Transcript Title

Business Analysis and the
Value of Requirements
PMI – IIBA Joint Meeting
Wednesday, January 20th, 2010
By David Nagy, PMP
President of the Albany Capital District Chapter of the IIBA
Agenda
• Business Analysis and those who practice it
• International Institute of Business Analysis
– Albany Capital District Chapter
– Parent organization
• Knowledge Areas
– Business Analysis Body of Knowledge
– Certified Business Analysis Professional
• Requirements
Business Analysis
• Definition:
“Business analysis is the set of tasks and techniques
used to work as a liaison among stakeholders in order
to understand the structure, policies, and operations
of an organization, and to recommend solutions that
enable the organization to achieve its goals.”
International Institute of Business Analysis – Body of Knowledge (BABOK) v2
Business Analysis
• Includes work between all stakeholders
• Helps the organization to understand and express its
needs, goals, and objectives
• Defines and evaluates alternatives that meet those
needs, goals, and objectives
• Recommends solutions that enable the organization
to achieve its goals
Business Analyst
• Is responsible for eliciting the actual needs of
stakeholders, not simply their expressed desires.
• Works to facilitate communication between
organizational units.
• Works to align the needs of business units with the
capabilities that can be delivered.
• The person performing this work may or may not
have the title of Business Analyst.
Albany Capital District Chapter
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Founded November 13th, 2008
Monthly meetings: First Tuesday of the month
43 chapter members (Requires IIBA membership)
29 people attending monthly meetings
4 CBAP – 1 other in area
• Contact Information:
– http://albanyny.theiiba.org/
– [email protected]
• Recognizing the need for professional help
• Start of the International Institute for Business Analysis
– Formed in October 29th, 2003 with 28 people
– March 2004:
• 37 Members in the US and Canada
• Today:
– 10,000+ Members in the 68 countries
– 88 active chapters worldwide, 59 chapters in US
http://www.theiiba.org/
Mission
• The mission of IIBA® is to develop and maintain
standards for the practice of business analysis and
for the certification of its practitioners. Our vision is
to be the leading worldwide professional association
for Business Analysts.
Goals
• Creating and developing awareness and recognition
of the value and contribution of Business Analysis
• Providing a forum for knowledge sharing and
contribution to the business analysis profession
• Defining the business analysis knowledge areas and
documenting them in the Business Analysis Body of
Knowledge® (BABOK®)
• Recognizing and certifying qualified practitioners
through an internationally acknowledged
certification program
Business Analysis Body of Knowledge
• Provides a common framework to understand and
define the practice of business analysis
• Documents the knowledge within the profession of
Business Analysis and reflects generally accepted
practices.
• Describes business analysis areas of knowledge, their
associated tasks and techniques necessary to be
effective in the execution.
• Provides the basis for IIBA’s certification:
Certified Business Analysis Professional (CBAP).
Knowledge Areas
• There are 7 knowledge areas:
– Business Analysis Planning and Monitoring
• Establishing overall strategy for how analysis will be performed.
– Elicitation
• How to work with the stakeholders to determine the true,
underlying needs.
– Requirements Management and Communication
• How requirements are documented and distributed. How conflicts
will be resolved. How changes will be managed.
– Enterprise Analysis
• Problem definition and analysis, business case development,
feasibility studies, and the definition of solution scope.
Knowledge Areas
• There are 7 knowledge areas:
– Requirements Analysis
• Prioritize and progressively elaborate requirements. Verification
and validation of the resulting requirements.
– Solution Assessment and Validation
• Assess proposed solutions to determine which solution best fits
the business need, identify gaps and shortcomings in solutions,
and determine necessary workarounds or changes to the solution.
– Underlying Competencies
• Behaviors, knowledge, and other characteristics that support the
effective performance of business analysis. Include analytical
thinking and problem solving, domain knowledge, communication
skills, ethics, tools
Knowledge Areas
Certified Business Analysis Professional
(CBAP)
• Certification designed for individuals with an
advanced level of knowledge and expertise
• Recognized expert in identifying the business needs
of an organization in order to determine business
solutions
• CBAPs are acknowledged as individuals performing a
role which is increasingly recognized as being vital to
a project’s success
Certified Business Analysis Professional
Certification Process
• Application Requirements
– At least 5 years (7,500 hours) of business analysis work in
the last 10 years, with at least 900 hours in 4 of the 6
BABOK knowledge areas.
– Minimum high school diploma or equivalent
– 21 hours BA professional development in the last 4 years
– 2 professional references
• Once application is accepted; schedule and pass
exam of 150 questions
• Worldwide 827 CBAPs, up 65% in the past year.
• Locally 5 CBAPs, up 100% in the past year.
Requirements 101
Requirement: World’s Definition
• noun
1. that which is required; a thing demanded or obligatory: One of
the requirements of the job is accuracy.
2. an act or instance of requiring.
3. a need or necessity: to meet the requirements of daily life.
From www.dictionary.com
Requirement: IIBA’s Definition
• A Requirement is defined to be:
– 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
document.
– A documented representation of a condition or capability
as in (1) or (2).
The Two Expressions of Scope
• Scope => Project Plan
– The PM works to express the scope as a set of tasks that
describes the work needed to be performed, ultimately
creating the project plan.
• Scope => Requirements
– The BA works to express the scope as a set of requirements
that describe what the solution needs to do.
• When these align, the PM and BA work as a team
• When these are not aligned, the PM and BA work
against one another
Requirement Approach
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Plan
Elicit the knowledge
Analyze, refine and trace
Document the requirements
Review and confirm
Validate completeness
Sign-off
Build and test solution
Implement
Plan
• Which stakeholders will be involved, and what will be
their role?
• What types of requirements will be collected and
what attributes will be captured?
• How will conflicts be resolved?
• Where will the requirements be stored?
• Use the plan to monitor and control
Elicit
• Prepare, Conduct, Document, Confirm
• Dig for information, not solutions
• Variety of techniques
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Existing documentation
Job shadowing
Facilitated sessions
Brainstorming
Interfaces with other systems
Prototyping, Storyboarding, Mock-ups
Surveys
Analyze
• Examine the information found
• Need to determine how it adds to understanding the
problem or its solution
• Focus on the what, not the how
Refine
• Start with a high-level requirements and refine into
supporting requirements
• Example of requirement types
Trace
• As requirements are refined, trace the more detailed
requirements from the originating requirement
• Ensures that all original requirements have been
developed
• Ensures that all new requirements are part of the
project scope
• Allows impact of proposed changes to be quickly
determined
Document
• One requirement to a sentence using the active voice
• State such that the requirement will be interpreted
the same by all readers
– Avoid ambiguity
– Use consistent terminology
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Need to be consistent with each other
Need to be testable
Need to trace new requirements to existing ones
Do not justify or explain why it is a requirement
Review and Confirm
• Are the requirements correct?
• Do they raise any other questions?
Validate
• When taken in whole, do the requirements provide a
complete description of the solution?
Approval
• Once the requirements have been approved, they
become the baseline.
Build and Test Solution
• Work to the approved requirements
• Once built, test solution against the requirements
Implement
• Prepare for transition
– Training
– Interfaces
• Solution placed into production
Exercise in Ambiguity
• For example:
– Because it will contribute to their experience here at the
university, they should have a machine, and a good one at
that.
• Who should have what, and how are some of those better than
others?
– Starting with the fall 2010 semester, all incoming freshmen
will be required to have a laptop includes at least 2GB
memory, 160 GB hard drive, and is wireless networking
capable.
• What about incoming graduate students?
Exercise
• The system should be user friendly.
– What features could be included to satisfy this requirement?
Responses
• The system should be user friendly.
– What features could be included to satisfy this requirement?
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Welcome page
Real time updates
Access to help
Performance/Response time
Training
Input validation with meaningful error messages
Controlling what access each user has
Orderly lay out of the screens
Minimizing scrolling
– Can we really say that any of these inappropriate?
Thank you