Business Analysis Foundations

Map enterprise analysis by defining business goals and vision, and analyzing business need to realize value. Assess capability gaps, feasibility, and learning curves, then define the solution scope and requirements.

Assess the depth and rigor of analysis by weighing risk, uncertainty, probability, and impact. Consider project size, complexity, change, dependencies, and the domains of scope, resources, and stakeholders.

Define the business need by clarifying tangible and intangible aspects and bottlenecks. Assess ripple effects, Kaizen-style changes, and stakeholder impact to frame scoped enterprise analysis.

Identify capability gaps, assess in-house skills, time, and cost, and decide on training, build vs. buy, and vendor partnerships to determine feasibility and return on investment.

Feasibility analysis assesses whether the proposed solution is viable by examining finances, technical and skill capabilities, risks, and alignment with policies, IT landscape, and business value.

Define solution scope, map current to future state with a business case, capture boundaries; assess risks of implementing or not, and outline deliverables, assumptions, constraints, and work breakdown structure.

Wraps up enterprise analysis by tying together business goals, vision, and the work breakdown structure, while outlining feasibility, solution scope, and the definition of done toward the desired future state.

Explores planning and monitoring across business analysis activities to ensure deliverables and implementation meet customer and end-user needs and the solution, and covers stakeholder roles, communication requirements, and change control.

Identify and align deliverables with stakeholders using organizational frameworks, distinguishing product outputs from plans and reports, and define requirements with the PM and BA mapped to the WBS.

Explore plan-driven and agile approaches to requirement gathering, detailing predictive upfront documentation and risk control, versus iterative sprint planning, daily standups, backlog management, reviews, and retrospectives.

Clarify roles and responsibilities in a project team using a RACI chart and responsibility assignment matrix, mapping activities to executives, analysts, developers, QA, architects, end users, and stakeholders.

Identify and analyze stakeholders early. Build a stakeholder registry and plan engagement through interviews and questionnaires to clarify roles, influence, and ownership.

Define the business analysis deliverables and scope, including feasibility studies, case studies, or recommendations, and plan time and cost estimates, elicitation, and stakeholder communications.

Map stakeholders with a power-interest grid and salience model to guide engagement strategies. Assess influence by org position upwards, downwards, outwards, sideways, and apply an onion diagram to prioritize communication.

Plan communication by identifying stakeholder needs—from sponsors and executives to users, designers, developers, and testers—then tailor level of detail, formality, and version control, and manage requirement approvals, changes, and traceability.

Learn how to manage change in both predictive and agile environments by applying threshold-based approvals, change requests, and integrated change control to assess scope, cost, schedule, and risk.

Explore how business analysts plan and monitor requirements across predictive and agile methods, define deliverables, elicit requirements, manage stakeholder communications and privacy, and handle change.

Define elicitation and explore common techniques used by business analysts. Identify stakeholders to elicit project requirements, apply elicitation tools, compare agile versus predictive requirements, and manage requirement types.

Elicit requirements from stakeholders through questions and observation to define the current state and desired future state, ensuring quality and conformance throughout an agile project.

Explore common elicitation techniques such as brainstorming with a three-segment approach, document analysis with validation by subject matter experts, focus groups with tailored participants, and interface analysis of system interactions.

In business analysis foundations, develop stakeholder interview skills—one-to-one, one-to-many, and many-to-many—and use open and closed questions, observation, and workshops to populate the stakeholder register and elicit requirements.

Learn elicitation strategies using throwaway and functional prototypes, storyboarding, and diagrams: context diagrams, affinity diagrams, mind maps, and the nominal group technique—to visualize, organize, and prioritize requirements.

Learn how agile requirements are gathered by writing user stories from the customer perspective, prioritizing in the product backlog, and applying the three Cs, definition of done, and invest.

Explore six requirement types—from business to quality—and learn to plan, trace, and manage requirements with a requirements traceability matrix (RTM) that links requirements to scope, objectives, and testing.

Elicit and manage requirements by defining elicitation, applying interviews, workshops, and focus groups, and engaging stakeholders through identification, job shadowing, and agile user stories for functional and non-functional needs.

explore requirement solicitation, analyze and model requirements with data models, including non-functional requirements, assess risk, and ensure quality through verification, validation, and delivering the requirements package.

Analyze stakeholders and solution requirements to ensure cohesive, functional and non-functional options aligned with the organization’s vision, using MoSCoW and risk-aware trade-offs.

Identify pure risks and business risks, then assess their probability and impact. Apply qualitative and quantitative analysis with bubble charts, sensitivity analysis, and tornado diagrams to prioritize risks for requirements.

Apply business rules and model requirements to write clear, consistent requirements in active voice. Draw use case diagrams showing system, actors, and actions like search, add to cart, pay, deliver.

Explore data models as the structure of data, and visualize how data flows from data in to data out with arrows showing the flow through a system.

Define and document non-functional requirements, including performance, privacy and security, quality, and safety, and model how these criteria affect reliability, usability, maintainability, scalability, and portability.

Verify requirements for correctness and detail to enable the project team to build the solution with quality, and validate alignment with the business model and customer needs using RTM.

Delivering the requirements package clarifies and documents gathered requirements, presents alternatives with pros and cons in easily shared formats, and secures stakeholder approval to guide design, contracts, and project decisions.

Finish the course by consolidating requirements analysis, risk assessment, modeling techniques, and data modeling; emphasize non-functional requirements, verification, validation, and defining quality up front for stakeholder communication.

Master the big picture of business analysis, from enterprise analysis and stakeholder communication to feasibility, capability gaps, elicitation, non-functional requirements, and traceability.

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