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What is the need of a Business Analyst?

The Business Analyst is an agent of change. Business Analysis is a disciplined approach for introducing and managing
change to organizations, whether they are for-profit businesses, governments, or non-profits.

Business analysis is used to identify and articulate the need for change in how organizations work, and to facilitate that
change. As business analysts, we identify and define the solutions that will maximize the value delivered by an
organization to its stakeholders.
Business analysts work across all levels of an organization and may be involved in everything from defining strategy, to
creating the enterprise architecture, to taking a leadership role by defining the goals and requirements for programs and
projects or supporting continuous improvement in its technology and processes.

The definition of business analysis is: “the set of tasks and techniques used to work as a liaison among stakeholders to
understand the structure, policies, and operations of an organization, and recommend solutions that enable the
organization to achieve its goals.”

The Business Analyst role is about linking and liaising. Broader than IT, the BA focuses on solutions in the context of the
organization’s goals, regardless of whether they utilize technology. The BA role is about meeting business needs and
ensuring investment in the right solutions.

There are 3 Knowledge Areas along with a set of underlying competencies, and applies to both the enterprise and to
projects. The knowledge areas are:

1. Elicitation (gathering)
2. Business Analysis Planning and Requirements Analysis
o Gap Analysis (As is and to be system analysis)
o Data mapping
o Process Mapping
3. Requirements Management (documentation) and Communication

1. Elicitation

One of the key roles of a Business Analyst is requirements elicitation.

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The term elicitation is used in books and research to raise the fact that good requirements cannot just be collected from
the customer, as would be indicated by the name requirements gathering. Requirements elicitation is non-trivial
because you can never be sure you get all requirements from the user and customer by just asking them what the
system should do.

Requirements elicitation practices include:

1. Interviews and workshops/meetings
2. questionnaires
3. user observation
4. brainstorming
5. use case diagrams (UML)
6. prototyping (mock up diagrams)
7. JAR/JAD sessions

1. INTERVIEWING AND WORKSHOPS/MEETINGS

 Used for eliciting detailed information from an individual or a group
 For the small projects – may be used as the only requirement elicitation technique
 For large projects – usually a part of some high-level elicitation techniques
 Interviewing is not simply a matter of asking questions; it requires development of some general social skills, the
ability to listen, and knowledge of a variety of interviewing tactics
 Overcomes articulation problems and communication barriers

Four phases
1. Identifying candidates
2. Preparing for an interview
3. Conducting the interview
4. Following up

Identify Candidates:
 Start with the person who has authorized or is sponsoring the project – usually a manager or executive
 Use the organization chart to identify other relevant people – those who know why the system is being built and
who will use it

Ask questions such as

 “Who else should I talk to?”
 “Who else may use the system?”
 “Who will agree/disagree with you on this?”
 “Who else interacts with you?”

Two major activities for interviewing

 Making arrangements with the people to be interviewed
 Preparing a list of questions

Making arrangements
 Schedule in advance
 Make the interviewees aware of the goals of the interview
 Give them any relevant materials
 Remind them a day or two in advance
 Secure permission for recording on audio or video type in advance
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Conducting the interview

 Review the goals
 Explain any mathematical or graphical notations that you might use
• Be an active listener
• Be courteous; keep the interviewee at ease
• Remain in control; bring the interview back on track
• Keeping the process visible
• “Are we doing all right?”
• “Have we ignored anything?”

Types of questions
• “Why are we building this system?”
• “What do you expect from it?”
• “Who are other users of this system?”
• Open-ended question - encourage unconstrained answers
• “Tell me what to do.”
• Close ended questions - force a precise or detailed answer
• Ask questions that approach the issue from different directions, or at different level of abstraction
• Ask the questions to raise the level when the interview begins to get too detailed or too focused
• Leave 5 - 10 minutes for summarizing and consolidating
• Describe briefly the major issues that you believe have adequately explored and those issues that you believe
require additional information
• Explain the follow up actions that will be taken
• Solicit and answer questions about the interview, the follow up actions, and what will happen with the
information collected o Thank the interviewee for the time and effort

Follow up Activities
• Send the interviewee the written expression of thanks
• Produce a written summary of the interview – Minutes of Meeting
• Reorganize or reorder the topics discussed
• Consolidate related information
• Uncover ambiguities, conflicting information, or missing information
• Give the interviewee the copy of the summary and request confirmation that the summary reflects the
information exchanged
• Review the procedures used to prepare for and conduct the interview; find a way to improve the process in the
future

2. SURVEY/QUESTIONNAIRE
• Surveys are useful for quickly gathering data from a large group of participants.
• They preclude the opportunity for in-person, ad hoc conversations
• Surveys are an inexpensive way to gather objective input from customers or potential end users.
• A successful survey or questionnaire must have well-chosen participants
• Surveys can be structured to offer a series of finite choices for feedback, or they can offer open-ended input,
depending on the needs of the project at hand.
• Open-ended surveys are useful for a broader discovery of business needs; however, the larger the number of
participants in open-ended surveys, the more prohibitive they are to analyze.
• Survey wording must be unambiguous and precise
• It is good practice for an analyst to politely request that survey participants respond by a reasonable deadline

3. BRAINSTORMING
• Group technique for generating ideas
• Allows people to suggest and explore ideas in an atmosphere free of criticism and judgment
• Overcomes cognitive limitations and communication barriers
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• Stimulates imaginative thinking

• Helps to build a more complete picture
• Helps to avoid tendency to focus too narrowly too soon
• Provides more comfortable social setting
• Easy to learn; very little overhead
• It may not produce the same quality and level of detail as some other processes since it is unfacilitated and
relatively unstructured
• Group of 4 - 10 people
• The role of the leader is to get the session started

Brainstorming session has two phases

• Generation phase – offer as many ideas as possible; do not discuss the merits of the ideas
• Consolidation phase – ideas are discussed, revised, and organized, prioritized.

Conducting a Brainstorming Session

• Preparation
• Identifying the participants
• Designating the leader
• Scheduling the session
• Preparing the meeting room
• Generation phase
• The leader opens the session with a general statement of the problem (a seed expression)
• Participants generate new ideas

Rules for generation phase

• Criticism is absolutely forbidden; participants must feel free to express any idea
• Wild, offbeat, or unconventional ideas are encouraged; they usually lead to really creative approaches to the
problem
• Number of ideas generated should be very large
• In addition to suggesting totally new ideas, participants should be encouraged to combine or embellish ides of
others
• All ideas should remain visible to the participants
• One person is designated to record all the ideas on the flip chart pads
• Participants step to the flip chart to record their own ides
• Several small sheets of papers are placed in the middle of the table where all participants can reach them
• If not enough ideas are being generated the meeting can be stopped and continued at another time
• If enough ideas have been generated and recorded, move to the next phase

Consolidation phase
• Review the ideas for the purpose of clarification; two or more ideas may be combined
• Discard the ideas that are too wild to be usable
• Discuss the remaining ideas with the goal of prioritizing them
• After the session, the leader or other designated person produces a record of all the remaining ideas with their
priorities and relevant comments

4. PROTOTYPING / MOCK UPS: (STORYBOARDING, NAVIGATION FLOW, PAPER PROTOTYPING, SCREEN FLOWS)
• Prototyping is especially valuable for stakeholders such as business owners and end users who may not
understand all of the technical aspects of requirements, but will better relate to a visual representation of the
end product.
• The prototyping process is normally iterative, improving as more input and evaluation are gleaned from
stakeholders.
• Prototyping may be an interactive screen (normally consisting of hypertext only with no real data behind it), a
mock-up (such as a PowerPoint), a navigation flow (such as a Visio diagram), or a storyboard.
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• Simple, throwaway prototypes (such as pencil sketches or whiteboard diagrams) may be done in the initial
stages of discovery, and more detailed, interactive prototypes may be done once business requirements have
been identified.

Paper prototyping StoryBoarding

Screen-flow/navigation-flow prototyping
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5. OBSERVATION (JOB SHADOWING)

• Observation is quite helpful when considering a project that will change or enhance current processes.
• Two basic types of observation are available to an analyst:
o passive observation, where the analyst merely watches someone working but does not interrupt or
engage the worker in any way, and
o Active observation, where an analyst asks questions throughout the process to be sure she understands
and even attempts portions of the work.
• Analyst will provide notes from her observations and/or a verbal description of her understanding of the work
for the worker to review in order to be sure that there were no misunderstandings of the process.

6. USE CASE DIAGRAMS/ USER SCENARIOS

Unified Modeling Language (UML) is a standardized (ISO/IEC 19501:2005), general-purpose modeling language in the
field of software engineering. The Unified Modeling Language includes a set of graphic notation techniques to
create visual models of object-oriented software-intensive systems.
Structural UML diagrams Behavioral UML diagrams
• Class diagram • Activity diagram
describes the structure of a system by showing describes the business and operational step-by-
the system's classes, their attributes, and the step workflows of components in a system. An
relationships among the classes. activity diagram shows the overall flow of
control.
• Component diagram
describes how a software system is split up into • Communication diagram
components and shows the dependencies among shows the interactions between objects or parts
these components. in terms of sequenced messages. They represent
a combination of information taken from Class,
• Composite structure diagram Sequence, and Use Case Diagrams describing
describes the internal structure of a class and the both the static structure and dynamic behavior of
collaborations that this structure makes possible. a system.

• Deployment diagram • Interaction overview diagram

describes the hardware used in system Provides an overview in which the nodes
implementations and the execution represent communication diagrams.
environments and artifacts deployed on the
hardware. • Sequence diagram
Shows how objects communicate with each
• Object diagram other in terms of a sequence of messages. Also
shows a complete or partial view of the structure indicates the lifespans of objects relative to those
of an example modeled system at a specific time. messages.

• Package diagram • State diagram

Describes how a system is split up into logical describes the states and state transitions of the
groupings by showing the dependencies system.
among these groupings.
• Timing diagrams
 Profile diagram a specific type of interaction diagram where the
operates at the metamodel level to focus is on timing constraints.
show stereotypes as classes with the
<<stereotype>> stereotype, and profiles as • Use case diagram
packages with the <<profile>> stereotype. The describes the functionality provided by a system
extension relation (solid line with closed, filled in terms of actors, their goals represented as
arrowhead) indicates what metamodel element a use cases, and any dependencies among those
given stereotype is extending. use cases.
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Activity Diagram
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Use Case Diagram

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Sequence Diagram
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Class Diagram
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Joint Application Requirements (JAR) / Joint Application Development (JAD) sessions

Key participants

• Executive Sponsor:
The executive who charters the project, also called the system owner. They must be high enough in the
organization to be able to make decisions and provide the necessary strategy, planning, and direction.

• Subject Matter Experts:

These are the business users, the IS professionals, and the outside experts that will be needed for a successful
workshop. This group is the backbone of the meeting; they will drive the changes.

• Facilitator/Session Leader:
meeting and directs traffic by keeping the group on the meeting agenda. The facilitator is responsible for
identifying those issues that can be solved as part of the meeting and those which need to be assigned at the
end of the meeting for follow-up investigation and resolution. The facilitator serves the participants and does
not contribute information to the meeting.

• Scribe/Modeler/Recorder/Documentation Expert:
Records and publish the proceedings of the meeting and does not contribute information to the meeting.

• Observers:
Generally members of the application development team assigned to the project. They are to sit behind the
participants and are to silently observe the proceedings.

Key Steps for a successful JAR/JAD session

• Identify project objectives and limitations
o Have clear objectives for the workshop and for the project as a whole. The pre-workshop activities, the
planning and scoping, set the expectations of the workshop sponsors and participants.
o Scoping identifies the business functions that are within the scope of the project. It also tries to assess
both the project design and implementation complexity.
o The political sensitivity of the project should be assessed.
o Has this been tried in the past? How many false starts were there? How many implementation failures
were there?
o Systems projects should be sized so that a complete design - right down to screens and menus - can be
designed in 8 to 10 workshop days.

• Define project deliverables

In general, the deliverables from a workshop are documentation and a design. It is important to define the form
and level of detail of the workshop documentation.
o What types of diagrams will be provided?
o What type or form of narrative will be supplied?

• Define the schedule of workshop activities

Workshops vary in length from one to five days. The initial workshop for a project should not be less than three
days. It takes the participants most of the first day to get comfortable with their roles, with each other, and with
the environment. The second day is spent learning to understand each other and developing a common
language with which to communicate issues and concerns. By the third day, everyone is working together on the
problem and real productivity is achieved. After the initial workshop, the team-building has been done. Shorter
workshops can be scheduled for subsequent phases of the project, for instance, to verify a prototype. However,
it will take the participants from one to three hours to re-establish the team psychology of the initial workshop.
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• Select the participants

These are the business users, the IS professionals, and the outside experts that will be needed for a successful
workshop. These are the true "back bones" of the meeting who will drive the changes.

• Prepare the workshop material

Before the workshop, the project manager and the facilitator perform an analysis and build a preliminary design
or straw man to focus the workshop. The workshop material consists of documentation, worksheets, diagrams,
and even props that will help the participants understand the business function under investigation.

• Organize workshop activities and exercises

The facilitator must design workshop exercises and activities to provide interim deliverables that build towards
the final output of the workshop. The pre-workshop activities help design those workshop exercises.

• Prepare, inform, educate the workshop participants

All of the participants in the workshop must be made aware of the objectives and limitations of the project and
the expected deliverables of the workshop. Briefing of participants should take place 1 to 5 days before the
workshop. This briefing may be teleconferenced if participants are widely dispersed. The briefing document
might be called the Familiarization Guide, Briefing Guide, Project Scope Definition, or the Management
Definition Guide - or anything else that seems appropriate. It is a document of eight to twelve pages, and it
provides a clear definition of the scope of the project for the participants. The briefing itself lasts two to four
hours. It provides the psychological preparation everyone needs to move forward into the workshop.

• Coordinate workshop logistics

Workshops should be held off-site to avoid interruptions. Projectors, screens, PCs, tables, markers, masking
tape, Post-It notes, and lots of other props should be prepared. What specific facilities and props are needed is
up to the facilitator. They can vary from simple flip charts to electronic white boards. In any case, the layout of
the room must promote the communication and interaction of the participants. Food and drinks. Shuttle service.

Advantages
 JAD decreases time and costs associated with requirements elicitation process. During 2-4 weeks information
not only is collected, but requirements, agreed upon by various system users, are identified. Experience with
JAD allows companies to customize their systems analysis process into even more dynamic ones like Double
Helix, a methodology for mission-critical work.

 JAD sessions help bring experts together giving them a chance to share their views, understand views of others,
and develop the sense of project ownership.

 The methods of JAD implementation are well known, as it is "the first accelerated design technique available on
the market and probably best known", and can easily be applied by any organization.

 Easy integration of modeling tools into JAD workshops improves session productivity and provides systems
analysts with discussed and ready to use models.
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JAR/JAD Template

Meeting Logistics
Dates: Monday, MM. DD, YYYY
Time: 10 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. (Central)
Location: STL Headquarters 2 – Conference Room 555
Audio USA Toll-Free: (877)555-8018 OR (636)555-3182
Teleconference #: ACCESS CODE: 6700360
Web Meeting Info: Web Meeting Address: https://www.webmeeting.att.com
Web Meeting Number(s): (877)555-8018 OR (636)555-3162
Access Code: 6700360
Contact Name: Alice Dames ##-7854 (direct) 314-555-7854 (cell) (314) 277-0658
Participants: Name Department Name Department
= In Attendance Matilda Duck Operations, Business Donald Duck Project Manager, XXX
Requestor Business Services
Minnie Mouse Project Manager, Ops Daisy Duck Product Engineer XXX
Scrooge McDuck Release Manager Hughie Duck Product Engineer XXX
(Optional)
Gladstone Gander Middleware Services
Hortense Duck Systems Architect Alice Dames Business Analyst, XXX
Louie Duck Development Design Lead
Development Resource
Dewey Duck Manager
QA Lead
Ludwig von Duck Application Delivery Manager
Della Duck

Purpose: To document requirements for the Wing Nut linked to Gizmo project.
Meeting Agenda
Morning Agenda 10:00 AM – 11:45 AM (CST)
Introductions and Overview of Complete Meeting Agenda 10:00 AM - 10:15 AM Alice Dames
Project Overview: 10:15 AM - 11:00 AM Project Sponsor
o Business Case Project Manager
o Project Scope
JAR Session Objectives : 11:00 AM - 11:15 AM Alice Dames
o Rules of the Road (business analyst)
o Define Project Scope
o Define High Level Requirements
o Define Detail Requirements (where applicable)
o Identify any Additional Project Stakeholders
o Identify Approvers
Discussion Categories:
o Requirements
o Assumptions
o Risks
o Constraints
o Action Items
o Dependencies
o Parking Lot
Current State Processing: 11:15 AM – 11:45 AM
o Introduction to Wing Nut linked to Gizmo project
o Manual process — annotations required
Lunch Arrives — 15 Minute Break 11:45 AM - 12:00 PM

Afternoon Agenda 12:15 PM – 3:00 PM (CST)

Vision of Future State: 12:00 AM - 1:15 PM Alice Dames
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o Changing the Wing Nut to add Gizmos Team

o Changes to GUI
Break 1:15 PM – 1:30 PM
Vision of Future State (continued): 1:30 PM - 2:00 PM Alice Dames
o Changing the Wing Nut to add Gizmos Team
o Changes to GUI
Review: 2:00 PM- 2:20PM Alice Dames
o Requirements Team
o Assumptions
o Risks
o Constraints
o Action Items
o Dependencies
o Parking Lot
Discuss Next Steps 2:20 PM - 2:30 PM Alice Dames

Gap Analysis

This technique helps you identify the gap between your current situation and the future state that you want to reach,
along with the tasks that you need to complete to close this gap. This usually occurs in the PLANNING PHASE of the
project.

1. First, identify the objectives that you need to achieve. This gives you your future state - the "place" where you
want to be once you've completed your project.

2. Second, for each of your objectives, analyze your current situation. To do this, consider the following questions:

o Who has the knowledge that you need?

o Who will you need to speak with to get a good picture of your current situation?
o Is the information in people's heads, or is it documented somewhere?
o What's the best way to get this information?
o By using brainstorming workshops?
o Through one-to-one interviews?
o By reviewing documents?
o By observing project activities such as design workshops?
o Or in some other way?
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3. Once you know your future state and your current situation, you can think about what you need to do to bridge
the gap and reach your project's objectives.

Example of Gap Analysis

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Data Mapping

Data mapping is the process of creating data element mappings between two distinct data models. Data mapping is
used as a first step for a wide variety of data integration tasks including:
 Data transformation or data mediation between a data source and a destination
 Identification of data relationships as part of data lineage analysis
 Discovery of hidden sensitive data such as the last four digits social security number hidden in another user id as
part of a data masking or de-identification project
 Consolidation of multiple databases into a single data base and identifying redundant columns of data for
consolidation or elimination
For example, a company that would like to transmit and receive purchases and invoices with other companies might use
data mapping to create data maps from a company's data to standardized ANSI ASC X12 messages for items such as
purchase orders and invoices.

When new data fields need to be implemented or changes to data need to be made, BA will be responsible for data
mapping.
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ETL
The process of extracting data from source systems and bringing it into the data warehouse is commonly called ETL,
which stands for extraction, transformation, and loading.

You need to load your data warehouse regularly so that it can serve its purpose of facilitating business analysis. To do
this, data from one or more operational systems needs to be extracted and copied into the data warehouse. The
challenge in data warehouse environments is to integrate, rearrange and consolidate large volumes of data over many
systems, thereby providing a new unified information base for business intelligence.

Extraction of Data
During extraction, the desired data is identified and extracted from many different sources, including database systems
and applications.

Clean
The cleaning step is one of the most important as it ensures the quality of the data in the data warehouse. Cleaning
should perform basic data unification rules, such as:
 Making identifiers unique (sex categories Male/Female/Unknown, M/F/null, Man/Woman/Not Available are
translated to standard Male/Female/Unknown)
 Convert null values into standardized Not Available/Not Provided value
 Convert phone numbers, ZIP codes to a standardized form
 Validate address fields, convert them into proper naming, e.g. Street/St/St./Str./Str
 Validate address fields against each other (State/Country, City/State, City/ZIP code, City/Street).

Transportation/Transformation of Data
After data is extracted, it has to be physically transported to the target system or to an intermediate system for further
processing. Depending on the chosen way of transportation, some transformations can be done during this process, too.

Load
During the load step, it is necessary to ensure that the load is performed correctly and with as little resources as
possible. The target of the Load process is often a database. In order to make the load process efficient, it is helpful to
disable any constraints and indexes before the load and enable them back only after the load completes. The referential
integrity needs to be maintained by ETL tool to ensure consistency.

Some of the Well Known ETL Tools

The most well-known commercial tools are Ab Initio, IBM InfoSphere DataStage, Informatica, Oracle Data
Integrator and SAP Data Integrator.
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Process Mapping
Business process mapping refers to activities involved in defining what a business entity does, who is responsible, to
what standard a business process should be completed, and how the success of a business process can be determined.
The main purpose behind business process mapping is to assist organizations in becoming more efficient. A clear and
detailed business process map or diagram allows outside firms to come in and look at whether or not improvements can
be made to the current process.
Business process mapping takes a specific objective and helps to measure and compare that objective alongside the
entire organization's objectives to make sure that all processes are aligned with the company's values and capabilities.

When there is a change at the PROCESS level in a company, BA and System architects are responsible for Process
Mapping.
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