Let’s not kid each other any longer. It’s simply the truth of working life – you wear many hats at work—no matter what your official title may mean. Of course, you may have an official title that comprises a position like ‘technician,’ ‘analyst,’ or supervisor. But your tasks and responsibilities seem more like someone spilled the forward-slash on your resume.
Business analysis is also the same. Many businesses are still not very sure about what “business analysis” is. Hence, it is deemed as a responsibility that comes with several titles like ‘database architect,’ ‘systems analyst,’ ‘financial analyst,’ ‘consultant,’ ‘process engineer,’ business architect,’ and ‘data analyst,’ just to call out a few names aloud! You can play the part of business analyst and (like most of us once) not even know it.
What’s Business Analysis In Functional Terms?
Business analysis is several tasks and techniques used as a system, to interact with stakeholders, with an aim to decipher and communicate the structure, policies, and operations of a firm. And, to give solutions that help that business achieve its goals.
Business analysis will feature the following processes-
- Establishing business requirements and opportunities
- Assembling, clarifying, and authenticating requirements
- Noting and communicating requirements to stakeholders
- Making a plan to collect requirements, exactly define the scope, and handle the changes to requirements
- Making certain that the requirements are well-drafted, precise, and all-encompassing
- Ensuring that the solution is the right one based on the requirements, not the other way around
Why Do We Need A Business Analysis Company?
A straightforward way to look at an IT project is to have two primary groups of people, – 1. The clients who know what they want, 2. The developers who design the IT system furnish them with whatever they want. This is, just a plain view and not very feasible in reality.
This is owing to a few reasons:
Developers can’t assemble the requirements as effectively. Yes, it’s possible for a developer to identify what a business requires; but they are at risk of having a narrow-minded design. Moreover, developers are generally (not always, but generally) trained and experts in their own field; and not confident or comfortable interacting with business users to gather requirements.
Business users can’t document their specific requirements. Sure, the business users are the best people to be able to identify their exact requirements, because it’s their process or system that they want to be analyzed. Nevertheless, the business users are generally inexperienced in this, and lack the technical knowledge to know what is available; and what may be achieved. Business analysis involves asking questions, and there are questions the analysts can ask that the users are not aware of.
For all such reasons, there needs to be someone who is an expert in business analysis consulting. Someone who has the technical knowledge, communication skills, and not to mention the ability to analyze and gather requirements. This is the responsibility of a business analyst.
The Duties Of A Business Analyst Are Wide-ranging
The Business Analyst will perhaps be involved in more than simply gathering requirements and putting them into a Word document. Some additional responsibilities and areas of a project are involved:
- Collecting business and system requirements
- Help with user or system acceptance testing at this stage of the project
- Active involvement in system implementation
- Creation or help with training documentation & manuals
- Active involvement in the project management tasks of a project when needed, like, the creation of project plans
All Comes Down To Requirements
Generally, business analysis companies are tasked with gathering and documenting business requirements before, the project planning and implementation. Business analysts primarily are involved with enterprise analysis and they clearly define the product scope (features and functions of the product, service, or deliverable) which is just, simply the requirements.
In the Software/System Development Life Cycle (SDLC), business analysts are important in the analysis phase. This phase is where all of those who perform business analysis work with the final goal being to get project requirements accurately the first time.
Truth be told, the Microsoft Corporation has realized over time that for a single wrong, unclear, or incomplete requirement on a project, it costs them five to 200 times more to fix that project as it progresses through the SDLC.
The Summary
Sometimes, business analysis companies are responsible just for determining the opportunities for improvements in a specific area. At other times, this kind of enterprise analysis is performed at higher levels in the organization by senior management or by specific departments. After that, a business analyst is brought in when there is a project, already planned to accumulate, write, and handle specific requirements. The best consultants charge a fee for the work they perform, with costs quoted and known upfront. Proposals should come written and itemized to establish a project’s scope, & timeline.