Business Analysis - 7 Steps in the Process flow

In case you want to check out my previous posts -?BA-1,?BA-2,?PM-1,?PM-2,?PM-3,?BA-3, BA-4.

Business Analysis. The most important step to begin within any project. The process is generally divided into multiple steps, with each step involving specific tasks to perform and documents to produce. While these steps and principles are agnostic to the SDLC cycle, the frequency of occurrence or the order may change.

This diagram depicts the business analysis process flow:

Step 1: Understanding the background

This first step is where much of the groundwork for a project is covered. Whether a project is brand new or existing, it’s crucial for the business analyst to gather a significant amount of background information on the project.

These are the conditions of the project that need to be determined at this stage:

1. What domain is the project under? Is there enough information corresponding to the domain?
2. What are the various circumstances that could potentially affect the business strategy for the project?

This can be accomplished by using Porter’s Five Forces framework.

Porter’s Five Forces framework: This technique determines the pressures on an organization that may impact the project. Industry competitors, new entrants, substitutes, buyers, and suppliers are examined to determine what, if any, external pressures exist.

Step 2: Identifying your Stakeholders

The stakeholders on a project are the ones who?make decisions and sign off on requirements and priorities. Therefore, identifying all of the stakeholders is crucial at the start.

The document at this stage is the stakeholder Matrix, a list of groups and stakeholders for each classification.

You can use a stakeholder wheel technique, which contains each stakeholder that impacts the project, such as:

• Owners:?shareholders, trustees, or anyone who are sponsoring the project
• Managers:?senior or middle managers responsible for communication and monitoring the progress
• Employees:?developers, analysts, or testers responsible for delivering the project
• Regulators:?any regulators involved that monitor adherence to rules — e.g. a regulator that monitors RBI/HKMA/MAS regulations
• Partners: individuals responsible for working alongside the project that provides complementary or supplementary products or services
• Customers: the end-users of the product
• Competitors:?a potential section of users of competitive products or inputs from the competitors themselves

Step 3: Discovering the Objectives

Establishing the business strategy and objectives and putting them on paper will help the business analyst and project managers stay focused on the vision and make course corrections along the way. It will also help during scope definition.

The document at this stage is the Business Objectives List.

Techniques that might help in establishing business objectives:

1. SWOT Analysis:?determine the strengths and weakness
2. Focus groups and brainstorming
3. Documenting and conveying business objectives?to all stakeholders, ensuring a single vision.

Step 4: Scoping the deliverables

Based on the objective of the project and a team discussion, this step is when the scope is defined. A list of project development goals is detailed, along with a list of items that are not included in the project. The scope definition document can include:

• Development items?in scope
• Development items out of scope

The document produced in this stage is a Scope Definition Document.

Step 5: Timelining and Delivery Planning

The business analyst and project owner will provide a detailed timeline for delivering the requirements to the development team. A timeline for the requirements will be provided based on factors such as:

• Stakeholders and their availability
• Project scope
• Project methodology

The document produced here is the Business Analyst Delivery Plan.

Step 6: Defining the Project Requirements

This step requires the business analyst to clarify requirements to the business owner and get the green signal?to deliver them to the development team.?Requirements can be divided into functional and non-functional.

Non-functional requirements?can be documented in a business requirement document that?covers performance, scalability, and security.?Functional requirements?are provided in terms of use cases, storyboards, prototypes, and wireframes.

A few techniques that help the requirement gathering phase are:

1. Interviewing the stakeholders: Ask when, how, where, and what is supposed to be achieved by the user helps arrive at the requirement.
2. Requirements defining techniques: Use case templates, storyboards, prototypes, or wireframes.

Documents required in this stage are 1) Non-functional Requirements business requirement document, 2) Functional Requirements

Step 7: Implementing through SDLC

A business analyst is involved in the technical implementation of requirements to ensure that everything aligns.

There are a few steps during this phase:

• Reviewing the technical deliverables to align with requirements
• Engage with the QA team to?ensure the requirements are tested and requirements are understood
• Manage changes from the business owner that are requested once the initial requirements are delivered and implemented (in the form of Change requests CR)
• Facilitate user acceptance once the requirement implementation is done

The importance of the business analysis phase cannot be underestimated. This phase sets the tone for the entire development project, so it’s crucial to flesh it out as much as possible. The more time and energy you dedicate to perfecting this phase, the smoother the overall development will proceed.

This is a general overview of Business Analysis Process Flow. You can always improvise and modify to make the process fit your?project.

Let me know your experience with this flow? Do you use this in your projects?