Francesca Gaille Castillo

ACC127 – Strategic Business Analysis

February 10, 2024

1. Explain your perception, realization and reflection about business analysis (5 points in lieu of
seatwork on Feb 2)

After the last meeting and the supplemental video provided in our prior seatwork my
understanding of business analysis has now broadened. I have summarized my key takeaways of
business analysis in the following paragraph:

I. Defining Business Analysis

Business analysis is determining the business’ actual needs and recommending a viable
solution for a company and its stakeholders. This should be aligned to the vision,
mission, objectives as well as its culture and philosophy. It requires meticulous
assessment, skills, knowledge, tools, techniques and understanding of the industry
involved. Hence, business analysts need to get a grasp of the techniques on how to
produce effective strategy.

What stuck with me is how crucial requirement identification is, through industry
scanning. As BAs, to recommend an optimal strategy to clients, they need to first
decipher what the business really needs (requirements) or else, it would be quite
challenging.

II. Different Requirements in Business Analysis

The needs of a business are categorized into four which are referred to as “requirements.”
According to the Glossary of Software Engineering Terminology and the Business
Analysis Body of Knowledge® (BABOK®), a requirement may be:

(1) condition or capability needed by a user to solve a problem or achieve an

objective.
(2) 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.
(3) documented representation of a condition or capability in (1) or (2) (Schedlbauer,
2015).
 The following taught in class were:

1. Business requirements → is a type of need wherein the organization as a whole is

involved. When an organization is in need of a business requirement, holistic
results are targeted and BAs therefore, must have a deep understanding of the
industry the organization is engaged in. An instance could be, operations of a firm
may be more effective if it were to alter to a new equipment or machine which
would thereby increase the efficiency of their operation by 40%.
2. Stakeholder requirements → when the ones managing a business have an internal
motive, a stakeholder requirement is needed. It involves all those with internal
business roles such as customers, suppliers, partners of the firm, those charged
with governance, management and many more. A case wherein a stakeholder
requirement is needed is lack of internal control.
3. Solution Requirements → when the need of the business arises from the features,
function, and characteristics of a product, service or result that will meet the
business stakeholder requirements. This has two types:
a. Functional - when the concern revolves around the product or service
itself
b. Non-functional - the concern is regarding the environmental condition or
qualities required for the product to be effective
4. Transition Requirements → when change is needed to go from current to future
state, temporary capability such as data conversion or training requirements. An
instance of such may be transitioning to a new system, may it be related with
accounting or human resources.

III. Domain of BA Practice

1. Needs Assessment → To achieve targets, assessment of both internal and external

environments is important, as well as understanding the current and desired states
of the business. However, these plans should be aligned with company goals,
VMO, and culture, considering the CEO's philosophy as even a cost-effective
plan may be rejected if it doesn't align. Using techniques like EPS, ratio analysis,
SWOT, and PESTLE could be used to ensure proposed options align with the
company's VMO and are viable. In short, strategic alignment with company
values and objectives is key to developing accepted solutions which is why
assessment is very important.
2. Business Analysis Planning → Planning in accordance with how to accomplish
the requirements, how long would be the time frame of the project as well as the
approach/es to be followed is an important domain in practicing business analysis.
 3. Requirements Elicitation and Analysis → This emphasizes the need for
practitioners to thoroughly grasp concepts related to requirements elicitation and
analysis. The goal is to enhance their performance in these areas by translating
theoretical understanding into practical skills. Continuous improvement is
encouraged, with a focus on the relevance of this knowledge for practitioners in
real-world scenarios.
4. Traceability and Monitoring → In the case where a change process for
requirements analysis is required, the focus should be on evaluating modifications
to requirements. This involves assessing whether the proposed changes will lead
to improvements, ensuring approval, effective communication, and proper
management.
5. Solution Evaluation → Recommended solutions should be validated regardless of
its state: if it's to be implemented or it's already being implemented. Questions
such as “Is it possible for the failure of what was implemented?” should be taken
into consideration.

IV. Importance of qualifications and background in being a business Analyst

BAs must possess a thorough understanding of the industry. Combining experience with
technical knowledge, abilities, and practices. The method necessitates extensive study
because a large amount of information is required to design a strategy that addresses the
business's actual demands. Otherwise, the BA would have difficulty recommending and
supporting a feasible alternative. For instance, someone who has completed a business
administration school and has worked in the banking field for many years cannot simply
go into being a BA for a pharmaceutical company because the necessary skills and
expertise will be lacking.

2. Explain about the techniques in BA which I discussed last Feb 2 (at least 3) and add 2 more
techniques that you like from the BABoK techniques (25 points in lieu of online class on Feb 10)

1. Balance Score Card

This technique could be used in multiple levels of the organization. In our other courses,
it was taught that it could be used in three tiers: corporate, departmental, down to the
individual level.

This technique is ideal for measuring the whole organization’s performance beyond
traditional measures as the current trend is to incorporate other vital perspectives. The
 four perspectives to look at when using this technique are the financial, customer, internal
processes and learning and growth/development.

Measures should be quantitative in order to utilize this technique to effectively achieve

the strategic objectives set and for easy digestion of the stakeholders. Lagging and
leading indicators are the basic types of measurement with this tool.

2. Benchmarking

The use of this tool is comparing organizational practices to the best practice of the
market leaders in the respective industry.

3. Market Analysis

By BaBok, market analysis is “ researching customers in order to determine the products

and services that they need or want.” This technique is utilized to ensure that the
business would be able to effectively offer products to the market that would attract the
best interests of the customers. This is why it requires BAs to identify customers’
preferences, trends that may anticipate growth or potential profitability, knowing their
competitors as well as their operations and many more in order to gain competitive
advantage, especially in highly competitive industries.

4. Mind mapping

One of the many techniques that caught my interest was mind mapping. Prior to reading
the book of techniques by BaBok, I thought that mind mapping was only used to
brainstorm ideas and it is to my surprise that it is a technical tool used by business
analysts to simplify complex ideas. In a non-linear structure, ideas are grouped as topics,
sub-topics and further sub-topics– aided by words, images, colors for structure and
organization.

I see how it could be useful for BAs as a business could need multiple requirements. for
an easy overview in guiding the BA to plan a viable solution using the mind map tool
would be beneficial.

5. Prototyping

Prototyping is commonly used for product design. Prototypes are early models of an
expected final result, in simple terms, it is basically a “tester.” However, prototyping is
not limited to producing “testers,” it has different approaches and methods to cater
different uses and purposes. These are summarized below:

Approaches:

1. Throw-away Prototype → This approach aims to efficiently identify and define

the needs of a system's interface by using basic tools like paper and pencil. It
specifically targets functionalities that are challenging to discover through other
methods, involve conflicting opinions, or are hard to grasp.

2. Functional Prototype → This involves turning the initial interface requirements

into a complete and operational system. It requires using specific prototyping
tools or programming languages, resulting in the creation of a functional
application.

Methods:

1. Storyboarding → Illustrates the order of actions using visuals and words.

2. Paper Prototyping → The interface or process is sketched using traditional tools
like paper and pencil.
3. Workflow modeling → This only focuses on human aspects. It displays the order
of actions being executed.
4. Simulation → To demonstrate solutions or solution components

The following are examples of prototyping:

Proof of Principle or Concept Created to validate the system design

without modeling appearance, materials
used etc.

Form Study Prototype Focuses on basic size, look and feel of the
product and not on the functionality

Usability Prototype Model to test how end user interacts with

the system

Visual Prototype Model to test visual aspects of the solution

Functional Prototype To test software functionality, qualities of

the system, workflow etc. Also referred to
as ‘working model’
Reference

Schedlbauer, M. (2015). The quest for good requirements. Retrieved from

https://www.batimes.com/articles/the-quest-for-good-requirements/