to contribute, and also hope that this information will be useful to someone in his future activities. So why business analysis on an IT site? The answer will be somewhat boring for the reader - organizations want to optimize their work and function as efficiently as possible. In many cases (although not all) the way out is to use IT. An example is the automation of work of employees, more efficient use of available resources, optimization of processes, and so on. So, information technologies have become a number of help.

The topic is actually quite interesting and materials in Russian or Ukrainian are quite few. In my opinion, one of the reasons for this is its relatively recent appearance. Although it should be added that the methods we will talk about are discussed separately in many textbooks in many languages.
We will take the definition of business analysis from Wikipedia in order not to invent a bicycle:
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“Business analysis is the discipline of identifying business needs and finding solutions to business problems”

However, there is another definition. According to the Business Analysis Body of Knowledge 2.0:

“Business analysis is a set of tasks and methods that are intended to be used as a link between business participants in order to understand the structure, rules and functions of the organization and propose solutions that will enable the organization to achieve its goals.”

To a large extent, the source for this article was just the body of knowledge about business analysis, which the author is currently actively studying.

In fact

For the introduction is enough and we go directly to the essence of the article. Analysis, as a method of scientific knowledge, is expressed by studying an object by splitting it into its component parts. For business, this is the most profitable method, since any business is a system consisting of components that interact with each other to make a profit (or, in the case of non-profit organizations, to bring benefit or value). Our foreign colleagues in similar cases use the word “value”, which the dictionaries interpret as “value” or “value”.

How can we analyze a business? Which way to approach him? In fact, it is possible and necessary to approach from different sides in order to build a holistic view of its components and their work.

To perform the tasks of business analysis using various methods. Moreover, to perform one task can serve as one or several methods. Quite simply common words - let's move on to more specific things.

The most commonly used in practice among business analysts are the following methods:

• Definition of acceptance and evaluation criteria;
• Brainstorm;
• Analysis of business rules;
• Data dictionary and glossary;
• Data flow diagrams;
• Data modeling;
• Decision making analysis;
• Document analysis;
• Interview;
• Metrics and key performance indicators;
• Analysis of non-functional requirements;
• Organization modeling;
• Problem tracking;
• Process modeling;
• Practical training to identify requirements;
• Scenarios and use cases.

These methods may include subsets of methods (such as data modeling).

Method for determining acceptance criteria and evaluation

The purpose of the method is to determine the criteria that the criteria must meet in order for them to be accepted by interested parties.

According to the definition, the criteria in this method are divided into two classes:

• Acceptance criteria (what requirements the decision must meet in order to make sense in its implementation);
• Evaluation criteria (which requirements should be used to choose between several solutions).

These criteria should be testable, and if they cannot be tested, they should be broken down into smaller requirements that can be tested. It is worth noting that it makes sense to rank the criteria by degree of significance.

The body of knowledge on business analysis mentions the advantages and disadvantages of the method.

Virtues

• For agile development it may be necessary that all requirements be expressed in a form that allows you to test compliance with these requirements;
• Acceptance criteria are necessary when requirements express contractual obligations.

disadvantages

• Evaluation or acceptance criteria expressed in contractual obligations can be problematic to change for legal or political reasons.

Brainstorm

The purpose of the method is to generate new ideas that will serve as material for further analysis.

Questions that may be answered may be as follows:

• How can we solve the problem now (with available tools)?
• What obstacles are we facing for choosing a particular solution or approach?
• What can cause a delay?
• How can we solve the problem?

To conduct a brainstorming session, it is necessary to prepare a clear definition of the topic for discussion, a time frame, define expectations from this discussion, define criteria for evaluating ideas and select appropriate people with certain experience in the field that is to be discussed.

In the process of brainstorming, all ideas should be proposed without discussion, criticism or evaluation, and the participants in the assault can build new ideas on the basis of those previously proposed. In addition, all ideas must be recorded.

At the end of the assault, it is necessary to discuss ideas and throw out duplicate ones. The result will be a list of ideas that in one way or another must answer the questions posed.

Benefits

• The ability to generate a large number of ideas in a short period of time;
• Includes creative thinking;
• It can help relieve tension between meeting participants.

disadvantages

• It largely depends on the willingness of people to participate in the assault, and interpersonal relations should be taken into account, which can limit the activity of the participants;
• Participants should not create debates around ideas that are proposed. Ie brainstorming can escalate into debate and wasted time.

Business Rule Analysis

The purpose of the method is to identify rules that define, limit, or allow a particular activity, job, or operation.

In general, the rules should support the goals of the organization, but they should not be too many.

• Rules must be defined by terms that will be understood by the performers;
• The rules should not contain descriptions of how they will be supported;
• Must be defined in a declarative form at the most basic level (that is, they should not be broken down into several more);
• Rules must be separated from processes;
• The rules must be maintained so that the organization can keep them up to date.

Rules can be resolutive or structural, depending on what they emphasize.

An example of a resolution rule (which determines the behavior of participants in the process):

The employee must obtain written permission from the director of security to use a personal laptop at work.

Or

Before merging into the main branch, the developer should test the code.

An example of a structural rule (which determines the structure of knowledge, which allows to determine the veracity, falsity or relation to a particular category):

Payment is accepted only by bank transfer.

Or

The deadline is defined as EV / PV, where EV is the amount consumed and PV is the planned volume.

Benefits

• Clearly defining rules separately from processes allows an organization to change rules without changing processes.

disadvantages

• The rules may conflict with each other, which should be regularly checked with the advent of new rules or change of old ones.

Data Dictionary and Glossary

Both the body of knowledge on business analysis and the methodology of Val IT as one of the bases for the successful activity of an organization put the use of common terminology by the interested parties. In addition, it simplifies the process of further analysis and collection of requirements, since participants understand what they are talking about and can clearly and clearly state their requirements.

Thus, the method identifies two components:

Glossary - a list of terms and their definition.

A data dictionary is a dictionary that includes a list of data, their definition, and valid or possible values. A data dictionary can also define combinations into which data can be combined.

The data dictionary consists of simple and composite elements.

Simple elements contain the following information:

• The name is a unique name;
• Aliases are other names that are used by interested parties for this concept;
• Values - the possible values ​​that an element can take;
• Description - definition of the element in the context of the decision

Components are formed from simple. Their structure is as follows:

• Sequences - show the order of simple elements (in sequences, simple elements are always defined in a clearly defined sequence);
• Repetitions — show that simple elements may appear multiple times in a composite element;
• Optional elements - may be present or absent in the composite element.

Data flow diagrams

The topic of data flow diagrams is truly worthy of a separate article. There are various notations (for example, the well-known Heine-Sarson in BPWin, which many probably made up in universities or Jordan). But back again.

The purpose of data flow diagrams (DFD) is to display the input, processing, storage and output of information from the system.

Diagrams describe:

• External entities that receive information from the system or give it to it;
• Processes of systems that convert data;
• Data warehouses , where information is stored for a certain time;
• The data flow through which data travels between external entities, processes, and data warehouses.

An example of one of these diagrams is shown below:



An asterisk indicates a simple data element, which is optional. By the way, the diagram would have to show that the result of the error message should be a response to the customer with a corrected error. By the way, add your own examples of diagrams - it would be interesting to see how others would describe the same technique and error message handling.

In general, we can give another example:



Diagrams were drawn in Dia, which is a model of horror in drawing diagrams under GNU / Linux.

Conclusion

Although we have considered only a part of the methods (of which there are dozens), you probably use some of them and hope that you were interested.

References:

1. Business Analysis Body of Knowledge Overview
2. Val it