Study notes · 159 notes in 10 topics
Business Analysis Notes
Practical study notes on business analysis. Each page explains one idea, technique or document, shows how to use it at work, and lists the original books and standards it is based on.
The notes follow the structure of the BABOK® Guide and extend it with classic works on requirements, processes, systems thinking and interaction design.
Where to start
If you are new to business analysis, follow this route:
- The core vocabulary. The BACCM, requirements classification, requirements vs. designs and stakeholder roles.
- The six knowledge areas, roughly in the order an initiative uses them: Planning and Monitoring → Elicitation and Collaboration → Strategy Analysis → Requirements Analysis and Design Definition → Solution Evaluation. Requirements Life Cycle Management runs alongside all of them.
- How the work gets done: underlying competencies and the 50 techniques.
- Adapting to context: BABOK perspectives for agile, BI, IT, business architecture and BPM work.
Topics
Basics
The role, the vocabulary, and how the BABOK Guide is organized.
6 notesKnowledge areas
What each area is for and which tasks it contains.
50 notesTechniques
All 50 BABOK techniques, each with steps, an example, common mistakes and a checklist.
40 notesRequirements engineering
Levels and types, writing, documents and templates, traceability, change, project types.
5 notesStrategy
Strategic analysis, business cases, soft systems, business models, change management.
6 notesBusiness processes
Process modelling, BPM, process roles, improvement tools, maturity models.
16 notesSystems thinking
Applied systems analysis, goals and criteria, choice, feedback loops and archetypes.
14 notesUX for analysts
Interaction design ideas for people who write requirements and review interfaces.
3 notesData management
The DAMA framework, data governance, data quality.
3 notesCase studies
How the techniques play out on real initiatives.
If you need something for work today
- Preparing to talk to stakeholders: Interviews, Workshops, Observation.
- Writing requirements: How to write good requirements, User stories, Use cases and scenarios, Acceptance and evaluation criteria.
- Deciding what comes first: Prioritization, Prioritizing requirements in practice.
- Modelling: Process modelling, Scope modelling, Data modelling, Decision modelling.
- Justifying a change: Business cases, Building a business case.
- Finding the real problem: Root cause analysis, Problem analysis.
The running example
Many pages use the same fictional case so you can see techniques connect: the Workshop, a regional chain of 12 bike-repair workshops that wants online booking, repair-status notifications and better spare-parts ordering. The company and all numbers in its examples are invented.
Main sources
Every page names the originals it is based on. The most used are:
- IIBA. A Guide to the Business Analysis Body of Knowledge (BABOK® Guide), v3. 2015.
- K. Wiegers, J. Beatty. Software Requirements, 3rd ed. Microsoft Press, 2013.
- D. Paul, D. Yeates, J. Cadle (eds.). Business Analysis, 2nd ed. BCS, 2010.
- D. Leffingwell, D. Widrig. Managing Software Requirements: A Unified Approach. Addison-Wesley, 2000.
- A. Cockburn. Writing Effective Use Cases. Addison-Wesley, 2000.
- A. Cooper. The Inmates Are Running the Asylum. Sams, 1999; A. Cooper, R. Reimann, D. Cronin. About Face 3. Wiley, 2007.
- P. Senge. The Fifth Discipline. Doubleday, 1990.
See About this site for how the notes are written.