Business Analysis(Part 1): Introduction
As the world moves towards digitization, businesses barely survive without technology. The recent Covid-19 pandemic has pushed more businesses to adopt technology than ever before. That said, the necessity to connect businesses with technology is crucial. This is where business analysis comes into play.
Business analysis is the liaison between the technology and the stakeholders to understand the structure, policies, and needs, to achieve its goals and objectives
Business analysis involves:
- Analyzing business requirements
- Creating detailed documentation
- Strategic planning
- Refining existing policies
- Determining areas for process improvement and organizational change
These factors together help drive the organization towards a superior business outcome.
A Business Analyst(BA) would be the person to carry out Business analysis and provide appropriate solutions to business problems. They are the bridge between the stakeholders and software developers translating the business requirements into technical requirements. They usually have a backup plan for the project. They understand the product thoroughly and usually are the go-to people for any changes proposed.
Here are some things that a BA works on:
Reducing Project Cost
It happens frequently that the developers may not understand the requirements or the requirements may not be documented properly. In such cases, the developed product may not live up to the stakeholder’s expectations and may need to be fixed. This results in delays in the projects and unnecessary utilization of resources which leads to an increase in project costs.
Having a BA on the team helps with the detailed requirement documentation and effective communication between the stakeholders and development teams. They will also ensure that the requirement gathering meeting results in some solution, therefore, not holding up the stakeholder and other company resources unnecessarily and further saving the project costs.
Increasing Potential Return
The business analyst gathers all the requirements for a project by talking to individual stakeholders involved. After gathering all the requirements, the BA would create action items(Epics/User stories) that software teams can effectively develop. Prioritization is made easy due to breaking down requirements into such granular blocks.
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Let’s look at an example of a food delivery app:
A BA, after meeting with the stakeholders, comes up with the following high-level items
- Onboarding
- Search restaurant
- Place order
- Payment
Now, each of these high-level requirements has to be broken down into manageable pieces which can be developed. For example, the payment option may be broken into
- Credit/Debit card
- Paypal
- Gift card
- Netbanking
- Cash on delivery
The BA can prioritize credit/debit cards and cash on delivery features over a gift card and net banking. This can add immense value to the project, thereby increasing potential returns.
Miscommunication
Knowing that the requirement gathering meetings go on for hours, roping the developers in for this may be counterproductive. Developers tend to concern themselves only with the coding part of the project and may not understand the business value of a certain feature. Additionally, having the developers(even if they are highly capable) interact with the stakeholders will substantially delay the development. This could lead to miscommunication between the stakeholders and the developers and negatively impact the project.
A Business analyst understands and fills the gap between the business requirements and the technical requirements, giving the necessary details to make the project a success.
Contributing in the test phase of the project
The test phases post-development are crucial for the successful delivery of the product, i.e. ensure optimum costs, timely development, and exceptional quality. In some cases, test phases may be neglected due to insufficient resources or clashing business needs. In such cases, an experienced business analyst can pitch in to create test scenarios, test cases, and test scripts and drive the project to success
Stay tuned for more on Business Analysis!!
