Today I found a pretty good AI diagraming tool which might save you time as a #businessanalyst or architect. The tool is called diagramgpt and provide by Eraser.io (linked to tool below) The prompt i used was “The process flow of a person buying a t-shirt from a local clothes store” – Entity Relationship Diagram Try it out here: https://www.eraser.io/diagramgpt Brought to you by the folks at Eraser
Are you looking to become a successful business analyst? Look no further! In this podcast episode, Benjamen Walsh from The Better Business Analysis Institute shares valuable insights on what to look for when hiring a business analyst and how to succeed in the job search process. Benjamen emphasises the importance of gaining experience and completing certified courses to move up to an intermediate level. Candidates should also tailor their CV and cover letter to the specific job and company they are applying for, and showcase their personality and connection with the company in their application. For hiring managers, Benjamen suggests having a structured interview process, including technical and culture fit interviews, and creating a job description specific to the level and job being hired for. So, if you’re looking to become a successful business analyst, take these tips to heart and start your journey today!
How Business Analysts Can Help Companies Survive a Recession The current financial climate has seen a recession not only in New Zealand but also overseas, leading to companies looking for ways to cut costs, restructure, and even merge to survive. Business analysts can play a crucial role in helping companies during this period by focusing on continuous improvement and business transformation. Continuous improvement involves applying process-level improvements to reduce waste in the organization. Business analysts can help by focusing on reducing waste at the process level, making processes more efficient, and providing clarity to senior leaders about the impact of cost-cutting measures. On the other hand, business transformation involves a top-down approach where a company reflects on its business model and unique value proposition (UVP). Business analysts can assist by reviewing the company’s UVP and identifying areas where fundamental changes can be made. During a recession, companies tend to focus on their UVP, which is what customers come to them for. This may result in turning off services that are not core to the business or not what makes them unique to their target customers. It’s important for businesses to be conservative with their spending and to look for ways to cut costs. However, this can be a difficult time for many people, and it’s important to remember that there are ways to help. Business analysts can use their skills and knowledge to advise friends and family who may be affected by the recession, helping them to identify new career opportunities and navigate the job market. By focusing on continuous improvement and business transformation, business analysts can help companies and individuals survive and thrive during a recession.
The BBAI free business analysis template library gives business analysts everything needed to deliver professional, consistent work — from requirements gathering through to solution validation. Every business analysis template is free to download and use on real projects. No email required, no paywall. Quick download links: BRD · Stakeholder Register · RAID Log · Gap Analysis · Business Case · User Stories · UAT Plan · RTM · Process Mapping · Risk Register · Project Charter Jump to section: Requirements · Analysis & Assessment · Stakeholder Management · Process & Workflow · Business Case & Planning · Testing & Quality · BA Project Management · Agile & Product Requirements Templates The most-used templates in a BA’s toolkit. Requirements templates help you capture, document, and manage what the business needs from a solution. Business Requirements Document (BRD) The BRD captures what the business needs to achieve, independent of how the solution will be built. Use at the start of a project to align stakeholders before solution design begins. Section Content to Include 1. Executive Summary Problem statement, business opportunity, and recommended approach (1 page) 2. Business Objectives SMART goals the solution must achieve, linked to strategic objectives 3. Current State As-is process description, pain points, and root causes 4. Scope In-scope processes, systems, and stakeholder groups. Explicit out-of-scope list. 5. Stakeholders Key stakeholders, roles, and approval authorities 6. Business Requirements Numbered list: BR-001, BR-002… Each with priority (MoSCoW) and owner 7. Assumptions & Constraints Known limitations, dependencies, regulatory requirements 8. Success Criteria How the business will measure whether the solution delivered value 9. Glossary Business terms and definitions used in this document Functional Requirements Specification (FRS) Translates business requirements into specific, testable functional behaviours. Used by development teams to understand what the system must do. Write this after the BRD is approved. Field Description Example FR-ID Unique reference number FR-001 Title Short name for the requirement User Login Description What the system must do The system shall allow registered users to log in using email and password Source Business requirement it traces to BR-003 Priority MoSCoW classification Must Have Acceptance Criteria How to confirm it works Given [context], When [action], Then [expected outcome] Owner Stakeholder responsible Product Owner Status Draft / Approved / Implemented / Tested Draft Requirements Traceability Matrix (RTM) Maps each business requirement through to functional requirements, test cases, and implementation. Ensures nothing is missed and every requirement can be tested. Essential for projects with regulatory compliance requirements. BR-ID Business Requirement FR-ID Functional Requirement Test Case ID Test Status Sign-off BR-001 Users must authenticate securely FR-001, FR-002 Login, Password Reset TC-001, TC-002 Pass ✓ BR-002 [Requirement text] [FR-IDs] [FR titles] [TC-IDs] Pending User Story Template Captures requirements from the user’s perspective in agile projects. Each story should be independently deliverable and testable. Use the INVEST criteria (Independent, Negotiable, Valuable, Estimable, Small, Testable) to validate stories before sprint planning. Field Format / Example Story ID US-001 As a… [Type of user / role] I want to… [Goal or action] So that… [Business value or outcome] Acceptance Criteria Given [context], When [action], Then [result]. Add one row per criterion. Story Points [Effort estimate] Priority Must Have / Should Have / Could Have Dependencies [Other story IDs] Notes Edge cases, exclusions, open questions Use Case Template Describes a system interaction from the actor’s perspective. Use cases are more detailed than user stories and are better suited to complex workflows or compliance-heavy projects. Field Content Use Case ID UC-001 Title Descriptive name (verb + noun: “Submit Expense Claim”) Primary Actor Who initiates the use case Secondary Actors Other systems or roles involved Preconditions What must be true before this can start Main Success Scenario Step-by-step numbered list of the happy path Alternative Flows Valid variations of the main flow (Alt-1, Alt-2…) Exception Flows Error conditions and how the system handles them Postconditions System state after successful completion Business Rules Rules that govern this use case (link to BR-IDs) Business Rules Template Documents the operational policies, regulations, and constraints that govern how the business works. Business rules are separate from functional requirements — they define the boundaries of acceptable system behaviour. Rule ID Rule Statement Category Source Impact Owner BR-001 All purchase orders above $10,000 must have two approvals Approval Finance Policy v3.1 High CFO BR-002 [Write rule as: Entity must/shall/must not verb condition] Validation / Approval / Calculation / Restriction [Policy, regulation, or SME] High / Medium / Low [Name] Data Dictionary Template Defines every data element used in a system or process — its name, format, valid values, and business meaning. Essential for integration projects, data migration, and anywhere multiple systems exchange data. Field Name Business Definition Data Type Format Valid Values Mandatory? Source System CustomerID Unique identifier for a customer account String CUST-NNNNNN CUST-000001 to CUST-999999 Yes CRM [Field name] [Plain English meaning] String / Integer / Date / Boolean / Decimal [Pattern or example] [List or range] Yes / No [System name] Business Analysis Plan Template A business analysis plan template documents how the BA function will be conducted on a project — scope, approach, techniques, deliverables, and timelines. Required on larger engagements where the BA scope needs sign-off. Download our dedicated BA approach guide or use the structure below. Section Content to Include 1. Purpose & Scope What this BA plan covers, the project context, and the BA engagement model 2. Business Analysis Approach Methodology (Agile / waterfall / hybrid), key techniques to be used, documentation standards 3. Stakeholder Engagement Who the BA will work with, engagement frequency, communication methods 4. BA Deliverables List of documents / artefacts to be produced, with target completion dates 5. Requirements Management How requirements will be elicited, documented, reviewed, prioritised, and baselined 6. Change Management Process for handling requirements changes during delivery 7. Risks & Assumptions Risks to BA delivery; assumptions the plan is based on 8. Approvals Sign-off authority, review process, and version control Analysis & Assessment Templates Gap Analysis Template Compares the current state to the desired future state to
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When you read the title of this blog post you might be tempted to ask the question – Isn’t Project management software for Project Managers? Well, the short answer is yes, but as Business Analysts are a large part of managing the scope of work through the delivery journey (which is primarily focused on delivering requirements) we should have the skills to understand stand up and run the delivery-focused project management software. Business Analysts may use project management software such as Jira, Trello, Asana, MS Project, and Excel to manage project tasks, track progress, and collaborate with team members. Again, yes this should be owned by the Project Manager or sometimes the Scrum master but in many situations you will find that Business Analyst is creating, updating or managing the content within these tools. I would like to spend some time talking about 3 of these tools that focus on the Delivery & Requirement Managements sides of things: As a Business Analyst, your Requirements Traceability Matrix should be managed within one of these 3 tools (or more than) or something very similar. Excel Excel is a great tool for any business professional to learn however as a Business Analyst you should have advanced Excel knowledge. Creating a Requirement Traceability Matrix in Excel is a simple task however there is no UX or system joins, dependencies or constraints between the Objectives, Epics and User Stories. Jira Jira is a popular project management tool that can be used to manage requirements for software development projects Azure DevOps Azure DevOps is a cloud-based project management tool that can be used to manage requirements for software development projects. There a number of specialist requirements management tools, such as IBM Rational DOORS or Jama Connect however in our opinion the above 3 tools are your best option.
We have defined our strategic objectives and now we need to look at how we are going to get after them. A lot of big businesses have a project management office that manages the programme of work for the year and have project managers, business analysis and solution architects that collectively work on a project to complete a piece of work. As far as a project owner and/or sponsor is concerned this is a great model and they can define their requirement and get a solution implemented through the solution delivery lifecycle. What is sometimes forgotten when you work on projects is that generally your project is part of a greater programme and what is more commonly missed is that those programmes exist to help achieve a strategic objective. With the structure of corporate being quite hierarchical with multiple department heads wanting to get their project funded the programme of work can get messy very quickly. Linking the Strategy objectives to each programme and then project can help prioritise what is important and what will give the business the biggest bang for buck! In order to keep programme planning simple I am going to take our example from chapter 4 – Just Law and I am going to work down from the Strategic objectives. Be well aware that most companies’ programmes of work are already in flight from the year before and strategic objectives are hardly even linked or used to prioritise one programme against another – this is changing however! In the case of Just Law we have our 3 strategic objectives which we examined in more detail. To meet SO1 John firstly needs to work out how he plans to get more clients in the door. For S02 John’s needs a change project to reduce steps in his current sales and purchase management process and finally for S03 johns needs to have a small recruitment project to find and hire the right lawyer. As I have been involved in many projects I would go ahead and state that John will have a programme consisting of at least 3 projects: 1. Investigate the options for increasing client number and implement, Implement a streamline sales and purchase process and recruit a lawyer. Seeing as John wants to increase revenue this year through client number he will use a reserve fund to hire a business analyst who has recruitment skills to help him get after this change programme.
Now we understand the business context and the elements that make up the business – Business Entities’, we should look at where the company is going. The vision statement defines the direction of a business. A vision is a defined corporate term however no matter how big or small a company is they all exist for a reason and that reason is articulated by the vision statement. Let’s have a look at some vision statements using the example businesses we talked about in chapter 2. Joe’s Car Ties vision statement is “to have the largest tier range in the country” This vision can be broken down into Largest Tier Range – Largest suggests that relative to the competition Joe’s will stock more types of tiers and in the country, defines that we are talking about the New Zealand market where Joe’s operates and we are not talking comparing the range to companies overseas. “To have the largest tier range in the country” is not an all-inspiring statement and is more like a customer promise, however this is quite common among small businesses that don’t have strategic plans. This vision statement also helps Joe’s stick out from the competition for those consumers who may have a unique tier requirement. It may also suggest that Joe’s range includes more cheaper tiers as well as the more expensive tiers could attract price conscious consumers looking for a good deal. The other important directive we can take from Joe’s vision is that the company needs to maintain, monitor and possibly increase their tier range relative to the competition. Before we move on to Strategic Objectives let’s take a look at another example. Just Law – “to be the cheapest and best property law firm in raglan” Now with this vision we need to look a little more carefully. Just Law is currently a one-man business which as we can see offers property law services. “To be the cheapest” is quite obvious and means that the price a client pays for services will be less than the competition charges for the same service. “Best” however is subjective and unless Just Law plans to measure themselves in surveys or a poll versus the competition is basically only a marketing word and nothing more. “property law firm” is a definition and describes the business context. We should also think to ourselves if Just Law was to offer other law services that weren’t property focused would the cheapest statement remain true. Finally, “raglan” is a small surf town in New Zealand and defines a location. Adding this to the vision gives Just Law a local focus. The reason I list both examples is that vision statements can be a mix of marketing fluff and buzz words however if well defined they should give the business direction and purpose for existing. A vision statement may be carved in stones and tattooed to each employee face however the strategic objectives of a business can and should change. Strategic objectives in lots of companies are measured statements of intention that can link to the vision statement and can be driven by a strategy. Depending on the size and maturely of a business Strategic Objectives may be explicitly defined each year or simply a call to action that is implied by the leader of a company. To help understand Strategic Objectives I am going to assume from this point forward that these are statements defined each year for the year ahead. That they are measurable and implemented via a change programme. Still confused? Let’s take a look at Just Law – who aim “to be the cheapest and best property law firm in raglan” Just Law has one employee/lawyer called John. John has worked out his goals in the next 5 years and wants to continue to grow and sell the business in 5 years. In order to take a step in the right direction john has defined the following strategic objectives for FY14/15: The above strategic objectives are very clear, measurable and to be honest so much better than I have seen at even some of the biggest corporations I have worked for. Usually as we saw in Chapter 1 you get some vague statement that you have to work through. There is a great analysis technique called S.M.A.R.T that defines what you should be looking for when capturing strategic objectives. Seeing as though there are so many great books on the topic I am going to skip based on this and move on to examining the statements. John’s has defined his Strategic Objectives and they are in service of his goals. If John’s intends to maintain his direction of being the cheapest and best property law firm in raglan then he needs to be realistic and ask himself if I want to increase revenue and do so without increasing my fees to a level more than the competition is possible. In this case John has been explicit and stated how he plans to reach this revenue target through increased client numbers aka increasing caseload. Looking at Strategic Objective 3 John is going to hire a new lawyer which will increase his costs however he qualifies this statement by stating that the new lawyer will process the same number of cases he does each month and therefore we can assume that their caseload will at least cover their wages and/or increase profit. Finally now looking at Strategic Objective 2 we can see that John thinks there is some efficiency gain in the sale and purchase case management process. In reducing the take taken to process a case then John will free up more time to increase client numbers (helping meet Strategic Objective 1) and/or provide John with spare time to focus on other areas of the business. If defined correctly Strategic Objectives are amazing things that give the whole business direction. Every project on the change programme must link to one or more of the strategic objectives or should not
From Cells to Intelligent Life – Business Entities What are these business entities you speak of? Well, these Business Entities’ are things that describe the key groups of information that a business requires to operate. BE’s are nouns and should be tangibles that exist. Many businesses have an illusion that they are unique or different to other businesses in their field and hence when asked to describe the inner workings of their business they make up terms and use corporate lingo to talk about their operations. It is up to the analyst to define common best practice terms when modeling the entities of the business – but feel free to use business context aliases in the description to keep the corporate junkies happy. To help understand what these business entities are – let’s look at a few examples: For each example, I will outline a two-sentence description of t he business and then list the business entities as I see them. Joes’ Car Tires sell tires they import from various manufacturers. They have 10 stores they own and operate nationwide. The main business entities of Joe’s Car Tires are the physical things that make up the business at the highest level. In this case: Customers, Manufactures, Staff, Sales, Tiers (Products), Importers, Stores Is that it? Well, if you think you can use the business entities above to store all information about the business, use them to describe the business operations and model all processes against that, yes you are close. Do you get it right all the time? No but take a good stab and go with what you’ve got as you can always add to the list during the modeling process. Now let’s look at a school. Hill High has 50 staff and 500 students and operators in one location. There are no fees to study at Hill High. So, what are the business entities? In this case: Students, Teachers, Subjects, Classes, Rooms, Timetable, Ministry of Education There are a lot of things that could be added to a list that a school may have but primarily the things above can be used to describe the inner workings of any school. Finally, with Just Law we can describe the elements of this one-man lawyer business like this: Client, Case, Lawyer, Fees, Service The trick to business entity modeling is to keep it simple! These are the foundations of the business and everyone in the business should be able to understand what you model. Ok we now have some business entities. What is next? And why are these so important? The next step is relating everything we model to these BE’s. This will help with consistency, verification and will be the core connection between the technical work and the business work. Let’s take Customer from Joe’s Car Tires: The Customer relates to some of the other entities directly and all the others in-directly. Customer visits a Store Customer chooses tires/project Customer buys/store Sales the Tiers/Product Describing the relationship between the core customer related BE’s above can help paint the base use stories. There may be several additional processes in the customer sale scenarios however the relationship between the BE’s have captured the essence of the customer sales process and more importantly describe the customer sales process for all product based sales companies. Why is it important to relate Joe’s Car Tires to other Sales companies? Well if we can have a consistent model we can start to identify what is common to every sales business and what is unique to that business.
Business Context and Environment Working as a contract business analyst for many years now, I have seen my fair share of different size and shaped businesses. As much as I think I have seen it all before there is always something that surprises me when I start working for a new client. Luckily one of the key skills of any Business Analyst is to land on 2 feet no matter what is thrown at them. When I used to interview staff at one of the most “flexible” companies I ever worked for, I would ask the potential business analysts the following question – If you walked into a scoping workshop and asked the sponsor what the objective of their new project was and they answered “Awesome Invoicing” – what would you do? The most common answer I received from skilful applicants was that they would start to work through the current state and ask what would need to happen to make their current invoice an awesome invoice (future state) – i.e. defining awesome. Unfortunately, this situation happened to me on my first day at a new company and no matter what angle I tried or technique I pulled out from my business analysis hat, the best response I was ever going to get from this person was variations of the word “awesome”. A few weeks later I found out the sponsor of the project had previously worked with a large consulting firm who had analysed and predicted huge savings if invoicing was made awesome. The only issue with this report was we now knew what the problems were and how much they were costing the business but had no idea of what the detailed current state was and no analysis or design to resolve these issues. In addition to this piece of business context, I also found out later that this sponsor didn’t think there was any value in going over what they wanted again with a new BA (I had replaced a previous staff member) and all they wanted to do was go straight into talking about delivery. It was clear to me, being the most experienced BA in the company, that business did not know what BA’s did and how they could help. Secondly, being a team in IT meant that whatever method we tried we were allocated once a project started to implement a solution – not defining the outcomes or upfront requirements. Knowing the personalities, environment, financial position and culture of the business you are working for is vital if you wish to gain understanding and insight into the enterprise. This can be vital to maintaining your own existence on a piece of work or at least your integrity. Understanding the specific business context is not mandatory initially but can speed up your analysis and help you gain the respect of the business users you are going to be working with. When first assigned to a specific piece of work it is important to know how your cog affects the machine. We as Business Analysts exist to facilitate, analyse, elicit and translate requirements into solutions but I equally think we are organisms of the enterprise that need to appreciate how our future state changes impact other projects and the business environment not just within our project scope. If we are to do this effectively, we need to define our requirements using the building boxes of any business – in the next blog post we will talk about business entities!
