In this KnowledgeKnugget™ you will learn what business analysis entails and what challenges you will face. This KK also introduces three different flavors: Strategic, Tactical and Operational Business Analysis.

Who Needs Business Analysis Skills?

Business analysis is the business process of assessing an organization’s structure, processes, technology, and capabilities to identify and define solutions to roadblocks that impede the achievement of organizational goals. It enables adaptation in an ever-changing business and regulatory environment to allow the organization to grow in the manner defined by management.

Although an expanding cadre of “Business Analysts” exists, business analysis is often performed by people with job titles such as “Product Owner”, “CEO”, “Developer”, “Product Manager”, “Project Manager”, SME and many others. The key to ensuring that business analysis is a positive force for change is that people doing it have the appropriate skills and techniques to do it well. Whether those individuals have the title “Business Analyst” is a question of the organizational structure, as bestowing the title does not inherently ensure the quality of the outcome.

Identify Problems/Opportunities and Define Requirements

“So, what does business analysis entail?” It encompasses all activities necessary to study the entire organization or a specific unit thereof to identify business problems and define suitable solutions, often involving an Information Technology (IT) component. To put it differently, business analysis is all about doing whatever it takes to elicit, discover, capture, gather, draw forth, trawl for, flush out, or get requirements for the solution by any means possible implying that requirements are not just lying around waiting to be picked up but require significant effort to help the business community figure out what they need and want. Does that not sound simple?

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