Business Analysis

About the Tutorial

Business Analysis is a subject which provides concepts and insights into the development
of the initial framework for any project. It holds the key to guide key stakeholders of a
project to perform business modelling in a systematic manner. This tutorial provides a
brief overview of the concepts of business analysis in an easy to understand manner.

Audience
This tutorial is meant for aspiring business analysts, and project owners or business
owners, coordinators and project team members who often work closely with business
analysts.

In addition, it will also be useful for anyone who is involved in capturing, writing, analyzing,
or understanding requirements for Information Technology solutions, including Subject
Matter Experts (SME), Business Process Managers, and Business Process Users.

Prerequisites
To understand this tutorial, it is advisable to have a foundation level knowledge of business
scenarios, process and domain knowledge pertaining to a few industries.

Copyright & Disclaimer

Copyright 2017 by Tutorials Point (I) Pvt. Ltd.

All the content and graphics published in this e-book are the property of Tutorials Point (I)
Pvt. Ltd. The user of this e-book is prohibited to reuse, retain, copy, distribute or republish
any contents or a part of contents of this e-book in any manner without written consent
of the publisher.

We strive to update the contents of our website and tutorials as timely and as precisely as
possible, however, the contents may contain inaccuracies or errors. Tutorials Point (I) Pvt.
Ltd. provides no guarantee regarding the accuracy, timeliness or completeness of our
website or its contents including this tutorial. If you discover any errors on our website or
in this tutorial, please notify us at [email protected]

i
 Business Analysis

Table of Contents
About the Tutorial ................................................................................................................................... i

Audience ................................................................................................................................................. i

Prerequisites ........................................................................................................................................... i

Copyright & Disclaimer............................................................................................................................ i

Table of Contents ................................................................................................................................... ii

1. BUSINESS ANALYSIS INTRODUCTION ................................................................................ 1

2. SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT LIFE CYCLE ............................................................................... 4

Post SDLC Process .................................................................................................................................. 6

Role of Business Analyst during SDLC Process ........................................................................................ 7

3. ROLES OF BUSINESS ANALYSTS ............................................................................................ 8

Major Roles of a BA ................................................................................................................................ 8

Key Responsibilities of a Business Analyst .............................................................................................. 9

What a BA is Expected to Deliver? ....................................................................................................... 10

4. BA TOOLS AND TECHNIQUES ............................................................................................. 12

Functional and Non-Functional Requirements ..................................................................................... 12

5. JAD SESSION ...................................................................................................................... 14

Use of a JAD Session ............................................................................................................................. 14

Participants in a JAD Session ................................................................................................................ 14

6. REQUIREMENT GATHERING TECHNIQUES ......................................................................... 16

7. FUNCTIONAL REQUIREMENTS DOCUMENT ....................................................................... 18

Functional Requirements Deliverables ................................................................................................. 18

ii
 Business Analysis

8. SOFTWARE REQUIREMENTS SPECIFICATION ..................................................................... 20

9. USE-CASES ......................................................................................................................... 22

What is a Use-Case? ............................................................................................................................. 22

Benefits of a Use-Case .......................................................................................................................... 22

The Anatomy of a Use-Case.................................................................................................................. 22

Guidance for Use-Case Template ......................................................................................................... 23

Use-Case Definition .............................................................................................................................. 23

10. USE-CASE DIAGRAMS ........................................................................................................ 26

Drawing Use-Case Diagrams ................................................................................................................. 26

Example Withdrawal Use-Case .......................................................................................................... 28

Use-Case Template ............................................................................................................................... 31

11. REQUIREMENTS MANAGEMENT ....................................................................................... 32

Why Projects Fail.................................................................................................................................. 32

Why Successful Teams do Requirements Management ....................................................................... 32

Lets Start with the Basics .................................................................................................................... 33

Collaboration & Buy- In from Stakeholders .......................................................................................... 34

12. PLANNING GOOD REQUIREMENTS .................................................................................... 36

Requirement Gathering and Analysis ................................................................................................... 36

Eliciting Approach ................................................................................................................................ 37

Different Types of Requirements ......................................................................................................... 37

Traceability & Change Management .................................................................................................... 39

Idea Requirements Design Test Business Objectives ............................................................................ 40

Quality Assurance ................................................................................................................................ 40

Obtaining Requirements Signoff .......................................................................................................... 41

iii
 Business Analysis

13. BUSINESS MODELLING ...................................................................................................... 42

Purpose of Business Modelling............................................................................................................. 42

Performing GAP Analysis ...................................................................................................................... 43

To Assess Proposed System .................................................................................................................. 44

Guiding Principles for Business Modelling ............................................................................................ 44

Example of BA role in Modelling ERP Systems ...................................................................................... 44

Functional Business Analyst ................................................................................................................. 45

Other Major Activities .......................................................................................................................... 45

Tool 1: Microsoft Visio ......................................................................................................................... 46

Tool 2: Enterprise Architect .................................................................................................................. 48

Tool 3: Rational Requisite Pro .............................................................................................................. 49

iv
 1. Business Analysis Introduction
Business Analysis

What is Business Analysis?

Business Analysis is the set of tasks, knowledge, and techniques required to identify
business needs and determine solutions to enterprise business problems. Although, the
general definition is similar, the practices and procedures may vary in various industries.

In Information technology industry, solutions often include a systems development

component, but may also consist of process improvement or organizational change.

Business analysis may also be performed to understand the current state of an

organization or to serve as a basis for the identification of business needs. In most cases,
however, business analysis is performed to define and validate solutions that meets
business needs, goals, or objectives.

Who is a Business Analyst?

A business analyst is someone who analyzes an organization or business domain (real or
hypothetical) and documents its business, processes, or systems, assessing the business
model or its integration with technology. However, organizational titles vary such as
analyst, business analyst, business systems analyst or maybe systems analyst.

Why a Business Analyst?

Organizations employ business analysis for the following reasons:

To understand the structure and the dynamics of the organization in which a system
is to be deployed.

To understand current problems in the target organization and identify

improvement potentials.

To ensure that the customer, end user, and developers have a common
understanding of the target organization.

In the initial phase of a project, when the requirements are being interpreted by the
solution and design teams, the role of a Business analyst is to review the solutions
documents, work closely with the solutions designers (IT team) and Project managers to
ensure that requirements are clear.

In a typical large-size IT organization, especially in a development environment, you can

find On-site as well as offshore delivery teams having the above-mentioned roles. You can
find a Business Analyst who acts as a key person who has to link both the teams.

1
 Business Analysis

Sometimes, he would interact with Business users and at times technical users and finally
to all the stakeholders in the projects to get the approval and final nod before proceeding
with the documentation.

Hence, the role of BA is very crucial in the effective and successful jumpstart for any
project.

Role of an IT Business Analyst

The role of a Business analyst starts from defining and scoping the business areas of the
organization, then eliciting the requirements, analyzing and documenting the
requirements, communicating these requirements to the appropriate stakeholders,
identifying the right solution and then validating the solution to find if the requirements
meet the expected standards.

2
 Business Analysis

BA
Role

How is it different from other Professions?

Business analysis is distinct from financial analysis, project management, quality
assurance, organizational development, testing, training and documentation development.
However, depending on the organization, a Business Analyst may perform some or all
these related functions.

Business analysts who work solely on developing software systems may be called IT
business analysts, technical business analysts, online business analysts, business systems
analysts, or systems analysts.

Business analysis also includes the work of liaison among stakeholders, development
teams, testing teams, etc.

3
 2. Software Development Life Cycle
Business Analysis

Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) is a process followed in a software project, within
a software organization. It consists of a detailed plan describing how to develop, maintain,
replace and alter or enhance specific software. It defines a methodology for improving the
quality of software and the overall development process.

SDLC is a process used by IT analysts in order to develop or redesign high quality

software system, which meets both the customer and the real-world requirement.

It takes into consideration all the associated aspects of software testing, analysis
and post-process maintenance.

The important phases of SDLC are depicted in the following illustration:

Planning Stage
Every activity must start with a plan. Failing to plan is planning to fail. The degree of
planning differs from one model to another, but it's very important to have a clear
understanding of what we are going to build by creating the system's specifications.

4
 Business Analysis

Defining Stage
In this phase, we analyze and define the system's structure. We define the architecture,
the components, and how these components fit together to produce a working system.

Designing Stage
In system design, the design functions and operations are described in detail, including
screen layouts, business rules, process diagrams and other documentation. The output of
this stage will describe the new system as a collection of modules or subsystems.

Building Stage
This is the development phase. We start code generation based on the system's design
using compilers, interpreters, debuggers to bring the system to life.

Implementation
Implementation is a part of the Building Stage. In this phase, we start code generation
based on the system's design using compilers, interpreters, debuggers to bring the system
to life.

Testing Stage
As different parts of the system are completed; they are put through a series of tests. it
is tested against the requirements to make sure that the product is actually solving the
needs addressed during the requirement phase.

Test plans and test cases are used to identify bugs and to ensure that the system
is working according to the specifications.

In this phase, different types of testing like unit testing, manual testing, acceptance
testing and system testing is done.

Defect Tracking in Testing

Software test reports are used to communicate the results of the executed test plans. This
being the case, a report should contain all test information that pertains to the current
system being tested. The completeness of reports will be verified in walkthrough sessions.
Testing for a project seeks to accomplish two main goals:

Detect failures and defects in the system.

Detect inconsistency between requirements and implementation.

The following flowchart depicts the Defect Tracking Process:

5
 Business Analysis

To achieve the main goals, the testing strategy for the proposed system will usually consist
of four testing levels.

These are unit testing, integration testing, acceptance testing, and regression testing. The
following subsections outline these testing levels, which development team roles are
responsible for developing and executing them, and criteria for determining their
completeness.

Deployment
After the test phase ends, the system is released and enters the production environment.
Once the product is tested and ready to be deployed it is released formally in the
appropriate market. Sometime product deployment happens in stages as per the
organizations business strategy.

The product may first be released in a limited segment and tested in the real business
environment (UAT- User acceptance testing). Then based on the feedback, the product
may be released as it is or with suggested enhancements in the targeting market segment.

Post SDLC Process

After the product is released in the market, its maintenance is done for the existing
customer base.

Once in the production environment, the system will suffer modifications because of
undetected bugs or other unexpected events. The system is evaluated and the cycle is
repeated for maintaining the system.

6
 Business Analysis

Role of Business Analyst during SDLC Process

As we can see the below diagram, BA is involved in driving business requirement and
converting them to solution requirements.

He is involved in translating the solution features into software requirements. Then leads
in analysis and designing phase, dictates in code development, then follows the testing
phase during bug fixing as a change agent in the project team and ultimately fulfills the
customer requirements.

7
 3. Roles of Business AnalystsBusiness Analysis

The role of a business analyst in an IT Project can be multifold. It is possible for project
team members to have multiple roles and responsibilities. In some projects, the BA may
take on the roles of the Business Intelligence Analyst, Database Designer, Software Quality
Assurance Specialist, Tester, and/or Trainer when there are limited resources available.

It is also possible for a Project Coordinator, or an Application Development Lead, or a

Developer to take on the role of the Business Analyst in specific projects.

Business Analysis overlaps heavily with analysis of requirements of the business to

function as usual and to optimize how they function. Some examples of Business Analysis
are:

Creating Business Architecture

Preparing a Business Case
Conducting Risk assessment
Requirements Elicitation
Business Process Analysis
Documentation of Requirements

Major Roles of a BA
A key role of most business analysts is to liaison between the business and technical
developers. Business analysts gets to work together with the business clients to
gather/define requirements of a system or process to improve productivity while at the
same time working with the technical teams to design and implement the system/process.

As a Contributor
The major responsibility of a BA is to contribute to the development of Business users /
key users in identifying business problems, needs and functions, understand stakeholders
concerns and requirements to identify improvement opportunities, and contribute business
input for developing the business case for the IT system development project.

As a Facilitator
A Business Analyst is also supposed to facilitate/co-ordinate in the elicitation and analysis
of requirements, collaborating and communicating with stakeholders and to manage their
expectations and needs, and ensure the requirements are complete, unambiguous and
map them to real-time business needs of an organization.

As an Analyst
Another important role would be to assess proposed system and organizational readiness
for system implementation and providing support to users and coordinate with IT staff.

8
 Business Analysis

To help review and provide inputs to the design of the proposed IT system from the
business perspective, resolving issues/conflicts among stakeholders, help organize
comprehensive and quality UAT through assisting users in developing test cases, and help
organize training with the aim of ensuring the deployed IT system which is capable of
meeting business needs and requirements as well as realizing the anticipated benefits.

Planning and monitoring the Business analysis activities for scope development, schedule
and approach for performing the activities related to business analysis for the IT system
development project, monitor the progress, coordinating with the Internal Project
manager and report on revenue, profitability, risks and issues wherever appropriate.

Key Responsibilities of a Business Analyst

The responsibility set of a business analyst would require him to fulfill different duties in
different phases of a project and they are elucidated below:

Initiation Phase
This phase will mark the beginning of a new project and a business analyst will vary out
the following responsibilities:

Assist in carrying out the cost-benefit analysis of the project.

Understand the business case.
Ascertain the feasibility of the solution/project/product.
Help in creating the project charter.
Identify the stakeholders in the project.

Planning Phase
This phase will involve gathering the requirements and planning, how the project will be
executed and managed. His responsibilities will include the below functions:

Eliciting the requirements

Analyze, organize and document requirements.
Manage requirements by creating Use-cases, RTM, BRD, SRS, etc.
Assess proposed solutions.
Liaise and enhance communications with stakeholders.
Assist in formulating the project management plans.
Help in finding the projects scope, constraints, assumptions and risks.
Assist in designing the user experience of the solution.

Executing Phase
This phase marks the development of the solution as per the requirements gathered. The
responsibilities include:

Explain requirements to the IT/development team.

Clarify doubts, concerns regarding the proposed solution to be developed.
9
 Business Analysis

Discuss and prioritize project scope changes and gain agreement.

Create beta tests scripts for initial testing.
Sharing the developing modules with stakeholders and solicit their feedback.
Following deadlines and manage stakeholders expectations.
Resolving conflicts and manage communications with the project team.

Monitoring and Controlling Phase

In this phase, the project is measured and controlled for any deviations from the initial
plans. This phase runs simultaneously to the execution phase.

Developing test scripts and conducting comprehensive module and integration

testing.

Conducting UAT (use acceptance testing) and creating testing reports.

Gain acceptance/approval of the deliverables from the client.
Explain the change requests to the development team.
Monitor the development of the change requests and verify their implementation
as per the projects objective.

Closing Phase
This phase marks the closure of the project. The responsibilities are:

Presenting the completed project to the client and gain their acceptance.

Create user-training manuals, any functional material and other instructional

guides.

Conduct elaborate integration testing in production environment.

Create final product documentations, document project lessons learned.

What a BA is Expected to Deliver?

A Business Analyst serves as the bridge between the business users and the technical IT
people. Their presence will contribute significantly to the success of IT projects. There are
many benefits of having a dedicated business analyst. A dedicated business analyst can:

Delivers a clear project scope from a business point of view.

Develop sound business cases and more realistic estimation of resources and
business benefits.

Prepares better reports on project scoping, planning and management in terms of

costs and schedule, especially for large-scale IT projects.

Produces clear and concise requirements, which in turn, helps provide clearer and
more accurate requirements, if the IT project is outsourced

10
 Business Analysis

Elicit the real business needs from users and effectively manage user expectations.

Improves the quality of design for the proposed IT system so that it meets the user
requirements.

Ensures the quality of the system developed before passing on to end-users for
review and acceptance.

Arranges comprehensive quality test on the delivered systems and provide

feedback to the technical IT people.

11
 4. BA Tools and Techniques Business Analysis

A Business Analyst should be familiar with various analytical tools and related technologies
when you are wearing the BA hat. I mean, if you are holding this position.

As we have already learnt earlier, business analysis is a process where you are trying to
understand a business enterprise and identifying opportunities, problem areas, problems
and meeting a wide range of people having wide range of roles and responsibilities like
CEO, VP, Director and understanding their business requirements.

Fundamentally, there are 3 types of Business analysis which we can categorize into -

Strategic Analysis: Strategic business analysis deals with pre-project work. It is

the method or process of identifying business problems, devising business
strategies, goals and objectives helping the top management. It provides
management information reporting for effective decision making process.

Tactical Analysis: It involves knowledge of specific business analysis techniques

to apply at the right time in the appropriate project.

Operational Analysis: In this type of Business analysis, we are focussed towards

the business aspect by leveraging information technology. It is also a process of
studying operational systems with the aim of identifying opportunities for business
improvement.

For each type of analysis, there are a set of tools which are available in the market and
based on organizational needs and requirements, these are to be used.

However, to materialize business requirements into understandable information, a good

BA will leverage techniques Fact-Finding, Interviews, Documentation Review,
Questionnaires, Sampling and Research in their day-to-day activities.

Functional and Non-Functional Requirements

We can breakdown a requirement into two principal types like Functional and Non-
functional requirements.

For all the technology projects, functional and non-functional requirements must be
segregated and separately analyzed.

To define the proper tool and an appropriate technique might be a daunting challenge.
Whether you are doing a brand-new application or making change to an existing
application. Considering the right technique for the functional process is an art by itself.

12
 Business Analysis

An overview of the widely-used business analysis techniques which are currently in the
market:

Process Deliverables
Processes Techniques
(Outcomes)

JAD Sessions
Business Requirements
Scenarios and Use-cases
Documents:
Organizational Modeling
Scope Modeling Business and Functional
Functional Decomposition Requirements
Interviews
Observation (Job Shadowing) Non-Functional
Focus Groups Requirements
To Determine Acceptance and Evaluation
Functional and Sequence Diagrams Business Rules
Non-Functional User Stories
Requirements Brainstorming Requirements Traceability
Storyboarding Matrix
Prototyping
Structured Walk-through
Event Analysis
Common Template:
Business Rule analysis
Requirements Workshops Business Requirements
Risk Analysis Document
Root Cause Analysis

Applicability of Tools and Process

Although there are a variety of tools and procedures available to business analysts, it all
depends upon the current practices of the organization and how they would like to use it.

For example, root-cause analysis is used when there is a requirement to go deeper into
a certain important area or function.

However, business requirements document is the most popular and accepted way to put
the requirements in documentation format.

In the subsequent chapters, we will be discussing some of the above techniques in-depth.

13
 5. JAD Session Business Analysis

Joint Application Development (JAD) is a process used to collect business requirements

while developing new information systems for a company. The JAD process may also
include approaches for enhancing user participation, expediting development and
improving the quality of specifications. The intention of a JAD session is to pool in subject
matter experts/Business analyst or IT specialist to bring out solutions.

A Business analyst is the one who interacts with the entire group and gathers the
information, analyses it and brings out a document. He plays a very important role in JAD
session.

Use of a JAD Session

JAD sessions are highly structured, facilitated workshops that bring together customer
decision makers and IT staff to produce high quality deliverables in a short period.

In other words, a JAD Session enables customers and developers to quickly come to an
agreement on the basic scope, objectives and specifications of a project or in case, not
come to an agreement which means the project needs to be re-evaluated.

Simply put, JAD sessions can

Simplify: It consolidates months of meetings and phone calls into a structured

workshop.

Identify: Issues and participants

Quantify: Information and processing needs

Clarify: Crystallize and clarify all requirements agreed upon in the session.

Unify: The output from one phase of development is input to the next.

Satisfy: The customers define the system; therefore, it is their system. Shared
participation brings a share in the outcome; they become committed to the systems
success.

Participants in a JAD Session

The participants involved in a JAD session are as follows:

Executive Sponsor
An executive sponsor is the person who drivers the project the system owner. They
normally are from higher positions and are able to make decisions and provide necessary
strategy, planning and direction.

14
 Business Analysis

Subject Matter Expert

These are the business users and outside experts who are required for a successful
workshop. The subject matter experts are the backbone of the JAD session. They will drive
the changes.

Facilitator
He chairs the meeting; he identifies issues that can be solved as part of the meeting. The
facilitator does not contribute information to the meeting.

Key Users
Key users or also called as super users in some instances have been used interchangeable
and differs from company to company still. Key users are generally the business users
who are more tightly aligned to the IT project and are responsible for the configuration of
profiles of their team members during the projects.

For Example: Suppose John is a key user and Nancy, Evan are users of a SAP system. In
this instance, Nancy and Evan does not have access to change the functionality and profile
whereas John being a Key user has access to edit profile with more authorizations.

The JAD approach, in comparison with the more traditional practice, is thought to lead to
faster development times and greater client satisfaction, because the client is involved
throughout the development process. In comparison, in the traditional approach to
systems development, the developer investigates the system requirements and develops
an application, with client input consisting of a series of interviews.

15
 6. Requirement Gathering Techniques
Business Analysis

Techniques describe how tasks are performed under specific circumstances. A task may
have none or one or more related techniques. A technique should be related to at least
one task.

The following are some of the well-known requirements gathering techniques:

Brainstorming
Brainstorming is used in requirement gathering to get as many ideas as possible from
group of people. Generally used to identify possible solutions to problems, and clarify
details of opportunities.

Document Analysis
Reviewing the documentation of an existing system can help when creating ASIS process
document, as well as driving gap analysis for scoping of migration projects. In an ideal
world, we would even be reviewing the requirements that drove creation of the existing
system a starting point for documenting current requirements. Nuggets of information
are often buried in existing documents that help us ask questions as part of validating
requirement completeness.

Focus Group
A focus group is a gathering of people who are representative of the users or customers
of a product to get feedback. The feedback can be gathered about needs/opportunities/
problems to identify requirements, or can be gathered to validate and refine already
elicited requirements. This form of market research is distinct from brainstorming in that
it is a managed process with specific participants.

Interface analysis
Interfaces for a software product can be human or machine. Integration with external
systems and devices is just another interface. User centric design approaches are very
effective at making sure that we create usable software. Interface analysis reviewing
the touch points with other external systems is important to make sure we dont overlook
requirements that arent immediately visible to users.

Interview
Interviews of stakeholders and users are critical to creating the great software. Without
understanding the goals and expectations of the users and stakeholders, we are very
unlikely to satisfy them. We also have to recognize the perspective of each interviewee,
so that, we can properly weigh and address their inputs. Listening is the skill that helps a
great analyst to get more value from an interview than an average analyst.

16
 Business Analysis

Observation
By observing users, an analyst can identify a process flow, steps, pain points and
opportunities for improvement. Observations can be passive or active (asking questions
while observing). Passive observation is better for getting feedback on a prototype (to
refine requirements), where active observation is more effective at getting an
understanding of an existing business process. Either approach can be used.

Prototyping
Prototyping is a relatively modern technique for gathering requirements. In this approach,
you gather preliminary requirements that you use to build an initial version of the solution
- a prototype. You show this to the client, who then gives you additional requirements.
You change the application and cycle around with the client again. This repetitive process
continues until the product meets the critical mass of business needs or for an agreed
number of iterations.

Requirement Workshops
Workshops can be very effective for gathering requirements. More structured than a
brainstorming session, involved parties collaborate to document requirements. One way
to capture the collaboration is with creation of domain-model artifacts (like static
diagrams, activity diagrams). A workshop will be more effective with two analysts than
with one.

Reverse Engineering
When a migration project does not have access to sufficient documentation of the existing
system, reverse engineering will identify what the system does. It will not identify what
the system should do, and will not identify when the system does the wrong thing.

Survey/Questionnaire
When collecting information from many people too many to interview with budget and
time constraints a survey or questionnaire can be used. The survey can force users to
select from choices, rate something (Agree Strongly, agree), or have open ended
questions allowing free-form responses. Survey design is hard questions can bias the
respondents.

17
 7. Functional Requirements Document
Business Analysis

The Functional Requirements Document (FRD) is a formal statement of an applications

functional requirements. It serves the same purpose as a contract. Here, the developers
agree to provide the capabilities specified. The client agrees to find the product satisfactory
if it provides the capabilities specified in the FRD.

Functional requirements capture the intended behavior of the system. This behavior may
be expressed as services, tasks or functions the system is required to perform. The
document should be tailored to fit a particular projects need. They define things such as
system calculations, data manipulation and processing, user interface and interaction with
the application.

The Functional Requirements Document (FRD) has the following characteristics:

It demonstrates that the application provides value in terms of the business

objectives and business processes in the next few years.

It contains a complete set of requirements for the application. It leaves no room

for anyone to assume anything which is not stated in the FRD.

It is solution independent. The ERD is a statement of what the application is to do

not of how it works. The FRD does not commit the developers to a design. For that
reason, any reference to the use of a specific technology is entirely inappropriate
in an FRD.

The functional requirement should include the following:

Descriptions of data to be entered into the system

Descriptions of operations performed by each screen
Descriptions of work-flows performed by the system
Descriptions of system reports or other outputs
Who can enter the data into the system?
How the system meets applicable regulatory requirements?

The functional specification is designed to be read by a general audience. Readers should

understand the system, but no technical knowledge should be required to understand this
document.

Functional Requirements Deliverables

A Business Requirements Document (BRD) consists of:

Functional Requirements: A document containing detailed requirements for the

system being developed. These requirements define the functional features and
capabilities that a system must possess. Be sure that any assumptions and
constraints identified during the Business Case are still accurate and up to date.

18
 Business Analysis

Business Process Model: A model of the current state of the process ("as is"
model) or a concept of what the process should become ("to be" model)

System Context Diagram: A Context Diagram shows the system boundaries,

external and internal entities that interact with the system, and the relevant data
flows between these external and internal entities.

Flow Diagrams (as-is or to-be): Diagrams graphically depict the sequence of

operations or the movement of data for a business process. One or more flow
diagrams are included depending on the complexity of the model.

Business Rules and Data Requirements: Business rules define or constrain

some aspects of the business and are used to define data constraints, default
values, value ranges, cardinality, data types, calculations, exceptions, required
elements and the relational integrity of the data.

Data Models: Entity Relationship Diagrams, Entity Descriptions, Class Diagrams

Conceptual Model - High level display of different entities for a business function
and how they relate to one another.

Logical Model: Illustrates the specific entities, attributes and relationships

involved in a business function and represents all the definitions, characteristics,
and relationships of data in a business, technical, or conceptual environment.

Data Dictionary and Glossary: A collection of detailed information on the data

elements, fields, tables and other entities that comprise the data model underlying
a database or similar data management system.

Stakeholder Map: Identifies all stakeholders who are affected by the proposed
change and their influence/authority level for requirements. This document is
developed in the origination phase of the Project Management Methodology (PMM)
and is owned by the Project Manager but needs to be updated by the project team
as new/changed Stakeholders are identified throughout the process.

Requirements Traceability Matrix: A table that illustrates logical links between

individual functional requirements and other types of system artifacts, including
other Functional Requirements, Use-cases/User Stories, Architecture and Design
Elements, Code Modules, Test Cases, and Business Rules.

19
 8. Software Requirements Specification
Business Analysis

A Software Requirements Specification (SRS) is a document, which is used as a

communication medium between the customers. A software requirement specification in
its most basic form is a formal document used in communicating the software
requirements between the customer and the developer.

An SRS document concentrates on WHAT needs to be done and carefully avoids the
solution (how to do). It serves as a contract between development team and the
customer. The requirements at this stage is written using end user terminology. If
necessary, later a formal requirement specification will be developed from it.

SRS is a complete description of the behavior of a system to be developed and may include
a set of use-cases that describes the interactions, the users will have with the software.

Purpose of SRS
SRS is a communication tool between Customer / Client, Business Analyst, System
developers, Maintenance teams. It can also be a contract between purchaser and supplier.

It will give firm foundation for the design phase

Supports project management and control

Helps in controlling and evolution of system

A software Requirement specification should be Complete, Consistent, Traceable,

Unambiguous, and Verifiable.

The following should be addressed in system specification:

Define the functions of the systems

Define the Hardware / Software Functional Partitioning
Define the Performance Specification
Define the Hardware / Software Performance Partitioning
Define Safety Requirements
Define the User Interface (users manual)
Provide Installation Drawings/Instructions
Software Requirement specification template

20
 Business Analysis

Revision History
Date Description Author Comments

<date> <Version 1> <Your Name> <First Revision>

Document Approval
The following software requirements specification has been accepted and approved by
the following:

Signature Printed Name Title Date

<Your Name> Lead Software Eng.

David Instructor

21
 9. Use-Cases Business Analysis

One of the nine diagrams of UMLs are the Use-case Diagram. These are not only important
but necessary requirement for software projects. It is basically used in Software life cycles.
As we know there are various phases in the development cycle and the most used phase
for Use-cases would be during the requirements gathering phase.

What is a Use-Case?
A use-case describes a sequence of actions, performed by a system that provides value to
an actor. The use-case describes the systems behavior under various conditions as it
responds to a request from one of the stakeholders, called the primary actor.

The actor is the Who of the system, in other words he the end user.

In software and systems engineering, a use-case is a list of steps, typically defining

interactions between a role (known in UML as an "actor") and a system, to achieve a goal.
The actor can be a human or an external system.

A use-case specifies the flow of events in the system. It is more concerned with what is
performed by the system in order to perform the sequence of actions.

Benefits of a Use-Case
A use-case provides the following benefits:

It is an easy means of capturing the functional requirement with a focus on value

added to the user.

Use-cases are relatively easy to write and read compared to the traditional
requirement methods

Use-cases force developers to think from the end user perspective

Use-case engage the user in the requirement process

The Anatomy of a Use-Case

Name : Descriptive name that illustrates the purpose of the use-case.

Description : Describes what the use-case does in couple of sentences.

Actor : List any actors that participate in the use-case

Pre-condition : Conditions that must be met prior to starting the use-case

Flow of events : Description of interaction between the system and the actor
contains main flows and alternate flows.

Post Condition : Describe the state of the system after a use-case has run its
course.

22
 Business Analysis

Guidance for Use-Case Template

Document each use-case using the template given in the end of this chapter. This section
provides a description of each section in the use-case template.

Use-Case Identification
Use-Case ID: Give each use-case a unique numeric identifier, in hierarchical form:
X.Y. Related use-cases can be grouped in the hierarchy. Functional requirements
can be traced back to a labelled use-case.

Use-Case Name: State a concise, results-oriented name for the use-case. These
reflect the tasks the user needs to be able to accomplish using the system. Include
an action verb and a noun. Some examples:

o View part number information.

o Manually mark hypertext source and establish link to target.
o Place an order for a CD with the updated software version.

Use-Case History
Here, we mention about the names of the people who are the stakeholders of the Use-
case document.

Created By: Supply the name of the person who initially documented this use-
case.

Date Created: Enter the date on which the use-case was initially documented.

Last Updated By: Supply the name of the person who performed the most recent
update to the use-case description.

Date Last Updated: Enter the date on which the use-case was most recently
updated.

Use-Case Definition
The following are the definitions of the key concepts of Use-Case:

Actor
An actor is a person or other entity external to the software system being specified who
interacts with the system and performs use-cases to accomplish tasks. Different actors
often correspond to different user classes, or roles, identified from the customer
community that will use the product. Name the actor(s) that will be performing this use-
case.

Description
Provide a brief description of the reason for and outcome of this use-case, or a high-level
description of the sequence of actions and the outcome of executing the use-case.

23
 Business Analysis

Preconditions
List any activities that must take place, or any conditions that must be true, before the
use-case can be started. Number each precondition. Examples:

Users identity has been authenticated.

Users computer has sufficient free memory available to launch task.

Post Conditions
Describe the state of the system at the conclusion of the use-case execution. Number each
post condition.

Examples

Document contains only valid SGML tags.

Price of item in database has been updated with new value.

Priority
Indicate the relative priority of implementing the functionality required to allow this use-
case to be executed. The priority scheme used must be the same as that used in the
software requirements specification.

Frequency of Use
Estimate the number of times this use-case will be performed by the actors per some
appropriate unit of time.

Normal Course of Events

Provide a detailed description of the user actions and system responses that will take place
during execution of the use-case under normal, expected conditions. This dialog sequence
will ultimately lead to accomplishing the goal stated in the use-case name and description.
This description may be written as an answer to the hypothetical question, How do I
<accomplish the task stated in the use-case name>? This is best done as a numbered
list of actions performed by the actor, alternating with responses provided by the system.

Alternative Courses
Document other, legitimate usage scenarios that can take place within this use-case
separately in this section. State the alternative course, and describe any differences in the
sequence of steps that take place. Number each alternative course using the Use-case ID
as a prefix, followed by AC to indicate Alternative Course. Example: X.Y.AC.1.

Exceptions
Describe any anticipated error conditions that could occur during execution of the use-
case, and define how the system is to respond to those conditions. Also, describe how the
system is to respond if the use-case execution fails for some unanticipated reason. Number
each exception using the Use-case ID as a prefix, followed by EX to indicate Exception.
Example: X.Y.EX.1.

24
 Business Analysis

Includes
List any other use-cases that are included (called) by this use-case. Common
functionality that appears in multiple use-cases can be split out into a separate use-case
that is included by the ones that need that common functionality.

Special Requirements
Identify any additional requirements, such as nonfunctional requirements, for the use-
case that may need to be addressed during design or implementation. These may include
performance requirements or other quality attributes.

Assumptions
List any assumptions that were made in the analysis that led to accepting this use-case
into the product description and writing the use-case description.

Notes and Issues

List any additional comments about this use-case or any remaining open issues or TBDs
(To Be Determined) that must be resolved. Identify who will resolve each issue, the due
date, and what the resolution ultimately is.

Change Management and Version control

Version control is the management of changes to documents, large websites, and other
collection of information. Changes are usually identified by a number or letter code, termed
as revision number or revision level. Each revision is associated with a timestamp and
person making the change.

25
 10. Use-Case Diagrams Business Analysis

An important part of the Unified Modeling Language (UML) is the facilities for drawing use-
case diagrams. Use-cases are used during the analysis phase of a project to identify and
partition system functionality. They separate the system into actors and use-cases. Actors
represent roles that can are played by users of the system.

Those users can be humans, other computers, pieces of hardware, or even other software
systems. The only criterion is that they must be external to the part of the system being
partitioned into use-cases. They must supply stimuli to that part of the system, and the
must receive outputs from it.

Use-cases represents the activities that actors perform with the help of your system in the
pursuit of a goal. We need to define what those users (actors) need from the system.
Use-case should reflect user needs and goals, and should be initiated by an actor.
Business, actors, Customers participating in the business use-case should be connected to
the use-case by association.

Drawing Use-Case Diagrams

The Figure below shows, what a use-case might look like UML schematic form. The use-
case itself looks like an oval. The actors are drawn as little stick figures. The actors are
connected to the use-case with lines.

26
 Business Analysis

Use-case 1: Sales Clerk checks out an item

Customer sets item on counter.

uses Swipe UPC Reader.
System looks up UPC code in database procuring item description and price
System emits audible beep.
System announces item description and price over voice output.
System adds price and item type to current invoice.
System adds price to correct tax subtotal

So, the uses relationship is very much like a function call or a subroutine.

The use-case being used in this fashion is called an abstract use-case because it
cannot exist on its own but must be used by other uses cases.

27
 Business Analysis

Example Withdrawal Use-Case

The goal of a customer in relation to our money vending machine (ATM) is to withdraw
money. So, we are adding Withdrawal use-case. Withdrawing money from the vending
machine might involve a bank for the transactions to be made. So, we are also adding
another actor Bank. Both actors participating in the use-case should be connected to
the use-case by association.

Money vending machine provides Withdrawal use-case for the customer and Bank actors.

Scenario of a Typical Banking Transaction

Relationships between Actors and Use-Cases

Use-cases could be organized using following relationships:

Generalization
Association
Extend
Include

Generalization between Use-Cases

There may be instances where actors are associated with similar use-cases. In such case
a Child use-case inherits the properties and behavior of the parent use. Hence we need to
generalize the actor to show the inheritance of functions. They are represented by a solid
line with a large hollow triangle arrowhead.

28
 Business Analysis

Association between Use-Cases

Associations between actors and use-cases are indicated in use-case diagrams by solid
lines. An association exists whenever an actor is involved with an interaction described by
a use-case.

Extend
There are some functions that are triggered optionally. In such cases the extend
relationship is used and the extension rule is attached to it. Thing to remember is that the
base use-case should be able to perform a function on its own even if the extending use-
case is not called.

Extend relationship is shown as a dashed line with an open arrowhead directed from the
extending use-case to the extended (base) use-case. The arrow is labeled with the
keyword extend.

Include
It is used to extract use-case fragments that are duplicated in multiple use-cases. It is
also used to simplify large use-case by splitting it into several use-cases and to extract
common parts of the behaviors of two or more use-cases.

Include relationship between use-cases which is shown by a dashed arrow with an open
arrowhead from the base use-case to the included use-case. The arrow is labeled with the
keyword include.

Use-cases deal only in the functional requirements for a system. Other requirements such
as business rules, quality of service requirements, and implementation constraints must
be represented separately.

29
 Business Analysis

The diagram shown below is an example of a simple use-case diagram with all the
elements marked.

Basic Principles for Successful Application of Use-cases

Keep it simple by telling stories
Be productive without perfection
Understand the big picture
Identify reuse opportunity for use-cases
Focus on value
Build the system in slices
Deliver the system in increments
Adapt to meet the teams needs

30
 Business Analysis

Use-Case Template
Here, we have shown a sample template of a Use-Case which a Business Analyst can fill
so that the information can be useful for the technical team to ascertain information about
the project.

Use-case ID:

Use-case Name:

Created By: Last Updated By:

Date Last
Date Created:
Updated:

Actor:

Description:

Preconditions:

Post conditions:

Priority:

Frequency of Use:

Normal Course of
Events:

Alternative
Courses:

Exceptions:

Includes:

Special
Requirements:

Assumptions:

Notes and Issues:

31
 11. Requirements Management
Business Analysis

Gathering software requirements is the foundation of the entire software development

project. Soliciting and gathering business requirements is a critical first step for every
project. In-order to bridge the gap between business and technical requirements, the
business analysts must fully understand the business needs within the given context, align
these needs with the business objectives, and properly communicate the needs to both
the stakeholders and development team.

The key stakeholders wish that someone could explain customer / client requirements in
plain English. Will this benefit them from understanding the value at a high-level? This will
be the main-focus area, as they will try to map the documentation with the requirements
and how BA could communicate in the best possible way.

Why Projects Fail

There are many reasons why projects fail but some of the common areas include the below

Market and Strategy Failure

Organizational and Planning Failures
Quality Failures
Leadership and Governance failures
Skills, Knowledge and competency failures
Engagement, team work and communication failures

Too often projects fail due to poorly managed requirements

Major
Issues Complex and changing communication hurdles

At the core of the issue is that projects are increasingly complex, changes occur and
communication is challenging.

Why Successful Teams do Requirements Management

Requirements management is about keeping your team in-sync and providing visibility
to what is going on within a project.

It is critical to the success of your projects for your whole team to understand what you
are building and why thats how we define requirements management. The why is
important because it provides context to the goals, feedback and decisions being made
about the requirements.

This increases predictability of future success and potential problems, allowing your team
to quickly course correct any issues and successfully complete your project on time and
32
 Business Analysis

within budget. As a starting point, its valuable for everyone involved to have a basic
understanding of what requirements are, and how to manage them.

Lets Start with the Basics

A requirement is a condition or capability needed by a stakeholder to solve a problem or
achieve an objective. A condition or capability that must be met or possessed by a system
or system. Component to satisfy a contract, standard, specification, or other formally
imposed documents.

A requirement can be expressed with text, sketches, detailed mockups or models,

whatever information best communicates to an engineer what to build, and to a QA
manager what to test. Depending on your development process, you might use different
terminology to capture requirements.

High-level requirements are sometimes referred to simply as needs or goals. Within

software development practices, requirements might be referred to as use-cases,
features or functional requirements. Even more specifically within agile development
methodologies, requirements are often captured as epics and stories.

Regardless of what your team calls them or what process you use; requirements are
essential to the development of all products. Without clearly defining requirements you
could produce an incomplete or defective product. Throughout the process there can be
many people involved in defining requirements.

A stakeholder might request a feature that describes how the product will provide value in
solving a problem. A designer might define a requirement based on how the final product
should look or perform from a usability or user interface standpoint.
33
 Business Analysis

A business analyst might create a system requirement that adheres to specific technical
or organizational constraints. For todays sophisticated products and software applications
being built, it often takes hundreds or thousands of requirements to sufficiently define the
scope of a project or a release. Thus, its imperative that the team be able to access,
collaborate, update, and test each requirement through to completion, as requirements
naturally change and evolve over time during the development process.

Now that weve defined the value of requirements management at a high-level, lets go
deeper into the four fundamentals that every team member and stakeholder can benefit
from understanding:

Planning good requirements: What the heck are we building?

Collaboration and buy-in: Just approve the spec, already!
Traceability & change management: Wait, do the developers know that changed?
Quality assurance: Hello, did anyone test this thing?

Does everyone know what were building and why? Thats the value of requirements
management.

Collaboration & Buy- In from Stakeholders

Is everyone in the loop? Do we have approval on the requirements to move forward? These
questions come up during development cycles. It would be great if everyone could agree
on requirements, but for large projects with many stakeholders, this does not usually
happen. Trying to get everyone in agreement can cause decisions to be delayed, or worse,
not made at all. Gaining consensus on every decision is not always easy.

In practice, you dont necessarily want consensus, you want buy-in from the group
and approval from those in control so you can move the project forward. With consensus,
you are trying to get everyone to compromise and agree on the decision. With buy-in, you
are trying to get people to back the best solution, make a smart decision and do what is
necessary to move forward.

34
 Business Analysis

You dont need everyone to agree that the decision is the best. You need everyone to
support the decision. Team collaboration can help in receiving support on decisions and in
planning good requirements.

Collaborative teams work hard to make sure everyone has a stake in projects and provides
feedback. Collaborative teams continuously share ideas, typically have better
communication and tend to support decisions made because there is a shared sense of
commitment and understanding of the goals of the project.

Its when developers, testers, or other stakeholders feel out of the loop that
communication issues arise, people get frustrated and projects get delayed. Once
everyone has bought-in to the scope of work, it is imperative for requirements to be clear
and well documented. Keeping track of all the requirements is where things get tricky.

Imagine having a to-do list a mile long that involves collaborating with multiple people to
complete. How would you keep all those items straight? How would you track how one
change to an item would affect the rest of the project? This is where traceability and
change management add value.

35
 12. Planning Good Requirements
Business Analysis

So, what makes a good requirement? A good requirement should be valuable and
actionable; it should define a need as well as provide a pathway to a solution. Everyone
on the team should understand what it means. Requirements vary in complexity.

A good Requirements Document can be part of a group with high-level

requirements broken down into sub-
requirements.

They may also include very detailed

specifications that include a set of
functional requirements describing the
behavior or components of the end-
product.

Good requirements need to be concise

and specific, and should answer the
question, what do we need? Rather
than, how do we fulfil a need?

Good requirements ensure that all stakeholders understand their part of the plan;
if parts are unclear or misinterpreted the final product could be defective or fail.

Preventing failure or misinterpretation of requirements can be aided by receiving feedback

from the team continuously throughout the process as requirements evolve. Continuous
collaboration and buy-in with everyone is a key to success.

Requirement Gathering and Analysis

A requirement is a condition or capability needed by a stakeholder to solve a problem or
achieve an organizational objective; a condition or capability that must be met or
possessed by a system.

Requirement analysis in software engineering covers those tasks that go into determining
the needs or conditions to meet for a new or altered product taking account of the possible
conflicting requirements of various stakeholders, analyzing, documenting, validating and
managing software or system requirements.

The requirements should be:

Documented
Actionable
Measurable
Testable
Traceable

Requirements should be related to identified business needs or opportunities, and defined

to a level of detail sufficient for system design.

36
 Business Analysis

A Business analyst gathers information through observing the existing systems, studying
the existing procedures, discussions with the customers and the end users. The analyst
should also have imaginative and creative skills in absence of a working System. Analyzing
the gathered requirement to find the missing links is requirement analysis.

Eliciting Approach
To elicit the objectives, ask the business expert, the development manager, and the
project sponsor the following questions:

What business objectives of the company will this project help achieve?

Why are we doing this project now?

What will happen if we do it later?

What if we do not do it at all?

Who will benefit from this project?

Do the people who will benefit from it consider it the most important improvement
that can possibly be made at this time?

Should we be doing a different project instead?

Possible objectives might be reducing costs, improving the customer service, simplifying
the work flow, replacing obsolete technology, piloting a new technology, and many others.
Also, make sure you understand exactly how the proposed project will help accomplish the
stated objective.

Different Types of Requirements

The most common types of requirement which a Business analyst is interested would be
the following:

Business Requirements
Business requirements are the critical activities of an enterprise that must be performed
to meet the organizational objectives while remaining solution independent. A business
requirements document (BRD) details the business solution for a project including the
documentation of customer needs and expectations.

User Requirements
User requirements should specify the specific requirements which the user expects/wants
from software to be constructed from the software project. A user requirement should be
Verifiable, Clear and concise, Complete, Consistent, Traceable, Viable.

The user requirements document (URD) or user requirements specification is a document

usually used in software engineering that specifies what the user expects the software to
be able to do.

37
 Business Analysis

System Requirements
System requirements deal with defining software resources requirements and pre-
requisites that needs to be installed on a computer to provide optimal functioning of an
application.

Functional Requirements
Functional requirements capture and specify specific intended behavior of the system
being developed. They define things such as system calculations, data manipulation and
processing, user interface and interaction with the application, and other specific
functionality that show how user requirements are satisfied. Assign a unique ID number
to each requirement.

Non-Functional Requirements
Non-functional requirement is the one which specifies criteria that can be used to judge
the operation of a system rather than specific behaviors. System architecture speaks on
the plan for implementing non-functional requirements.

Non-functional requirements speak on how the system should look like or it can be
mentioned like system shall be. Non-functional requirements are called as qualities of
the system.

Transition Requirements
Transition Requirements describe capabilities that the solution must fulfill in order to
facilitate transition from the current state of the enterprise to a desired future state, but
that will not be needed once that transition is complete.

They are differentiated from other requirements types, because they are always temporary
in nature and because they cannot be developed until both an existing and new solution
is defined. They typically cover data conversion from existing systems, skill gaps that must
be addressed, and other related changes to reach the desired future state. They are
developed and defined through solution assessment and validation.

38
 Business Analysis

Traceability & Change Management

Requirements traceability is a way to organize, document and keep track of all your
requirements from initial idea generation through to the testing phase.

The requirements trace ability matrix (RTM) provides a method for tracking the functional
requirements and their implementation through the development process. Each
requirement is included in the matrix along with its associated section number.

As the project progresses, the RIM is updated to reflect each requirements status. When
the product is ready for system testing, the matrix lists each requirement, what product
component addresses it, and what test verifies that it is correctly implemented.

Sample Screenshot of an automated traceability tool

Include columns for each of the following in the RTM:

Requirement description
Requirement reference in FRD
Verification Method
Requirement reference in Test Plan

Example: Connecting the dots to identify the relationships between items within your
project. It is a connector of common downstream flow.

39
 Business Analysis

Idea Requirements Design Test Business Objectives

You should be able to trace each of your requirements back to its original business
objective.

By tracing requirements, you are able to identify the ripple effect changes have, see if a
requirement has been completed and whether its being tested properly. Traceability and
change management provides managers peace of mind and the visibility needed to
anticipate issues and ensure continuous quality.

Quality Assurance
Getting requirements delivered right the first time can mean better quality, faster
development cycles and higher customer satisfaction with the product. Requirements
management not only helps you get it right, but also helps your team save money and
many headaches throughout the development process.

Concise, specific requirements can help you detect and fix problems early, rather than
later when it is much more expensive to fix. In addition, it can cost up to 100 times more
to correct a defect later in the development process after its been coded, than it is to
correct early on while a requirement.

By integrating requirements management into your quality assurance process, you can
help your team increase efficiency and eliminate rework. Moreover, rework is where most
of the cost issues occur.

In other words, development teams are wasting majority of their budgets on efforts that
are not performed correctly the first time. For example, a developer codes a feature based
on an old specification document, only to learn later, that the requirements for that feature
changed. These types of issues can be avoided with effective requirements management
best practices.

In summary, requirements management can sound like a complex discipline, but when
you boil it down to a simple concept its about helping teams answer the question, Does
everyone understand what were building and why? From the business analysts, product
managers and project leaders to the developers, QA managers and testers, along with the
stakeholders and customers involved so often the root cause of project failure is a
misunderstanding of the scope of the project.

When everyone is collaborating, and has full context and visibility to the discussions,
decisions and changes involved with the requirements throughout the lifecycle of the
project, that is when success happens consistently and you maintain continuous quality.
In addition, the process is smoother with less friction and frustration along the way for
everyone involved.

Note: Research has shown that project teams can eliminate 50-80% of project defects by
effectively managing requirements. According to the Carnegie Mellon software engineering
institute, 60-80 percent of the cost of software development is in rework.

40
 Business Analysis

Obtaining Requirements Signoff

Requirements signoff formalizes agreement by project stakeholders that the content and
presentation of the requirements, as documented, are accurate and complete. Formal
agreement reduces the risk that, during or subsequent to implementation, a stakeholder
will introduce a new (previously unencountered) requirement.

Obtaining requirements signoff typically involves a face-to-face final review of

requirements, as documented, with each project stakeholder. At the end each review, the
stakeholder is asked to formally approve the reviewed requirements document. This
approval may be recorded either physically or electronically.

Obtaining requirements signoff is typically the final task within Requirements

Communication. The Business Analyst will require the output from the Formal
Requirements Review(s), including accommodation of any comments or objections which
were raised during the review process.

41
 13. Business Modelling Business Analysis

A Business Model can be defined as a representation of a business or solution that often

include a graphic component along with supporting text and relationships to other
components. For example, if we have to understand a companys business model, then
we would like to study the following areas like

Core values of the company

What it serves?
What is sets apart?
Its key resources
Major relationships
Its delivery channels

With the help of modelling techniques, we can create a complete description of existing
and proposed organizational structures, processes, and information used by the
enterprise.

Business Model is a structured model, just like a blueprint for the final product to be
developed. It gives structure and dynamics for planning. It also provides the foundation
for the final product.

Purpose of Business Modelling

Business modelling is used to design current and future state of an enterprise. This model
is used by the Business Analyst and the stakeholders to ensure that they have an accurate
understanding of the current As-Is model of the enterprise.

It is used to verify if, stakeholders have a shared understanding of the proposed To-be
of the solution.

Analyzing requirements is a part of business modelling process and it forms the core focus
area. Functional Requirements are gathered during the Current state. These
requirements are provided by the stakeholders regarding the business processes, data,
and business rules that describe the desired functionality which will be designed in the
Future State.

42
 Business Analysis

Performing GAP Analysis

After defining the business needs, the current state (e.g. current business processes,
business functions, features of a current system and services/products offered and events
that the system must respond to) must be identified to understand how people, processes
and technology, structure and architecture are supporting the business by seeking input
from IT staff and other related stakeholders including business owners.

A gap analysis is then performed to assess, if there is any gap that prevents from achieving
business needs by comparing the identified current state with the desired outcomes.

If there is no gap (i.e. the current state is adequate to meet the business needs and
desired outcomes), it will probably not be necessary to launch the IT project. Otherwise,
the problems/issues required to be addressed in order to bridge the gap should be
identified.

Techniques such as SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats) Analysis

and document analysis can be used.

43
 Business Analysis

To Assess Proposed System

BA should assist the IT project team in assessing the proposed IT system to ensure that
it meets the business needs and maximizes the values delivered to stakeholders. BA
should also review the organization readiness for supporting the transition to the proposed
IT system to ensure a smooth System Implementation.

Step 2
Step 1: Assess Proposed System Review Organization Readiness for
System Implementation

BA should help the IT project team to determine whether the proposed system option and
the high-level system design could meet the business needs and deliver enough business
value to justify the investment. If there are more than one system options, BA should
work with the IT staff to help to identify the pros and cons of each option and select the
option that delivers the greatest business value.

Guiding Principles for Business Modelling

The primary role of business modelling is mostly during inception stage and elaboration
stages of project and it fades during the construction and transitioning stage. It is mostly
to do with analytical aspects of business combined with technical mapping of the
application or software solution.

Domain and User variation: Developing a business model will frequently reveal
areas of disagreement or confusion between stakeholders. The Business Analyst
will need to document the following variations in the as-is model.

Multiple work units perform the same function: Document the variances in
the AS-IS model. This may be different divisions or geographies.

Multiples users perform the same work: Different stakeholders may do similar
work differently. The variation may be the result of different skill sets and
approaches of different business units or the result of differing needs of external
stakeholders serviced by the enterprise. Document the variances in the AS-IS
model.

Resolution Mechanism: The Business Analyst should document whether the To-
Be solution will accommodate the inconsistencies in the current business model or
whether the solution will require standardization. Stakeholders need to determine
which approach to follow. The To-Be model will reflect their decision.

Example of BA role in Modelling ERP Systems

A Business analyst is supposed to define a standard business process and set up into an
ERP system which is of key importance for efficient implementation. It is also the duty of
a BA to define the language of the developers in understandable language before the
implementation and then, utilize best practices and map them based on the system
capabilities.

44
 Business Analysis

A requirement to the system is the GAAP fit analysis, which has to balance between:

The need for the technical changes, which are the enhancements in order to achieve
identity with the existing practice.

Effective changes, which are related to re-engineering of existing business

processes to allow for implementation of the standard functionality and application
of process models.

Functional Business Analyst

Domain expertise is generally acquired over a period by being in the business of doing
things. For example,

A banking associate gains knowledge of various types of accounts that a

customer (individual and business) can operate along with detailed business
process flow.

An insurance sales representative can understand the various stages involved

in procuring of an Insurance policy.

A marketing analyst has more chances of understanding the key stakeholders

and business processes involved in a Customer Relationship Management system.

A Business Analyst involved in capital markets project is supposed to have subject

matter expertise and strong knowledge of Equities, Fixed Income and Derivatives.
Also, he is expected to have handled back office, front office, practical exposure in
applying risk management models.

A Healthcare Business Analyst is required to have basic understanding of US

Healthcare Financial and Utilization metrics, Technical experience and
understanding of EDI 837/835/834, HIPAA guidelines, ICD codification 9/10 and
CPT codes, LOINC, SNOMED knowledge.

Some business analysts acquire domain knowledge by testing business applications and
working with the business users. They create a conducive learning environment though
their interpersonal and analytical skills. In some cases, they supplement their domain
knowledge with a few domain certifications offered by AICPCU/IIA and LOMA in the field
of Insurance and financial services. There are other institutes that offer certification in
other domains.

Other Major Activities

Following a thorough examination of current business processes, you can offer highly
professional assistance in identifying the optimal approach of modelling the system.

Organizing the preparation of a formalized and uniform description of business

processes in a manner ensuring efficient automation in the system.

Assistance to your teams in filling out standard questionnaires for the relevant
system as may be furnished by the developers.

Participation in working meetings requirements towards the developers are defined.

45
 Business Analysis

Check and control as to whether the requirements set by you have been properly
reproduced and recorded in the documents describing the future model in the
system (Blueprints).

Preparation of data and assisting for prototyping the system.

Assistance in preparation of data for migration of lists and balances in the format
required by the system.

Review of the set-up prototype for compliance with the requirements defined by
the business process owners.

Acting as a support resource to your IT teams in preparing data and actual

performance of functional and integration tests in the system.

In the next section, we will discuss briefly about some of the popular Business Modelling
Tools used by large organizations in IT environments.

Tool 1: Microsoft Visio

MS-Visio is a drawing and diagramming software that helps transform concepts into a
visual representation. Visio provides you with pre-defined shapes, symbols, backgrounds,
and borders. Just drag and drop elements into your diagram to create a professional
communication tool.

Step 1: To open a new Visio drawing, go to the Start Menu and select Programs Visio.

Step 2: Move your cursor over Business Process and select Basic Flowchart

46
 Business Analysis

The following screenshot shows the major sections of MS-Visio application.

Let us now discuss the basic utility of each component:

A: the toolbars across the top of the screen are like other Microsoft programs such as
Word and PowerPoint. If you have used these programs before, you may notice a few
different functionalities, which we will explore later.

Selecting Help Diagram Gallery is a good way to become familiar with the types of drawings
and diagrams that can be created in Visio.

B: The left side of the screen shows the menus specific to the type of diagram you are
creating. In this case, we see:

Arrow Shapes
Backgrounds
Basic Flowchart Shapes
Borders and Titles

C: The center of the screen shows the diagram workspace, which includes the actual
diagram page as well as some blank space adjacent to the page.

D: The right side of the screen shows some help functions. Some people may choose to
close this window to increase the area for diagram workspace, and re-open the help
functions when necessary.

47
 Business Analysis

Tool 2: Enterprise Architect

Enterprise architect is a visual modeling and design tool based on UML. The platform
supports the design and construction of software systems, modeling business processes
and modeling industry based domains. It is used by business and organizations to not only
model the architecture of their systems. But to process the implementation of these
models across the full application development life cycle.

Sample screenshot from an Enterprise solution

The intent of Enterprise architect is to determine how an organization can most effectively
achieve its current and future objectives.

Enterprise architect has four points of view which are as follows:

Business perspective: The Business perspective defines the processes and

standards by which the business operates on day to day basis.

Application Perspective: The application perspective defines the interactions

among the processes and standards used by the organization.

Information Perspective: This defines and classifies the raw data like document
files, databases, images, presentations and spreadsheets that organization requires
in order to efficiency operate.

Technology Prospective: This defines the hardware, operating systems,

programming and networking solutions used by organization.

48
 Business Analysis

Tool 3: Rational Requisite Pro

The process of eliciting, documenting organizing tracking and changing Requirements and
communicating this information across the project teams to ensure that iterative and
unanticipated changes are maintained throughout the project life cycle.

Monitoring status and controlling changes to the requirement baseline. The Primary
elements are Change control and Traceability.

Requisite Pro is used for the above activities and project administration purposes, the tool
is used for querying and searching, Viewing the discussion that were part of the
requirement.

In Requisite Pro, the user can work on the requirement document. The document is a
MS-Word file created in Reqpro application and integrated with the project database.
Requirements created outside Requisite pro can be imported or copied into the document.

In Requisite Pro, we can also work with traceability, here it is a dependency relationship
between two requirements. Traceability is a methodical approach to managing change by
linking requirements that are related to each other.

49
 Business Analysis

Requisite Pro makes it easy to track changes to a requirement throughout the development
cycle, so it is not necessary to review all your documents individually to determine which
elements need updating. You can view and manage suspect relationships using a
Traceability Matrix or a Traceability Tree view.

Requisite Pro projects enable us to create a project framework in which the project artifacts
are organized and managed. In each project the following are included

General project information

Packages
General document information
Document types
Requirement types
Requirement attributes
Attribute values
Cross-project traceability

Requisite Pro allows multiple user to access the same project documents and database
simultaneously hence the project security aspect is to very crucial. Security prevents the
system use, potential harm, or data loss from unauthorized user access to a project
document.

It is recommended that the security is enabled for all RequisitePro projects. Doing so
ensures that all changes to the project are associated with the proper username of the
Individual who made the change, thereby ensuring that you have a complete audit trail
for all changes.

50