Business Analysis Foundation - Self-paced

Course subjects

1. What is Business Analysis?

• The definition and purpose of Business Analysis

• The business change lifecycle

• Key principles of business analysis

• Variants of the Business Analyst role

2. The Competencies of a Business Analyst

• The concept of the T-shaped Professional

• Three key competency areas:

  • Personal qualities

  • Business knowledge

  • Professional techniques

3. The Strategic Context for Business Analysis

• The role of Business Analysis in strategic change

• Strategic analysis techniques: PESTLE, SWOT, VMOST

• Business performance measurement: CSFs and KPIs

• POPIT™ model and Business Model Canvas

4. The Business Analysis Service Framework

• Overview of the Business Analysis Service Framework (BASF)

• Key activities in the framework, including:

  • Situation investigation and problem analysis

  • Feasibility assessment and business case development

  • Business process improvement

  • Requirements definition

  • Stakeholder engagement

5. Investigating the Business Situation

• Key investigative techniques:

  • Workshops, Observation, Interviews

  • Scenarios, Prototyping, Surveys, and Questionnaires

• Diagrammatic techniques: Rich Pictures and Mind Maps

6. Analysing and Managing Stakeholders

• Stakeholder identification using the Stakeholder Wheel

• Power/Interest Grid technique for stakeholder analysis

• RACI charts for defining stakeholder responsibilities

7. Improving Business Services and Processes

• Business process hierarchy (enterprise level to actor-task level)

• Enterprise process modelling techniques: SIPOC, Value Chain Analysis, Value Propositions

• Event-response level process models and UML diagrams

• Techniques for process improvement: simplification, automation, bottleneck removal

• Customer journey mapping

8. Defining the Solution

• The gap analysis process

• Using the POPIT™ model in gap analysis

• Identifying and evaluating solution options

• Design thinking and prototyping solutions

9. Making the Business Case

• Business case lifecycle and development

• Feasibility assessment: business, technical, and financial feasibility

• Business case structure and key components

• Investment appraisal techniques: Payback, Net Present Value (NPV), Discounted Cash Flow (DCF)

10. Establishing the Requirements

• The Requirements Engineering (RE) framework

• Types of requirements: business, functional, non-functional

• Requirements elicitation techniques: interviews, workshops, document analysis

• The MoSCoW technique for requirements prioritisation

11. Documenting and Modelling Requirements

• Requirements documentation styles:

  • Text-based (Requirements Catalog, User Stories)

  • Diagrammatic (Use Case Diagrams, Class Models, Business Process Models)

• Creating and managing a Product Backlog in Agile environments

12. Validating and Managing Requirements

• Requirements validation approaches: Formal vs Agile

• Requirements traceability: horizontal and vertical alignment

• Change control processes in requirements management

13. Delivering the Requirements

• Delivery lifecycles:

  • Waterfall, V-model, Incremental, Agile

• Advantages and disadvantages of different delivery methods

14. Delivering the Business Solution

• The role of a Business Analyst in the Business Change Lifecycle

• Supporting solution design, development, and testing

• Business readiness assessment: McKinsey 7S and CPPOLDAT

• Transition and migration approaches: Big Bang, Phased, Pilot, Parallel

• Benefits realisation and tracking using Benefits Dependency Networks