What is Business Analysis?

Business Analyse – enabling change in companies

The International Institute of Business Analysis (IIBA) defines in the Business Analysis Guide – the so-called BABOK – business analysis as an activity to facilitate change in a company by defining the company’s needs and recommending solutions that add value to stakeholders. This definition addresses strategic and operational activities of business analysis. Strategic activities include:

• identify information and understand business,
• analyse and define demand,
• identify and evaluate solutions.

Operational activities in business analysis include:

• define requirements and
• implement change.

Business Analysis Process Model

In combination with strategic and operational activities, we often speak of a business analysis process model in which a go- or no-go decision must be made according to the strategic aspects of the analysis. In this context, reference is often made to the skill model of the “T-shaped business analyst”, who should have a broad knowledge in various areas such as IT, processes or organisations in order to keep an eye on the corporate strategy as a whole. In addition, however, in-depth knowledge is also required for special areas of application so that, for example, concrete IT processes can also be optimised.

Knowledge areas in business analysis

The BABOK defines 6 knowledge areas. They define tasks to be performed and techniques that explain how the tasks are to be carried out. A business analyst should have defined competences and be able to adopt different perspectives.

The following knowledge areas exist:

• Planning and monitoring business analysis,
• elicitation and collaboration,
• strategy analysis,
• requirements analysis and design definition,
• requirements lifecycle management and
• solution evaluation.

Perspectives in Business Analysis

There are many tasks involved in business analysis. According to BABOK, certain perspectives are suitable for narrowing down these tasks:

• Business Intelligence perspective with emphasis on data collection, data modelling and data reporting.
• Information technology perspective with a focus on development and requirements gathering.
• Business architecture perspective with a spotlight on governance and structure of the organisation and key business processes.
• Business process management perspective with a view to analysis, design and modelling of business processes.
• Agile perspective with attention to planning, analysis, implementation and testing of changes.

Business Analysis in practice

Here you will find some English and German articles dealing with business analysis in practice:

• The critical role of Business Analysis in becoming a data-driven organization – free download at IIBA.
• Die Arbeit der Business Analysten – article at it-daily.net.
• Business Analysis or Business Analyst — what’s needed in the Scrum Team – Article by Naveen Kumar Singh at Scrum.org.
• Die 6 Einsatzgebiete für Business-Analysten – Article by Peter Gerstbach at Gerstbach Business Analyse.
• Backlog refinement – How I learned to love agile business analysis – Article by Duncan Evans at Scrum.org.

We would be happy to add more interesting articles to the list.