microsoft word - business analyst area of competency

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Business Analyst Area of Competency Development

Service Description

Enterprise Agility Service Description Business Analyst Area of Competency Development


Overview

The role of the Business Analyst is evolving rapidly. Organizations are launching ever more complex projects where the role of the Business Analyst is essential to their success. But traditionally the definition of this role has varied widely both across organizations and even within a single organization. This variation in role definitions has been accompanied by a corresponding variation in techniques and tools used by Business Analysts. With the increased demands being placed upon Business Analysts, organizations are finding that they are being compelled to extract more value from their Business Analysts. In order to achieve this, organizations are moving towards formalization of the Business Analysts role and towards a common definition of responsibilities and techniques that can be used across their organization. Implementing this approach involves building a core group that understands the new approach and which can be used to carry it to the rest of the organization. That core group is a Business Analyst Area of Competency.

This service is designed for organizations that wish to increase their ability to deliver automation solutions and which see that the Business Analyst role is the linchpin in this effort. The Business Analyst AOC Development service has evolved from 14 years of working with clients and the formulation of our Business Engineering Framework. A proven approach that has been successfully followed by some of our large clients.

Enterprise Agility covers all aspects of an organization’s business analysis approach, including: strategic alignment, the requirements capture process, project governance and the quality process. This approach provides an essential step by helping organizations develop a comprehensive vision of a fully mature business analyst.



The Details

RESPONSIBILITY ALIGNMENT

Develops a definition of the key responsibilities that the Business Analyst role plays within your organization. These roles cover fundamental BA skill sets as well as more sophisticated skill sets that are typically provided only by senior Business Analysts. The approach involves mapping your organization’s existing processes onto the responsibility framework and examining any issues with organizational or skill set alignment.

MILESTONE

VALUE

Elicitation

Elicitation is the act of assisting individuals in formulating, discovering and making choices in relationship to their own needs. This is a fundamental skillset for Business Analysts because one of the key roles that a Business Analyst performs is crafting a coherent statement of the goals from whatever level of conceptualization their client may bring to the table.

Risk Mitigation

The Business Analyst has a leadership role in making certain that areas of risk are identified early and have defined paths to validate the impact of those risks before major structural decisions have been made. These risks come both from the business and the IT side and a strong Business Analyst will have the ability to identify when potential risks are being undertaken and to work with other roles to identify possible alternatives or ways of determining the likelihood that the risk will be realized.

Specification Development

Specification development is the heart of the Business Analyst role. But specification means many things to many people. Core to the ability of the Business Analyst to be able to define a complete solution, is the ability of the Business Analyst to create a specification that is complete, non-ambiguous and has a defined way in which it will be consumed both by business sponsors as well as IT architecture and implementation resources.

Strategic Analysis

Strategic Analysis is an advanced Business Analyst skillset. This skill involves the ability to help direct tasks such as the reengineering of a business process. This type of work requires the ability to both understand business objectives as well as the ability to account for how the solution specification being created is intended to support those objectives via quantifiable metrics.

Solution Validation A key element of the Business Analyst’s role is helping to define whether or not a solution is correct. This involves validation of the specification during its development as well as development of business scenarios and associated metrics that define the core acceptance criteria that the solution must achieve.



The Details (continued)

ANALYTIC TECHNIQUES

Addresses how your organization captures the elements of a solution specification. Emphasizes the development of an integrated specification that encompasses both business- and IT-level specifications in a way that allows your business experts to retain direct control of business specification elements.

MILESTONE

VALUE

Terminology Rigorously Captured

Examines your existing techniques for capturing the knowledge engineering embodied by your existing business entity, enterprise data or glossary models. Evaluates the appropriateness of these techniques for providing accessibility to business analysts as well as the integration of these models with other requirements artifacts. The model needs to be treated as a piece of knowledge engineering where the tradeoffs between approaches are made explicitly.

Structured Techniques for Rules Capture

The definition of how business rules will be captured is an essential element in any requirements process since business rules typically represent the largest volume of pure business changes that organizations must deal with. Because the term business rule covers several different concepts, it is important that an organization identify techniques that support the primary patterns of business rule definition and identify how each of these interact with all other business specification elements to provide rule-based control of the specification.

Business Process Integration

Business processes are a core business specification deliverable that should not require IT change. To achieve this it is necessary that you have clear procedures for linking events, rules-driven knowledge and human activities to these processes. Relationships between human activities and use cases (if used) must be defined so that the automation solution itself becomes the specification for how work is done in these human activities.

Business Event Identification

Most business behavior is event driven. The source of these events can be both internal and external to an organization and originate from either the business or automation arena. Formalizing the capture of business events, their attributes, their sources and use is a key step in producing a business specification that accurately represents how your business can function.

Abstract UI Specifications Integration

Reconciliation of user interface display with business entities closes the door on the miscommunication and requirements rework that a non-integrated approach promotes. Capture of all user actions and decomposition into business processes, events and conceptual services is a key step in integrating the automation solution specification with the business specification.

Functional Flow Capture for Human Activities

Functional flows is the way in which solution designers arrange the end-users integrated toolset that facilitates those users getting their work done. Analysis of usage patterns is essential to maximizing the ability of the individuals performing these tasks to spend their time on human judgments and creativity where they add value.

Integration with IT Frameworks

Failure to incorporate early IT feedback into the development of requirements risks major disruption to requirements due to complexity or costs issues arising late in the specification development process. Defined techniques for separating IT algorithms and adherence to usage patterns within the specification are key to isolating the IT sensitive areas early enough to allow the feedback to be integrated into the specifications.



The Details (continued)

PERSONNEL DEVELOPMENT

A set of techniques and responsibilities are only as good as the ability of the Business Analysts within an organization to make use of them. Developing a core group of Business Analysts involves understanding the personality characteristics that are required, as well as developing the skills of the individuals to execute the role.

MILESTONE

VALUE

Personnel Characteristics

People are the most important element in the success of any Business Analyst Area of Competency effort. But every individual is different and those differences can help determine what kind of role someone is best suited for. Not all business analysts are equally adept at all areas of the business analyst role and most organizations find that finding individuals that excel at all the demands of the role is almost impossible. Helping to understand how personality relates to the business analyst role is key to getting high value from business analysts.

Levels of Business Analysts

Business Analysts are often divided by areas of expertise. But this type of segregation limits the ability to have a broad perspective and to move individuals between projects. Focusing upon levels of responsibilities is an alternate approach that supports individuals having different capabilities while helping preserve a coherent Business Analyst role.

Training to Support Broad Understanding

With the range of skills expected of the Business Analyst, it is usually difficult for individuals to develop a well-rounded base knowledge strictly via through project work. Training is most effective in helping to broaden the understanding that an individual has so that they can understand how the work they are doing fits together and which techniques they might want to bring aboard projects they are working on.

Mentoring to Support Mastery

While training is effective at developing a broad understanding, it isn’t a particularly effective technique for developing mastery of a particular skill. Mastery involves the ability of an individual to be able to correctly choose the appropriate technique and be confident that they have a deep enough understanding of the “whys” underlying the technique to be able to adapt to situations that they haven’t encountered previously. Mentoring has historically proven the single most effective approach for helping individuals reach that highly productive level we think of as “mastery”.



The Enterprise Agility Advantage

Founded in 1993, Enterprise Agility delivers advisory, training and leadership services to U.S. and global organizations. Clients partner with Enterprise Agility to adopt business engineering approaches to increase business agility while reducing operational costs.

As an industry standard setter and a worldwide leader in the areas of business architecture, process, rules, requirements and legacy transformation, Enterprise Agility brings unmatched multi-disciplinary expertise to our clients.

Enterprise Agility has led the industry with innovative approaches and techniques that tie directly to delivering business results. This is made possible through our strategic relationship with technology vendors and our thought leadership in aligning business and IT.

Areas of Expertise:

Business Architecture

Business Processes

Business Requirements

Business Rules

Legacy Transformation

Areas of Practice:

Consultative and Assessment Services

Project Leadership

Self-Directed eLearning

Instructor-Led Training

1543 N. Milwaukee Ave. Chicago, IL 60622 USA

Phone: 1-773-227-7110 Fax: 1-773-227-7130 Email: [email protected]

Web: www.Enterprise-Agility.com

http://www.Enterprise-Agility.com

microsoft word - business analyst area of competency

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