The high business analysis approach on any new engagement is similar. The approach follows the 5 main steps
1. Understand the situation
During this step, you want to understand both the purpose of the engagement as well as how that purpose fits in with the bigger purpose or vision of the organization. You want to understand the major stakeholders involved as well as what the expected outcome is for each of the stakeholders.
At this time some of the deliverables that may be produced are high-level context diagrams, stakeholder lists, glossary, and business requirements.
2. Make a business analysis plan
The business analysis plan outlines the main tasks that are required to complete the last three steps. The plan helps the client to understand what needs to be done and who needs to be involved.
3. Capture the current state
In this step, the process, stakeholders, resources for how things are currently done are captured. An important part of this stage is to capture the state of any related data. When creating a change to an existing process, the data will show what the process looked like in the past. For some processes, the process has gone through several iterations in the past. Any challenges and opportunities are also identified during this step.
At this time some of the deliverables that may be produced are: business process diagrams, high-level use cases or user stories, entity-relationship diagrams, potential requirements, activity diagrams
4. Determine the future state
In this step, the proposed change is defined and approved by the client. Traceability is included to show the relationship both to the current state and back to the high-level business requirements. The final part of defining the future state is creating the test cases for determining the quality of the produced change. Many times, it is in the creation of the test cases that missing requirements are identified.
At this time some of the deliverables that may be produced are: business process diagrams, use cases or user stories, entity-relationship diagrams, approved requirements, activity diagrams, mock-ups, test cases.
5. Identify and address the gap
In the previous steps, the starting point (current state) and the endpoint (future state) have been identified. The last part of the process is determining how to address the gap. Typically this step is done in conjunction with a project manager who oversees the project. The project manager’s focus is on scheduling and coordinating the tasks, the business analyst’s focus is implementing the future state to create value for the client.
At this time some of the deliverables that may be produced are: completed test cases, baseline metrics