Business Analyst Principle: Questions are a key part of business analysis.
The general framework I use for business analysis is Discover, Analyze, Innovate, Communicate.
Questions are a key part of each part of the framework.
In Discover, you are learning the domain and understanding the change the is being contemplated. Here open-ended questions are best to get the most information efficiently. You want to get a broad understanding of the domain and then you want to understand what the change is and how it fits in with the rest of the picture.
For understanding the change there are some key questions that should be asked.
- What are the issues, pain points, and challenges with the way things are currently done?
- What are the top three to five parts of the way things are currently done that you would change?
- What are parts of the way things are currently done that you would keep?
- If the ideal change was implemented what would it look like?
- What would it look like if the change was not implemented? How would the way things currently are, be impacted?
In the Analyze you are getting a deeper understanding in the areas where it makes sense. This is the ideal place to use the 5-why’s technique to get at the root cause of current issues or to really understand why things are the way they are?
In Innovate, you ask the what-if questions. This is where you brainstorm potential futures and see how they will fit within the domain. You get an understanding of what the gap is and how to create a bridge to get to the future state.
In Communicate there are still questions to ask. Here we want to know the best way to communicate what we have learned and to communicate what the proposed change is. We need to understand the learning and communication styles of those stakeholders we need to communicate with.
Everything comes down to asking good questions and know when we have asked enough in order to create the change required.