A Visual Model is a pictorial representation of the business processes and how it is going to serve to fulfill the requirements of the user. The complex structure of the business is defined in a simpler way so that stakeholders, clients, and team members can easily understand that, how the business flow and what exactly they have to work on.
This pictorial representation is the correct means to convey the exact requirement, the complexity of the business processes, organizational challenges, operational analysis, the hidden challenges, strengths, and weaknesses, etc. This gives a better understanding of across the team members who all are involved in the project including clients.
The following are the few Visual Models for which Business Analyst has to work on. This will help business analysts to structure everything inline with the business requirement.
- Organizational charts: Shows the hierarchical structure among the organization and reporting employees
- MOST Analysis: Mission -Objective – Strategy- Tactics
- PESTLE analysis: Political-Economical-Social-Technical-Legal-Environmental factors that affect the business.
- SWOT analysis: Strengths-Weaknesses-Opportunities and Threats
Apart from the above visual models, a business analyst has to consider the following business analysis modeling techniques which help the business analyst to decide the road map of the project. Different business requires a different business framework for analysis.
Analyzing Products and Services
- Product roadmap
- Mind map of product features
Analyzing Systems and Processes
- Activity Diagrams
- Use case diagram
- User interface wireframe
- Sitemap
- Data flow diagrams
- Process flow
Analyzing Stakeholders and Their Interests
- Stakeholder map
- Threats and opportunity matrix for stakeholders
Of course, there are different tools that help you to build these visual models and use case diagrams. There are a lot of business analysis tools available in the market and you can use it according to your business requirements.
Hope this will help you to understand the responsibilities of the business analyst and the importance of the visual model building.