Detailed Course Outline
The Business Change Life Cycle
The role of the Business Analyst in the business change life cycle
- Producing the business case
- Other roles in the business change life cycle
The framework for business analysis activities
- Relating business analysis to strategic analysis, definition, and IT systems analysis
- The holistic approach to business analysis
Understanding the Strategic Context
Analysing the business environment
- Internal and external environments
- Analysing the business with SWOT analysis
Developing business metrics
- Identifying your Critical Success Factors (CSF)
- Creating Key Performance Indicators (KPI)
- Identifying critical success with the Balanced Business Scorecard
Project Discipline for Business Analysis Studies
- Reading the Terms of Reference or Project Initiation Document
- OSCAR (objectives, scope, constraints, authority and resources)
- What does the business wish to achieve and deliver?
- Creating SMART objectives
Understanding the Business Situation
Stakeholder identification
- Using the Stakeholder wheel
- Overview of investigative techniques
Representing a holistic view of the business situation
- Generating Rich pictures
- Making Mind Maps
Analysing Stakeholder Perspectives
Stakeholder analysis and management
- Power/Interest Grid
- Stakeholder management strategies
Identifying and defining different perspectives
- Contrasting different stakeholder perspectives
- Analysing the root cause with CATWOE
Analysing and Modelling Business Activities
Developing a Business Activity Model
- Depicting business perspectives with a Business Activity Model (BAM)
- Describing the BAM process and notation
- Identifying business events
Analysing business rules
- Distinguishing between business rule types
- Recognising business rules levels of constraint
Building the consensus Business Activity Model
- Identifying differences between business activity models
- Negotiating to resolve conflicts
Identifying Potential Solutions
Gap analysis - comparing the ideal and existing systems
- Outlining the gap analysis process
- Identifying inputs to, and outputs from, gap analysis
Defining a new business model
- Exploiting areas for change - processes, people, technology and organisation
Identifying requirements using business activity and business process models
- Classifying models that document and analyse requirements
- Recognising data/processing requirements
Making the Business Case
The Business Case life cycle
- Structuring the business case
- Identifying and shortlisting options for business change
Identifying and categorising costs and benefits
- Classifying tangible and intangible costs and benefits
- Investment appraisal techniques
Risk and impact identification, categorisation, and management
- Identifying and assessing risk impact and probability
- Risk management approaches