Business analysis helps an organization to
improve how it conducts its functions and
activities in order to reduce overall costs,
provide more efficient use of resources, and
better support customers. It introduces the
notion of process orientation, of concentrating
on and rethinking end-to-end activities that
create value for customers, while removing
unnecessary, non-value added work. The person
who carries out this task is called a business
analyst or BA.
Those BAs who work solely on developing software
systems may be called IT Business Analysts or
Technical Business Analysts.
Business analysis, as a discipline, has a heavy
overlap with requirements analysis, but focuses
on identifying requirements in the context of
helping organizations to achieve strategic goals
through internal changes to organizational
capabilities, including changes to policies,
processes, and information systems.
Some professional business analysts believe that
business analysis can be broken down into six
major knowledge areas:
Enterprise analysis focuses on understanding the
needs of the business as a whole, its strategic
direction, and identifying initiatives that will
allow a business to meet those strategic goals.
Requirements planning and management involves
planning the requirements development process,
determining which requirements are the highest
priority for implementation, and managing
change.
Requirements elicitation describes techniques
for collecting requirements from stakeholders in
a project.
Requirements analysis describes how to develop
and specify requirements in enough detail to
allow them to be successfully implemented by a
project team.
Requirements communication describes techniques
for ensuring that stakeholders have a shared
understanding of the requirements and how they
will be implemented.
Solution assessment and validation describes how
the business analyst can verify the correctness
of a proposed solution, how to support the
implementation of a solution, and how to assess
possible shortcomings in the implementation.
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