Essentials of Business Analysis

Course Category: Business Analysis
Course Duration: 2 Days
Hours: 14 PD Hours / CDUs (Professional Development Hours / Capability Development Units)

Course Overview

According to the International Institute of Business Analysis:

Business analysis is concerned with investigating business needs and proposing solutions to business problems. Solutions often include some form of software system, but may also include improvements to business processes, development of staff skills or changes to the organisation structure.

The people that perform business analysis have a variety of job titles.  These include business analysts, systems analyst, functional analyst, business consultant and often, simply “BA”.

No matter what your job title is, this course is designed to develop the knowledge and skills that are essential to succeed at business analysis.

The course is based on the real-world experience and lessons learnt by practicing business analysts working on actual projects.  At the same time it presents an up to date perspective on business analysis that includes use cases.

Participants leave the course with a clear understanding of what is expected from a business analyst and the skills necessary to fulfil those expectations.

Course Features

  • Adopts a “systems” perspective of business analysis.
  • Covers material required for the Information Systems Examinations Board (ISEB) and International Institute of Business Analysis (IIBA) certification exams:
  • Based on the ISEB business analysis process model.
  • Suitable for graduates, developers and others moving into a BA role for the first time as well as experienced business analysts who need to update their skills attend a “refresher” course or simply get some new ideas.

Participant Benefits

  • Gain a better understanding of the role of a business analyst.
  • Develops the essentials knowledge and skills required to investigate business systems; identify business needs and specify the requirements of a software solution.
  • Understand how to better align IT with business needs.

Who Should Attend

  • Those acting (or planning to act) in the role of Business Analyst, Business Systems Analyst, Systems Analyst, Functional Analyst or Business Consultant.
  • Software Development Managers, Project Managers, Program Managers, Developers and Testers who need to understand what business analysts do.
  • Project Sponsors, Project Stakeholders and End-User Representatives who participate in business analysis projects.

Course Agenda

Introduction to Business Analysis

  • The roles and responsibilities of a business analyst
  • Skills required by business analysts
  • Business analysis projects
    • Other roles
    • Project deliverables
  • A systems engineering perspective of business analysis
    • What is a system?
    • Types of system
    • The traditional hierarchical view of systems
    • Systems and the contemporary business environment
    • Viewing systems as independent and overlapping

Business Analysis Process Model

  • Investigate the situation
  • Consider perspectives
  • Analyze needs
  • Evaluate options
  • Define requirements

Understanding Business Strategy

  • Value chain analysis
  • Competitive analysis
  • Environmental scanning
  • SWOT analysis

Analyzing Stakeholders

  • Stakeholder categories
  • Identifying stakeholders
  • Analyzing stakeholders
  • Strategies for managing stakeholders

Course Agenda

Investigating the Situation

  • The Soft Systems Methodology (SSM)
  • Rich pictures
  • Mind mapping the system context
  • Investigating stakeholder perspectives
  • Mapping stakeholder perspectives
  • CATWOE Analysis

Modeling Business Processes

  • Business process concepts
    • Definition of a business process
    • A model of human activity
  • Activity diagrams
    • Representing activities
    • Showing activity sequence
    • Decomposing activities
    • Showing parallel activities
  • Modeling decisions
  • Modeling workflow
    • Using swimlanes to represent actors
    • Representing information flows
    • Representing the flow of physical objects
  • Modeling business processes
    • Modeling logical workflows
    • Modeling the current as is workflow
    • Representing activity breakdowns using activity diagrams
    • Representing activity breakdowns with mind maps

The role of business process reference models

Identifying Business Needs

  • Business needs
    • Solving problems
    • Exploiting an opportunities
    • Avoiding threats
  • Identifying business needs
    • Brainstorming business needs
    • Identifying internal weaknesses
    • Identifying external threats advantage

Investigating the root cause of problems

Documenting Software Requirements

  • Software requirements
    • Interface requirements
    • Functional requirements
    • Non-functional requirements
  • Quality attributes
  • Constraints
  • Storage requirements
    • Use cases
      • Use case concepts
      • Use case diagrams
      • Naming use cases
      • The importance of a glossary
      • Use case steps
    • The subject…verb…object template
    • Use case scenarios
    • Interface requirements
    • Data dictionaries
    • The role of prototypes
      • Use cases and business processes
        • Documenting to be workflows
        • Activity diagrams
        • Sequence diagrams
      • Use case templates
        • Levels of use case description

Use case narrative

Course Category: Business Analysis
Course Duration: 2 Days
Hours: 14 PD Hours / CDUs (Professional Development Hours / Capability Development Units)