It is very important for a Business analyst to start off with the business analysis phase before starting a project. This process contains many steps involving tasks, techniques, and documents. These phases may be longer or shorter depending on the type of project. The business Analysis process flow includes:
- Gathering background information to see if the project is a new or existing one, the domain, the effects for that project and documentation of that project if available.
- The next step is to identify the stakeholders who are involved and prioritize them depending on the roles they perform in a project and the decisions they make. This is a very vital step as they are the one that is affected the most and are the one who signs off your documents. You can also prepare the matrix to differentiate stakeholder roles.
- The next step is to discover business objectives – putting business objectives helps the team and project managers to stay focused on the vision and helps in defining the scope.
One can use the following techniques to discover business objectives:
- Benchmarking
- SWOT Analysis
- Focus groups, Brainstorming
- SMART Analysis
- Evaluating Options – you need to evaluate and pick up the best option to achieve the business objective. You can prepare a business case document to validate the proposing solutions.
You need to look into the following factors while evaluating options. They are:
- Feasibility
- ROI
- Budgets
- Risks
- Impact on business
- Defining Scope – Here you need to describe the project goals along with the list of items that are included and not included in the project. They include:
- Items in scope
- Items out of the scope
- Delivery Plan – A BA will provide a detailed delivery plan for delivering the requirements. This timeline will depend on the following factors:
- Project Methodology
- Stakeholders Availability
- Scope
- Defining requirements – Here, A BA needs to clarify the business requirements to stakeholders and get them signed off. They may be both functional and non-functional requirements.
They are many techniques to gather these requirements and get their signoff.
- Assisting the development and implementation.
- Releasing the products as per requirements.