Basic Summary:

• "This practice guide is intended for anyone who is performing business analysis work whether they hold the title of business analyst or not. This practice guide was developed to help practitioners obtain improvements in overall competency levels and in the application of business analysis on programs and projects."
• This book is designed to provide all the essential knowledge to perform Business Analysis on programs and projects, across the categories of Product, Service, or Process improvement.
• The deliverables of Business Analysis can be broken into (1) Programs and (2) Projects.
• The operational environment for Business Analysis is often chunked up into (1) Products, (2) Services, and (3) Processes.
• "Confusion also exists because there are inconsistent definitions and use of the role across industries, organizations, and departments within the same organization."

Highlights from Book:

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Business Analysis takes the form of 5 important steps:

1. Needs Assessment

• * "A needs assessment consists of the business analysis work that is conducted in order to analyze a current business problem or opportunity. It is used to assess the current internal and external environments and current capabilities of the organization in order to determine the viable solution options that, when pursued, would help the organization meet the desired future state."

A Business Case is often made up of the following elements:

1. Problem / Opportunity
2. Situation Analysis
3. Recommendation
4. Evaluation

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2. Business Analysis Planning

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3. Requirements Elicitation and Analysis

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4. Traceability and Monitoring

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5. Solution Evaluation

• "Evaluation consists of Business Analysis activities performed to validate a full solution - or a segment of a solution - that is about to be or has already been implemented. Evaluation determines how well a solution meets the business needs expressed by stakeholders, including delivering value to the customer."
• "Solution evaluation provides the ability to assess whether or not a solution has achieved the desired business result. Evaluation provides input to go / no business and technical decisions when releasing an entire solution or segment of it."

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Good solution evaluations meet some general principles:

1. Evaluate early and often
2. Treat requirements analysis, traceability, testing, and evaluation as complementary activities
3. Evaluate with context of usage and value in mind
4. Confirm expected values for software solutions

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