Business Analysis – Overview

I have found that there are a broad number of approaches to Business Analysis at both a Strategic and Tactical level. Unfortunately, they often seem to be mis-applied and project’s tend to go into analysis paralysis. Some initial thoughts for discussion:

Strategic Business Analysis

This is high-level analysis that should identify problems and opportunities at the strategic business level. We should be looking at Business Modelling techniques to give us a holistic view of the entire business. The key objective is to produce and prioritize outline business cases that will ultimately lead to transformation projects. We only need a high-level analysis to do this. Our intent is to construct a context and governance framework for decision making and the execution of strategy. Order of magnitude estimates are generally sufficient to establish relative priorities. The common mistake is to try to analyze everything to the same level of detail – this results in paralysis of the entire business. No projects get started, or priorities are constantly shifting resulting in no project actually being completed.

Tactical Business Analysis

This is a more detailed analysis step that should be used after a business case has been accepted and a specific transformation project initiated. The purpose of this analysis is to clearly define the scope, business need and requirements of the project. Some examples of practical techniques include:

• Building a glossary of Business/IT terms
• Developing a conceptual models
• Developing Business Scenarios
• Outlining Business Processes, Rules and Requirements

The common mistakes are:

• Over analyze everything to the point where the design of the solution is over constrained and utlimately compromised. This typically leads to project paralysis, cost overruns and poorly executed solutions.
• Overly rigid adherence to a waterfall SDLC where the Requirements Analysis must be signed off before work starts on design and implementation. This typically leads to long duration projects with expensive change cycles as users realize what they asked for 6 months ago isn’t really what they want when they see it in user testing.

Some questions we might consider:

1. How do we draw the line between Strategic and Tactical Analysis?
2. How do we decide we have enough information?
3. What are the most effective analysis techniques in different project scenarios?

Business Modelling – Overview

Starting from the top – it is useful to understand the business model of the organization. Why are they in business and how do they add value for their customers. Some approaches that have worked for me in the past are:

1. Variation of the Porter five forces approach: Competitors, Suppliers, Replacements, Customers and Regulatory. Gives you a good overview of where the organization is today and can help you identify problems and opportunities within the overall market place.
2. High-level value chain analysis of the top 5-10 business activities can also tell you a lot about how the organization approaches its operations. A good way to quickly identify the problems and opportunities at the highest level of operational delivery within the business.
3. Top-down organizational structure and capability analysis provides insight into how the organization works and the barriers it has erected internally to operational efficiency. This type of analysis gives you a quick way to identify areas that need to be strengthened and barriers to efficiency that need to be overcome.

These initial business modelling approaches can be done in a few half day workshops with senior business and IT executives. They help to build overall consensus on the need for change and the direction it should take. This helps to prioritize what needs to be done and helps you scope and schedule the projects you will need to undertake to effect change.