Unit-2

Business Analysis: Planning, Collaboration and

Life Cycle Management

Contents:
1. Business Analysis Planning and
Monitoring
a. Plan Business Analysis Approach
b. Plan Stakeholder Engagement
c. Plan Business Analysis Governance
d. Plan Business Analysis Information Management
e. Identify Business Analysis Performance Improvements
2. Elicitation and Collaboration
a. Prepare for Elicitation
b. Conduct Elicitation
c. Confirm Elicitation Results
d. Communicate Business Analysis Information
e. Manage Stakeholder Collaboration

3. Requirements Life Cycle Management

a. Trace Requirements
b. Maintain Requirements
c. Prioritize Requirements
d. Assess Requirements Changes
e. Approve Requirements
1. Business Analysis Planning and Monitoring
 The Business Analysis Planning and Monitoring knowledge area includes
the following tasks:

Task What It Means (Simplified)

1. Plan Business Analysis Choose the method and plan the BA tasks, activities, and
Approach deliverables.

2. Plan Stakeholder Identify what BAs need from stakeholders, what stakeholders need
Engagement from BAs, and how to engage.

3. Plan BA Governance Define how decisions will be made, who approves what, and how
BA risks and resources are managed.

4. Plan BA Information Decide how BA info (like requirements) will be stored, shared, and
Management maintained.

5. Identify BA performance Monitor how BA work is done and find ways to improve it
Improvements continuously.

1. Business Analysis Planning and Monitoring

a. Plan Business Analysis Approach
Business analysis approaches describe

● the overall method that will be followed when performing business analysis work
on a given initiative,
● how and when tasks will be performed, and
● the deliverables that will be produced.

This business analysis approach should:

● align to the overall goals of the change,
● coordinate the business analysis tasks with the activities and deliverables of
the overall change,
● include tasks to manage any risks that could reduce the quality of business
analysis deliverables or impede task efficiency, and
● leverage approaches and select techniques and tools that have historically
worked well.
Planning Approaches
1. Predictive Approach
2. Adaptive Approach

The timing of business analysis activities can also be affected by:

● the availability of resources,
● priority and/or urgency of the initiative,
● other concurrent initiatives, or
● constraints such as contract terms or regulatory deadlines.
The business analysis approach is reviewed and agreed upon by key stakeholders.
Category Technique Purpose / Use
Learn from the Lessons Learned Identify what worked or failed in previous initiatives
Past
Document Analysis Review past project docs, templates, or BA plans

Gather Input Interviews One-on-one or small group conversations to gather

insights

Surveys / Questionnaires Collect data or opinions from a larger group quickly

Workshops Collaborate in a team setting to co-create the approach

Analyze & Estimation Estimate time and effort needed for BA tasks
Estimate

Financial Analysis Understand cost impact and value delivery of each

approach

1. Business Analysis Planning and Monitoring

b. Plan Stakeholder Engagement
The purpose of Plan Stakeholder Engagement is to plan an approach for
establishing and maintaining effective working relationships with the
stakeholders.

Identifying Stakeholders
Imagine you are Building a College App. Stakeholders may include:

● Students
● Teachers
● Admin Team
● IT Staff

Sources to identify the stakeholders:

● A company’s organizational chart,

● Sponsor may also identify stakeholders.
● Shareholders, customers, and suppliers are also considered when searching for
external stakeholders

Business analysts connect stakeholders and the solution.

Tasks involved:
a. Identifying Stakeholders
b. Analyzing Stakeholder Characteristics
c. Determining Collaboration Strategies
d. Developing Communication Approaches
e. Planning for Stakeholder Risks

Analyzing Stakeholder Characteristics

● Business analysts identify stakeholder roles in order to understand where and
how the stakeholders will contribute to the initiative.
● Business analysts analyze stakeholder attitudes about:
○ business goals, objectives of the initiative, and any proposed solutions,
○ business analysis in general,
○ the level of interest in the change,
○ the sponsor,
○ team members and other stakeholders, and
○ collaboration and a team-based approach.
Decision Making Authority:
Business analysts identify the authority level a stakeholder possesses over
○ business analysis activities,
○ deliverables, and
○ changes to business analysis work.
Level of Power or Influence:
● Understanding the nature of influence and the influence structures
and channels can prove invaluable when seeking to build relationships
and trust.
● Understanding the influence and attitude each stakeholder may have
can help develop strategies.

Determining Collaboration Strategies

Effective collaboration with stakeholders is essential for maintaining their
engagement in business analysis activities. Much collaboration is
deliberate and planned, with specific activities and outcomes determined
ahead of time during planning activities.
Some considerations when planning collaboration include:
• timing and frequency of collaboration,
• location,
• available tools such as wikis and online communities,
• delivery method such as in-person or virtual, and
• preferences of the stakeholders.

Developing Communication Approaches

The business analyst evaluates:
● what needs to be communicated,
● what is the appropriate delivery method (written or verbal),
 ● who the appropriate audience is,
● when communication should occur,
● frequency of communication,
● geographic location of stakeholders who will receive communications,
● level of detail appropriate for the communication and stakeholder, and
● level of formality of communications.

1. Business Analysis Planning and Monitoring

C. Plan Business Analysis Governance
● Business analysts ensure that a governance process is in place and
clarify any ambiguities within it.
● A governance process identifies
○ the decision makers,
○ process, and
○ information required for decisions to be made.
● A governance process describes how approvals and prioritization
decisions are made for requirements and designs.
When planning the governance approach, business analysts identify:
● how business analysis work will be approached and prioritized,
● what the process for proposing a change to business analysis
information is,
● who has the authority and responsibility to propose changes and
who should be involved in the change discussions,
● who has responsibility for analyzing change requests,
● who has the authority to approve changes, and
● how changes will be documented and communicated.
Key tasks:
1. Decision Making
2. Change Control Process
3. Plan Prioritization Approach
4. Plan for Approvals
5. Decision Making:
Some key stakeholders holds final decision-making authority.
A stakeholder may serve in various roles in the decision-making process such as:

● participant in decision-making discussions,

● subject matter expert (SME) lending experience and knowledge to
the decision-making process,
● Reviewer of information, and
● approver of decisions.

2. Change Control Process:This process details the steps for proposing a

change, when changes can be proposed, who can propose changes and how change requests
are communicated.
 When business analysts develop a change control process,
they:
● Determine the process for requesting changes
● Determine the elements of the change request
● Determine how changes will be documented
● Determine how changes will be communicated
● Determine who will perform the impact analysis
● Determine who will authorize changes

2. Change Control Process: Determine the elements of the change request:

● Cost and time estimates
● Benefits
● Risks
● Priority
● Course(s) of action
● Determine how changes will be prioritized

3. Plan Prioritization Approach

● Timelines, expected value, dependencies, resource constraints, adopted
methodologies, and other factors influence how requirements and designs
are prioritized.
● The approach should also determine which stakeholders will have a role in
prioritization.

4. Plan for Approvals: An approval formalizes the agreement between all

stakeholders that the content and presentation of the requirements and designs
are accurate, adequate, and contain sufficient detail to allow for continued
progress to be made.

1. Business Analysis Planning and Monitoring

D. Plan Business Analysis Information
Management
It is to develop an approach for how business analysis information will be stored and
accessed.
 Information management involves identifying:

● how information should be organized,

● the level of detail at which information should be captured,
● any relationships between the information,
● how information may be used across multiple initiatives and throughout the
enterprise,
● how information should be accessed and stored, and
● characteristics about the information that must be maintained.

Factor What It Means

Type & Amount of Will it be diagrams, documents, user stories, spreadsheets? How
Information
much of it?
Stakeholder Needs Who needs to access this info? How will they use it?
Size & Complexity of Is this a small update or a large transformation? More
the Change
complexity needs better structure.
Relationships Between How does one piece of information connect to another? E.g., a
Information
change in one requirement may impact others.
1. Business Analysis Planning and Monitoring
E. Identify Business Analysis Performance Improvements
Purpose:
To assess business analysis work and to plan to improve processes where
required.
To monitor and improve performance, it is necessary to
● establish the performance measures,
● conduct the performance analysis,
● report on the results of the analysis, and
● identify any necessary preventive, corrective, or developmental
actions.

Some Performance Measures

● Accuracy and Completeness (The work of business analyst is correct and
relevant or whether ongoing revisions were needed to gain acceptance by
stakeholders.)
● Knowledge (skills and experience of the Business Analyst)
● Effectiveness (clarity and usability of work products)
● Organizational Support (availability of resources)
● Significance (value vs. cost/time/effort)
 ● Strategic Alignment (did it meet business goals?)
● Timeliness (was it delivered on time?)
The business analysis process and deliverables are compared against the set of defined
measures.

Recommend Actions for Improvement:

1. Preventive: reduces the probability of an event with a negative impact.

2. Corrective: establishes ways to reduce the negative impact of an event.
3. Improvement: establishes ways to increase the probability or impact of
events with a positive impact.

2. Elicitation and Collaboration

a. Prepare for Elicitation
b. Conduct Elicitation
c. Confirm Elicitation Results
d. Communicate Business Analysis Information
e. Manage Stakeholder Collaboration
Elicitation is the drawing forth or receiving of information
from stakeholders or other sources.

Elicitation might involve

Collaboration is the act of two or more people working

together towards a common goal.
 ● The Elicitation and Collaboration knowledge area
describes how business analysts identify and reach
agreement on the mutual understanding of all types of
business analysis information.
● Elicitation and collaboration work is never a 'phase' in
business analysis; rather, it is ongoing as long as
business analysis work is occurring.
Key Task Description

Prepare for Elicitation Ensure stakeholders have the needed information and understand
the activities. Prepare sources or experiments.

Conduct Elicitation Understand stakeholder needs and identify potential solutions

through interaction, research, or experiments.

Confirm Elicitation Ensure shared understanding, accurate records, and complete

Results information. Check for inconsistencies or gaps.

Communicate Business Provide information in a useful format using correct terminology

Analysis Information and timing.

Manage Stakeholder Engage stakeholders in the BA process and support delivery of

Collaboration needed outcomes.
●
2. Elicitation and Collaboration
a. Prepare for Elicitation
Defining the Desired Outcomes, considering the stakeholders involved and the goals
of the initiative

● What are you trying to achieve?

● Who’s involved? What are their roles and expectations?
● Make sure elicitation supports the broader business goals.

It includes:

Identifying Work Products using elicitation results?(e.g., user stories, models)

Deciding which techniques are best suited to produce those results, (e.g., interviews,
workshops, observations).
Establishing Logistics( Set time, place, tools, and platforms for the session.)
Identifying any Supporting Materials Needed (Bring any documents, templates, or
reference content needed.)
Understanding circumstances to foster collaboration during an elicitation activity.

B. Conduct Elicitation
The purpose of Conduct Elicitation is to draw out, explore, and identify information relevant to
the change.

There are three common types of elicitation:

● Collaborative: involves direct interaction with stakeholders, and relies on their
experiences, expertise, and judgment.
● Research: involves systematically discovering and studying information from
materials or sources that are not directly known by stakeholders involved in the
change. Research can include data analysis of historical data to identify trends or past
results.
● Experiments: involves identifying information that could not be known without some
sort of controlled test. Some information cannot be drawn from people or
documents—because it is unknown. Experiments can help discover this kind of
information. Experiments include observational studies, proofs of concept, and
prototypes.
One or more elicitation techniques may be used to produce the desired outcome within the scope
of elicitation.

C. Confirm Elicitation Results

The purpose of Confirm Elicitation Results is to check the information gathered during an
elicitation session for accuracy and consistency with other information.

Confirming the Elicited information:

● Discovering any problems (errors, omissions, conflicts, and ambiguity) in Elicited
information.
● The elicitation results can be compared against their source and other elicitation results
to ensure consistency.
● Collaboration with stakeholders might be necessary to ensure their inputs are correctly
captured and that they agree with the results of non-facilitated elicitation. If
information is not correct, the business analyst determines what is correct, which can
require more elicitation.
To resolve the problems before resources are committed to using the information.

D. Communicate Business Analysis Information

● The purpose of Communicate Business Analysis Information is to ensure
stakeholders have a shared understanding of business analysis information.
● Business analysts must communicate appropriate information to stakeholders at
the right time and in formats that meet their needs.
● Communication of business analysis information is bi-directional and iterative
 ● Communicating information does not simply involve pushing information out and
assuming it was received and understood. Business analysts engage stakeholders
to ensure they understand the information and gain agreement.
● The business analyst acts on any disagreements.

Business analysis information packages may be prepared;

Possible forms for packages may include:
● Formal Documentation: is usually based on a template used by the
organization and may include text, matrices, or diagrams. It provides a
stable, easy to use, long-term record of the information.
● Informal Documentation: may include text, diagrams, or matrices that are
used during a change but are not part of a formal organizational process.
● Presentations: deliver a high-level overview appropriate for understanding
goals of a change, functions of a solution, or information to support decision
making.
Selecting the appropriate communication platform is also important. Common
communication platforms include:
● Group collaboration
● Individual collaboration
● E-mail or other non-verbal methods
E. Manage Stakeholder Collaboration
● The purpose of Manage Stakeholder Collaboration is to encourage stakeholders to
work towards a common goal.
● Identification of stakeholders, Determining their role, influence, and relationship
to the Initiative.
● Business analysts manage stakeholder collaboration to capitalize on positive
reactions, and mitigate or avoid negative reactions. The business analyst should
constantly monitor and assess each stakeholder’s attitude to determine if it might
affect their involvement in the business analysis activities.

Gain Agreement on Commitments: Stakeholders participate in business analysis activities

that may require time and resource commitments. The business analyst and stakeholders
identify and agree upon these commitments as early in the initiative as possible.

Monitor Stakeholder Engagement: Business analysts monitor the participation and

performance of stakeholders
3. Requirements Life Cycle Management
a. Trace Requirements
b. Maintain Requirements
c. Prioritize Requirements
d. Assess Requirements Changes
e. Approve Requirements
The Requirements Life Cycle Management knowledge area describes the tasks that
business analysts perform in order to manage and maintain requirements and design
information from inception to retirement.

● Tasks Included:
○ establishing meaningful relationships between related requirements and
designs
○ assessing changes to requirements and designs when changes are proposed,
and
○ analyzing and gaining consensus on changes.

● The purpose of requirements life cycle management is to ensure that business,

stakeholder, and solution requirements and designs are aligned to one another and
that the solution implements them.
● Requirements are focused on the need; designs are focused on the solution.
● The distinction between requirements and designs is not always clear.
● A requirement leads to a design which in turn may drive the discovery and
analysis of more requirements.

Life cycle refers to the existence of various phases or states that requirements pass
through as part of any change. Requirements may be in multiple states at one time.

The requirements life cycle:

● begins with the representation of a business need as a requirement,
● continues through the development of a solution, and
● ends when a solution and the requirements that represent it are retired.
The management of requirements does not end once a solution is implemented.
Throughout the life of a solution, requirements continue to provide value when they are
managed appropriately.
3. Requirements Life Cycle Management

a. Trace Requirements
Requirements Traceability
Requirements traceability means tracking each requirement’s origin and how it
connects to other parts of the solution.
It includes:

● Backward traceability (where it came from)

● Forward traceability (where it leads to)
● Relationships to other requirements

Why Traceability Is Important:

● Ensures the solution matches the requirements
● Supports scope, change, risk, time, cost, and communication management
● Helps find missing or extra functionality

Requirements Traceability
Traceability enables:
● faster and simpler impact analysis,
● more reliable discovery of inconsistencies and gaps in requirements,
● deeper insights into the scope and complexity of a change, and
● reliable assessment of which requirements have been addressed and
which have not.
Example: Software Requirements Traceability
Relationships
There are several types of relationships that the business analyst considers when
defining the traceability approach:
● Derive: relationship between two requirements, used when a requirement is
derived from another requirement. This type of relationship is appropriate to
link the requirements on different levels of abstraction. For example, a
solution requirement derived from a business or a stakeholder requirement.
● Depends: relationship between two requirements, used when a requirement
depends on another requirement. Types of dependency relationships include:
○ Necessity: when it only makes sense to implement a particular
requirement if a related requirement is also implemented.
○ Effort: when a requirement is easier to implement if a related
requirement is also implemented.
● Satisfy: relationship between an implementation element and the
requirements it is satisfying. For example, the relationship between a
functional requirement and a solution component that is implementingit.
● Validate: relationship between a requirement and a test case or other element
that can determine whether a solution fulfills the requirement.
Outputs:
● Requirements (traced) & Designs (traced): have clearly defined
relationships to other requirements, solution components, or releases, phases,
or iterations, within a solution scope, such that coverage and the effects of
change are clearly identifiable.

3. Requirements Life Cycle Management

B. Maintain Requirements
A requirement that represents an ongoing need must be maintained to ensure that it
remains valid over time.
In order to maximize the benefits of maintaining and reusing requirements, the
requirements should be:
● consistently represented,
● reviewed and approved for maintenance using a standardized process that defines
proper access rights and ensures quality, and
● easily accessible and understandable.
3. Requirements Life Cycle Management
C. Prioritize Requirements
The purpose of Prioritize Requirements is to rank requirements in the order
of relative importance.

● Prioritization is the act of ranking requirements to determine their relative

importance to stakeholders. When a requirement is prioritized, it is given
greater or lesser priority.
● Priority can refer to the relative value of a requirement, or to the sequence in
which it will be implemented.
● Prioritization is an ongoing process, with priorities changing as the context
changes.
● Inter-dependencies between requirements are identified and may be used as
the basis for prioritization.
● Prioritization is a critical exercise that seeks to ensure the maximum value is
achieved.
Typical factors that influence prioritization include:
● Benefit
● Penalty
● Cost
● Risk
● Dependencies
● Time Sensitivity
● Stability
● Regulatory or Policy Compliance

3. Requirements Life Cycle Management

D. Assess Requirements Changes
● The purpose of Assess Requirements Changes is to evaluate the implications
of proposed changes to requirements and designs.
● The Assess Requirements Changes task is performed as new needs or
possible solutions are identified. These may or may not align to the change
strategy and/ or solution scope.
● Assessment must be performed to determine whether a proposed change will
increase the value of the solution, and if so, what action should be taken.
● Business analysts assess the potential effect of the change to solution value,
and whether proposed changes introduce conflicts with other requirements or
increase the level of risk.
● Business analysts also ensure each proposed change can be traced back to a
need.
When assessing changes, business analysts consider if each proposed change:
● aligns with the overall strategy,
● affects value delivered to the business or stakeholder groups,
● impacts the time to deliver or the resources required to deliver the
value, and
● alters any risks, opportunities, or constraints associated with the
overall initiative.
3. Requirements Life Cycle Management
E. Approve Requirements
The purpose of Approve Requirements is to obtain agreement on and approval of
requirements and designs for business analysis work to continue and/or solution
construction to proceed.
● Business analysts are responsible for ensuring clear communication of
requirements, designs, and other business analysis information to the key
stakeholders responsible for approving that information.
● Approval of requirements and designs may be formal or informal.
○ Predictive approaches typically perform approvals at the end of the
phase or during planned change control meetings.
○ Adaptive approaches typically approve requirements only when
construction and implementation of a solution meeting the
requirement can begin.
● Business analysts work with key stakeholders to gain consensus on new and
changed requirements, communicate the outcome of discussions, and track
and manage the approval.