The Business Analysis Handbook : Techniques and Questions to Deliver Better Business Outcomes

FINALIST: Business Book Awards 2020 - Specialist Book Category FINALIST: PMI UK National Project Awards 2019 - Project Management Literature Category The business analyst role can cover a wide range of responsibilities, including the elicitation and documenting of business requirements, upfront strategic work, design and implementation phases. Typical difficulties faced by analysts include stakeholders who disagree or don't know their requirements, handling estimates and project deadlines that conflict, and what to do if all the requirements are top priority. The Business Analysis Handbook offers practical solutions to these and other common problems which arise when uncovering requirements or conducting business analysis. Getting requirements right is difficult; this book offers guidance on delivering the right project results, avoiding extra cost and work, and increasing the benefits to the organization. The Business Analysis Handbook provides an understanding of the analyst role and the soft skills required, and outlines industry standard tools and techniques with guidelines on their use to suit the most appropriate situations. Covering numerous techniques such as Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN), use cases and user stories, this essential guide also includes standard templates to save time and ensure nothing important is missed. Cover Contents List of figures and tables About the author Acknowledgements 1 Preparation for business analysis Introduction What is business analysis? How did I become a business analyst? What are some tips on becoming a business analyst? What skills are needed for business analysis? What are the reasons for having business analysis? What are the different project methodologies and when is best to use each one? What are the different types of roles in business analysis? What are the different business analysis artefacts What are the main challenges facing someone who does business analysis? 2 Effective working relationships Introduction What types of stakeholders will you need to engage with? How do you build effective working relationships with your different stakeholders? How do you change your communication approach to meet the needs of your stakeholders? What do you do when stakeholders go straight to the solution without explaining the context or vision? Why is getting requirements/information from stakeholders so difficult and how do you overcome it? How do you run a workshop/meeting effectively? 3 Business context and vision Introduction How do you know you are solving the right problem? How do you gain consensus for the direction of the project and its scope with all stakeholders? How do you go about identifying all your stakeholders? How do you identify constraints that might influence the solution? How do you identify the needs that might influence the solution? How do you ensure the overall solution agreed will meet the business needs? How do you justify the benefits and estimated costs? 4 Business context and business processes Introduction What is process modelling? How do you work out what level of detail to use for mapping processes? What are the benefits of process modelling? How do you go about identifying the processes in the first place? How do you put a process map together? What standard and symbols should you use? How do you analyse process maps for improvement? 5 Business context/understanding requirements Introduction Why is there a hierarchy of requirements and why does it matter? What are the different methods for requirements elicitation? How do you formulate a good requirement? What goes into a business requirements document? What are assumptions, dependencies, risks and issues? What are the implications of mixing up business requirements, assumptions, dependencies, risks and issues? 6 System context/understanding requirements Introduction What are the techniques for understanding and documenting functional requirements (use case models, use cases, user stories, storyboarding and traditional table format)? How do you deal with global non-functional requirements? How do you adapt requirements for commercial off the shelf packages? What is involved in the procurement process and how can business analysis help? How do you evaluate responses from software providers? What are the approaches for agile projects? 7 Managing requirements Introduction How do you get stakeholders to read your documentation? How to handle stakeholders’ feedback when they have reviewed your documentation How do you get your documentation signed off? How do you prioritize requirements? What is traceability and why is it important? How do you conduct traceability? How do you manage changes to requirements? 8 Enterprise business analysis Introduction What is enterprise business analysis? How do you identify new or transformational enterprise initiatives? How do you prepare a company for business agility? 9 Templates Introduction What are the best practice guidelines when documenting? What are the benefits and drawbacks of having templates? Vision document template Business process document template Business requirements document template Solution requirements document template (UML) Solution requirements document template (non-functional) Solutions requirements document template (business solutions) Index SHORTLISTED: PMI UK National Project Awards 2019 - Project Management Literature Category The business analyst role can cover a wide range of responsibilities, including the elicitation and documenting of business requirements, upfront strategic work, design and implementation phases. Typical difficulties faced by analysts include stakeholders who disagree or don't know their requirements, handling estimates and project deadlines that conflict, and what to do if all the requirements are top priority. The Business Analysis Handbook offers practical solutions to these and other common problems which arise when uncovering requirements or conducting business analysis. Getting requirements right is difficult; this book offers guidance on delivering the right project results, avoiding extra cost and work, and increasing the benefits to the organization. The Business Analysis Handbook provides an understanding of the analyst role and the soft skills required, and outlines industry standard tools and techniques with guidelines on their use to suit the most appropriate situations. Covering numerous techniques such as Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN), use cases and user stories, this essential guide also includes standard templates to save time and ensure nothing important is missed "The business analyst role can cover a wide range of responsibilities, including the elicitation and documenting of business requirements, upfront strategic work, design and implementation phases. Typical difficulties faced by analysts include stakeholders who disagree or don't know their requirements, handling estimates and project deadlines that conflict, and what to do if all the requirements are top priority. The Business Analysis Handbook offers practical solutions to these and other common problems which arise when uncovering requirements or conducting business analysis. Getting requirements right is difficult; this book offers guidance on delivering the right project results, avoiding extra cost and work, and increasing the benefits to the organization. The Business Analysis Handbook provides an understanding of the analyst role and the soft skills required, and outlines industry standard tools and techniques with guidelines on their use to suit the most appropriate situations. Covering methodologies such as Lean Six Sigma and Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN), this essential guide also includes standard templates to save time and ensure nothing important is missed"-- Provided by publisher