I want to know everything: business analysis. Part 1

How it all began

Staying on “sabbatical”, I have at my disposal a certain amount of free time that I can spend on “socially useful work”. Therefore, if the business analysis is interesting for you, please read the thoughts on this issue:


So, the purpose of the article is to show what users of the results of business analyst work expect and need. In fact, the article was written not only for business analysts, but also for those who are forced to use the results of their work. And not just to “read and use foul language”, but to be able to explain what they missed or did not take into account in their work.

Let's start with the basics: what is “business analysis”? I hope it is not a secret to anyone that “business analysis”, “business analysis” (audit) and “business analytics” are completely different concepts, and, apart from “similar words,” there is not much in common between them.

In order not to obstruct the already voluminous text, I made a “collection of definitions” in a footnote, who are interested, you can read.
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Collection and documentation of requirements, wishes, business goals

So, as they say, it's time to figure out what this was all about. All this, in the sense of "business". And if the managers themselves and / or employees do not know this, “ then we go to you ” (c). In fact, this is a very important stage and there are some very unobvious difficulties.

Traditionally, let's start with definitions. What is business? Business, speaking in Russian, is just some kind of activity or occupation for which we spend our resources (time, money) and our abilities. And any “business” does not exist by itself in a vacuum; it serves to “meet the needs.” All this probably already heard more than once. So, the identification of these very needs and is one of the tasks of a business analyst at the first stage of the study.


And in order for us to have all this praise more understandable, let us digress from the granite of science, to more pliable matters - to examples. Imagine that we are faced with the task of researching the Post of Russia business. This example, I think, will be close to many, because each of us has come across with the mail. So what is the purpose of this organization? What need does it (the organization) satisfy? Many will answer right away that this is “mail delivery”. And it will not be the right answer. Let's ask a little differently, but what reflects the need of customers in “sending letters, parcels and so on”? And then surely everyone guessed it - the transfer of information and values ​​over distances. This is precisely the business need that this organization must meet.

I feel that there will be dissatisfied smirks, saying “you want to twist, turn, you want to fool” the author. But no. Take another look carefully. A person was not born with the knowledge that in order to tell something to another person behind forests and fields (in the sense of being very far away), you must first write it all down on paper, pack it in an envelope and send it by mail. Such were the requirements due to the underdevelopment of communications.

And we see that the incorrect definition of business goals leads to its (business, enterprise) dying. After all, cellular communication, fax, e-mail - these means also satisfy the same need - the transfer of information over distances. The fact that the management of Post of Russia did not understand this, it happens, but the fact that business analysts, whom they probably called, did not indicate this - this is already a problem. If we talk about mail, then its task was and remains "the transfer of information and values ​​over distances." Not sending parcels, envelopes, wrappers — namely, “transmitting information and values,” regardless of the way she does it, even let her teleport or produce it on the spot.

With the advent of cell phones, it was obvious that writing letters would be less. Only those who are interested in the transfer of information on physical media remain. That's what prevented the delivery of faxes and the rights of notaries at each post office, so that the person on the other end would receive a certified copy? In the future, you could use the scan and file transfer for printing in the right compartment (the benefit of digital signatures is already in progress). Again, money transfers in Russia with the receipt / departure in each branch. And if we recall the call offices, which were often in the mail, which prevented the organization of VoIP, or its equivalent for cheap calls? It was precisely the lack of understanding of the goals of the organization that prevented it. Now, all the sweet pieces went to courier services, money transfer systems and other VoIP operators. And it was necessary, just to think a little.

I hope that this example clearly showed that the primary goal of a business analyst is to recognize and indicate the business goals of an enterprise, the needs that it satisfies. And how does it (the company) do it (as in our example, sending envelopes, notarizing the fax-mail items, or a video call service) is already a second question. These will be just specific business options for solving the problem. Knowing the business goals, the marketer, sales manager, risk analyst and many others can determine in advance the possibilities and risks of this direction, and offer the customer more interesting options, or point out competitors. Concentration on specific business options, as we clearly see, leads to disastrous results.

The following “artifacts” that a business analyst should work with are tasks, requirements and wishes. And now comes the moment when we (as business analysts) will be very useful in marketing assistance. The need then we identified. But those who will satisfy this need, using the services of a business, must be found by marketers. "Market segment", "target audience", and hence the requirements for the service provided or products produced - must be set by marketing. This is their bread, and they work it out.

Obviously, the business analyst must understand and document all the requirements and tasks that will be voiced, precisely from a business point of view - satisfying quite specific needs. At the same time, when describing them, it is desirable to avoid all sorts of vague definitions of tasks in the “make Aunt Glasha happy” style, or try to specify them as much as possible (for example, “for the“ assistant ”position, reduce the amount of work performed to 5 operations, total time not more than 6 hours a day "). And most importantly, all asked requirements must have a numerical, absolute value. Suppose we received a requirement: “reduce the cost of delivering items within one area by 5%.” Reduce what? What are the costs: labor, delivery time, delivery costs, or all together in a certain proportion? How to count all this? Ideally, it would be desirable for the requirements to be recorded in a form close to the following examples:

The time spent on delivering shipments weighing up to 1 kg, within 300 km from the place of departure, from the moment of sending the item to the office until it is ready to be issued to the recipient, must be reduced from 24 to 16 working hours.

The cost of delivery of shipments within 300 km from the place of departure, weighing up to 1 kg, taking into account:

• the cost of processing the shipment;
• the wages of all those involved in the process of receiving, processing, delivering, issuing and other necessary procedures (including cleaning the premises, servicing vehicles and premises, issuing documents, etc.);
• equipment depreciation;
• the cost of consumables;
• constant quality and speed of delivery.

It should be reduced from 50 to 45 rubles, in terms of one consignment, with a total number of departures of at least 50 per day.

Surely they will immediately argue, “ what about the requirements in the style of“ increase the transparency of the processes? "In fact, there is nothing complicated. First, you need to understand what reasons led the customer to specify such a requirement? In this case, this is a consequence of the fact that it is impossible to control the movement of materials / goods / items in the process of work or other actions. Therefore, such requirements can be written in the style:

The time of providing information on a request to find an arbitrary batch / unit of goods shall not exceed 5 minutes from the moment of its sending / formation.

or

The report on the passage of the stages of shipment / production units / batch of products should be updated at least once per hour.

In this form, the performers will know exactly what is expected of them and will easily be able to confirm to the customer the achievement of the set goals and objectives. On the other hand, the customer will know what he pays for and what to expect.

And finally, I think everyone understands this, it is desirable to set goals and objectives for the process as a whole, and not for its separate stages. Although optimization and / or automation will relate to individual stages of the process, we also understand that improvement in one place often entails deterioration in another. Therefore, only generalized indicators give us an integral assessment of efficiency.

We go further. When we talk about the tasks that the customer sets, the business analyst must make sure that there are real opportunities to accomplish these tasks. Here, for example, the task is to guarantee the maximum delivery time for parcels from Kaliningrad to Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky in 3 days. Super. Everyone will only be happy. However, analyzing transport opportunities, we see that purely physically, sometimes in the glorious city of volcanoes and “Avachi”, a week can “not be weather.” That is a week planes do not fly there. And in this case, all promises, improvement of processes and anything else will not allow to solve this problem in the current conditions. Therefore, such a task should either be rejected at the earliest stages, or placed under conditions when they can be achieved.


As you can see, ignoring details in requirements and tasks can lead to troubles at further stages of work and this will not add “happiness” to developers, implementers and everyone who will have to use the report and make the “improvements” prescribed by the business analyst, who “forgot to clarify a couple non essential details. ”

I hope everyone imbued and realized that for each requirement and task, you need to make sure that it is possible to implement it and provide explanations with examples and detailed explanations (with restrictions, conditions and details on sources, means, data formats, conditions of their applicability and so on). Looking ahead, the same applies to the found deficiencies, problems, non-standard situations. It is highly desirable to also give the reasons for their appearance.

For example, if “duplicates” are found in the goods directory, then it is necessary to find out and indicate the reason for their appearance. In this case, at least three options are possible:

• The goods were entered simultaneously by several operators for new receipts from invoices, as a result, each incoming invoice uses its own variant of the commodity item;
• New product items are introduced by one person in charge, but in this way the missing or disabled “party accounting” in the accounting system is “emulated”;
• "Twins" are the result of combining several bases and many of them (twin positions) are missing from the balances and are used only for correctly displaying historical documents / transactions, without affecting the current work.

As we see, there may be situations when either you don’t need to change anything, or there are enough organizational measures, or you have to expand the scope of work by modernizing the used accounting system. In the absence of such details, a simple statement of fact “and in the reference books the duplication of positions” does not mean anything, and even recommendations in the “put the directory in order” or “remove twins” style can be both useless and erroneous.

And at the end of this section, I’ll focus on the fact that business processes have nothing to do with such economic indicators as sales volumes and prices. This is the responsibility of the commercial department in general, and marketing in particular. In other words, marketing is responsible for creating demand, and employees and business processes are responsible for satisfying it. And the only thing how business processes of any enterprise can affect profits is only by reducing costs, including time costs. Pricing, the formation of requirements for products, the volume of production / sales - all this concerns marketing and only marketing.


So, summarizing this part, we can say that the collection and analysis of requirements should be accompanied by an analysis of the reasons for the appearance of these requirements, the availability of physical capabilities for their implementation, as well as risks, and ways to minimize both the risks and their consequences. At the same time, requirements and tasks should be presented in the form of calculated indicators and set in absolute values. In essence, creating or improving processes is an organizational, or administrative function. And in order to realize it (function) effectively, it is necessary to clearly see why all this “disgrace” is being started, what is expected and what opportunities there are of these expectations to be realized.

→ Continued here

Sources of images:

1. The image of the lighthouse is taken here .
2. Dog from here