How do you create business analysis models that are high-quality and user-friendly?

Understanding the stakeholder needs, defining clear objectives, gathering information, and doing story boarding along with visual aid. clarity of the requirement with multiple iterations with the stakeholder.

Agree with the article. As a Business Analyst, it is key to understand what exactly you intend on illustrating and who is your target audience. Based on these two guidelines, it is often possible that the outcome may not be a text book model, but a hybrid one customized to cater specifically to a set of stakeholders. Often times in fact, analysis tends to operate in similar grey areas of procedure, not strictly following any single model but rather being flexible enough to get the best of multiple worlds. The standard best practices however, like readability, accessibility, easy to share and update, should be followed irrespective of the model chosen.

Selecting the right business analysis model hinges on the purpose, complexity, and audience. For comprehensive insights, complex scenarios might require decision trees, control flows or UML models. Simpler presentations may benefit from SWOT or Fishbone diagrams. Prioritise user comprehension and engagement by balancing depth and simplicity, ensuring alignment with stakeholder needs and the data's nature for an impactful, user-friendly model.

Considering your stakeholder personas is a helpful way to make sure you select the right models and views. Working with a few people from across your organization, you can develop a set of information about types of roles and preferences in your organization, then prioritize those who are most important to the work at hand. For example, busy executives and detail-oriented engineering leads may both need to use your models often. To meet both of their needs, your artifacts may need the capability to shift between summary and detailed information in a smooth and intuitive way.

Providing professional opinions and offering alternatives based on your experience is also key. Listening to stakeholders and their objectives is the first step but being able to leverage that information and understanding their needs while offering a solution that may not be in the form they originally intended! So respecting their wishes while also providing a new perspective is key.

As business analysts, we also have to be able to address complexity, and this requires significant decomposition skills. In order to keep your models simple and easily understandable, you have to decompose them into logical parts and then to find a way how to go from global to detail view and vice versa. Frequently, identifying the criteria by which you can break down complex models into simpler ones can be challenging. However, with persistent practice, your proficiency in this skill will steadily improve.

The writer has clearly explained the challenges related to creating effective business analysis models. The article emphasizes the importance of choosing the right type of model based on project scope, objectives, and audience. It also provides guidance on following best practices to ensure the quality and usability of the models, including using standard notation, clear labeling, and appropriate levels of detail. Lastly, the article mentions the use of appropriate tools for creating and editing these models. Overall, the article offers a structured approach to addressing the complexities of creating business analysis models.

As a Finance expert, I have seen numerous times when finance jargon is used in presentations to multi-disciplinary audiences. The reaction is confusion and distraction from the message. It is optimal to not use jargon unless the audience is all in the same discipline. If there is a rare instance that jargon is used, at least have a reference document provided to audience members so they can see its definition.

Remember, best practices are those techniques that were mostly tried and true in the recent past. I prefer to add a future perspective or leading edge practices and new techniques/approaches to enhance models. Also build in a lens of risk management to any decision models you design. Keep the concepts simple to understand, but the math complex. Let the models take us to new insights and new “places “of thought and knowledge.

Need to carefully consider use of colour, to ensure that the model is understandable by colour blind or visually impaired readers.

Tools are often dictated by the availability within your organisation. So whether your organisation has simple tools, specialist modelling tools or more versatile alternatives that allow you to communicate effectively, make the most of what you have available. What should determine the tool, is the technique you intend to model and the situation or outcome you wish to visualise.

It may be challenging to find time to learn new tools when you have a lot of tasks to complete. However, it's crucial to prioritize learning these tools to improve communication. The benefits are definitely worth the effort. Modern tools like Miro not only provide templates for different frameworks, but also offer quick explanations and examples, making the learning process faster.

Tool needs to be collaborative in nature too and has rich embedded tool sets. Knowledge on different SaaS based tool is critical.

I'd say only from my experiences: use tools that are easily accessible for you and your audiences, that allow you and them to save the work and update later, that you can proficiently use to draw and update your model WHILE eliciting requirements (not after).

I agree. Another factor of importance is establishing common terminology with stakeholders and always being as precise as possible when documenting to ensure, that the content of specifications is really understood and mitigate risk for unexpected change requests. In fact, based on my experience it is advisable to use as simple language as possible and leave as few room for interpretation as possible.

While best practices and use cases are valuable strategies to address problems faced by emerging markets and businesses, they might not be sufficient on their own. Best practices provide guidelines based on past experiences, and use cases illustrate scenarios in which models are applicable. However, the evolving nature of markets and businesses can introduce novel challenges that may not have been addressed by existing best practices or captured in traditional use cases. Therefore, while best practices and use cases provide a strong foundation, adaptability and innovative thinking are crucial for handling new and unforeseen challenges.

I think it’s important to validate the models with relevant stakeholders. Ensure that they accurately represent the intended information and that they effectively address the problem or question at hand. Document the rationale behind your model choices, assumptions made, and any constraints. Ensure that your models are as universally understandable as possible, especially if your audience is multi-cultural, as symbols and terminology can have different interpretations.

The article is really insightful & helpful . Another important consideration in business analysis models is accommodation of stakeholder feedback. One can hardly get everything right in the first attempt. Therefore, capturing feedback is paramount in order to evolve the initial model to fit the needs of the stakeholders.

You need to understand the purpose and scope of your business analysis model. What problem are you trying to solve? Who are your stakeholders and what are their needs and expectations? What are the objectives and benefits of your model? You can use techniques such as MOST (Mission, Objectives, Strategies, and Tactics) Analysis or CATWOE (Customers, Actors, Transformation Process, World View, Owner, Environmental Constraints) Analysis to define the context and scope of your model.