Paul Mulvey

The data flow diagram is a helpful diagram for business analysts that shows the parties and systems involved with a particular process, as well as the data and interfaces involved when dealing with external agents (those parties or systems that exchange information with the project but over which your project has no control).

Collaboration is critical to business analysis success. It’s about working together with other people to accomplish common goals whether you’re all in one location or dispersed across many. To collaborate well, team members must understand the goal and purpose of the collaboration and actively contribute to the efforts by freely sharing info, talents, and context.

Reverse engineering refers to looking at the solution to figure out how it works. Basically, you you’re your business analysis backward from the solution to understand the data, processes, and business rules. Reverse engineering is more common than you think. Have you ever looked into a Microsoft Excel formula to figure out where it’s coming up with the calculation?

Business requirements are derived from the needs of the business; a good business analyst will recognize that they’re the things that must be in place to benefit the business or enterprise as a whole. They characterize and quantify outcomes desired for the business, and document what business the business decides to be in, what products the business will offer, or what markets the business will expand into or exit.

The genuine problem or opportunity that the business seeks to address in their analysis is the root cause problem, and it’s not always that easy to uncover. You typically have to ask a lot of questions to get down to that root cause because your stakeholders often report symptoms rather than the real cause. A business analyst’s best question is “why?

One of the most frustrating things that can happen between two parties is that they think they’ve reached understanding and agreement about the business analysis when they really haven’t. In those cases, both parties may walk away from the initial conversation thinking they’re talking about the same thing but later realize they were talking about two distinctly different points or different levels of acceptability or achievement within the same points.

The verification and validation test plan portion of a business analysis describes how a software product will be tested. Make sure to include the following sections in your verification and validation plan. Introduction Start off by explaining the test and describing the objective of the project. Remember to keep it short.

A workflow diagram (or workflow) is a visual way for your business analysis to show how work gets accomplished. Workflows are composed of a set of symbols that show how various workers accomplish tasks and interact with each other, as well as how information (data) flows through the business area. These diagrams have been around for a long time and come in many varieties: Swimlane: This workflow diagram focuses on interactions between organizational units and exposes bottlenecks and process inefficiencies ANSI flowchart: This style grew out of flowcharting in the 1970s and became the first standard for workflows.

When you write business and stakeholder requirements in your business analysis, you want to capture the problem or opportunity and explain what has to be done (rather than how you’re going to solve the problem or take advantage of the opportunity). As the person performing the business analysis, you’re generally the main person capturing the business requirements because you have a unique ability to drill into the real problem or opportunity rather than just gather a solution request (which is why your process is called “elicitation” and not “gathering”).