What Is Business Analysis

Business analysis is an important discipline when it comes to improving your business. Business analysis can have many types and different techniques are being used by business analysts in order to perform this process.

Business analysis is defined through two kinds of disciplines. First, it means to identify the needs of the business. Second, it means to determine certain solutions to problems in business.

There can be so many solutions but usually, it includes a component of systems development. Certain common solutions also include the improvement of the business process or some changes in the business organization. Changes in the strategic planning and development of policies can also help in solving problems. Talented people who usually do the analysis are referred to as business analyst or in short term, BA. In today’s modern business, some BAs focused in working and developing software system solutions are called IT Business Analysts or simply, Systems Analyst.

Now that your basic ‘what is business analysis’ question is already answered by knowing the main disciplines, let us next discuss about the sub-disciplines in business analysis. Requirements analysis, or requirements engineering as others call it, may overlap with business analysis but only concerned about the identification of organizational changes needed to achieve goals. This may include some changes in the business structures, strategies, processes, information systems, and policies.

Here are some of the kinds of business analysis that are done by BAs:

  • Enterprise analysis – the needs of the business, its direction, strategies, and the actions in order to achieve goals are studied.
  • Requirements planning and management – the process of the requirements development are planned and then prioritized on which of them will be first implemented.
  • Requirements elicitation – the techniques for requirement collection from project stakeholders are described here.
  • Requirements analysis - development and specification of the requirements in details are being described here. This will help the project team to successfully implement them.
  • Requirements communication – the shared understanding of the stakeholders regarding the requirements are important. In this analysis, ensuring that shared understanding by having a technique is being described here.
  • Solution assessment validation – this is where the correctness of a proposed solution verification to be done by the analyst is being described

Now that you know the different kinds of business analysis that BAs perform, now here are the kinds of techniques that they do in order to successfully analyze a particular business:

  • PESTLE – this technique is used to analyze external factors that affect the business which includes Political, Economic, Sociological, Technological, Legal, and Environmental factors.
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  • MOST – On the other hand, this technique is used by BAs to analyze the internal factors that can affect the business which means Mission, Objectives, Strategies, and Tactics.
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  • SWOT – this one helps in making the BAs to focus on the attributes of the business. These factors can affect both the external and internal aspects of the company. It means Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats.

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