Business analysis

Business analysis vs project management vs systems engineering

Business analysis (also known for its abbreviation; hereinafter, BA) is the set of enterprise efforts and techniques used to work as a liaison among stakeholders in order to understand the structure, policies and operations of an enterprise, its business needs, and recommend solutions that enable the enterprise to achieve its goals.

Definitions

According to the BABOK Guide (3rd edition),

Business analysis. The practice of enabling change in the context of an enterprise by defining needs and recommending solutions that deliver value to stakeholders.

Practice

Main wikipage: Business analysis practice

Lexicon

• Activity diagram. A model that illustrates the flow of processes and/or complex use cases by showing each activity along with information flows and concurrent activities. Steps can be superimposed onto horizontal swimlanes for the roles that perform the steps.
• Activity. A unit of work performed as part of an initiative or process.
• Actor(s). The human and nonhuman roles that interact with the system.
• Analyst. A generic name for a role with the responsibilities of developing and managing requirements. Other names include business analyst, business integrator, requirements analyst, requirements engineer, and systems analyst.
• Association. A link between two elements or objects in a diagram.
• Assumption. Assumptions are influencing factors that are believed to be true but have not been confirmed to be accurate.
• Attribute. A data element with a specified data type that describes information associated with a concept or entity.
• Baseline. A point-in-time view of requirements that have been reviewed and agreed upon to serve as a basis for further development.
• Benchmarking. A comparison of a process or system's cost, time, quality, or other metrics to those of leading peer organizations to identify opportunities for improvement.
• Black box test. A test written without regard to how the software is implemented. These tests show only what the expected input and outputs will be.
• Brainstorming. Brainstorming is a team activity that seeks to produce a broad or diverse set of options through the rapid and uncritical generation of ideas.
• Business analysis. Business analysis is the set of tasks and techniques used to work as a liaison among stakeholders in order to understand the structure, policies and operations of an organization, and recommend solutions that enable the organization to achieve its goals.
• Business analysis approach. The set of processes, templates, and activities that will be used to perform business analysis in a specific context.
• Business analysis communication plan. A description of the types of communication the business analyst will perform during business analysis, the recipients of those communications, and the form in which communication should occur.
• Business analysis plan. A description of the planned activities that the business analyst will execute in order to perform the business analysis work involved in a specific initiative.
• Business analyst. A practitioner of business analysis.
• Business architecture. A subset of the enterprise architecture that defines an organization's current and future state, including its strategy, its goals and objectives, the internal environment through a process or functional view, the external environment in which the business operates, and the stakeholders affected by the organization's activities.
• Business case. An assessment of the costs and benefits associated with a proposed initiative.
• Business constraint(s). Business constraints are limitations placed on the solution design by the organization that needs the solution. Business constraints describe limitations on available solutions, or an aspect of the current state that cannot be changed by the deployment of the new solution. See also technical constraint.
• Business domain model. A conceptual view of all or part of an enterprise focusing on products, deliverables and events that are important to the mission of the organization. The domain model is useful to validate the solution scope with the business and technical stakeholders. See also model.
• Business event. A system trigger that is initiated by humans.
• Business goal. A state or condition the business must satisfy to reach its vision.
• Business need(s). A type of high-level business requirement that is a statement of a business objective, or an impact the solution should have on its environment.
• Business policy. A business policy is a non-actionable directive that supports a business goal.
• Business process. A set of defined ad-hoc or sequenced collaborative activities performed in a repeatable fashion by an organization. Processes are triggered by events and may have multiple possible outcomes. A successful outcome of a process will deliver value to one or more stakeholders.
• Business requirement. A higher level business rationale that, when addressed, will permit the organization to increase revenue, avoid costs, improve service, or meet regulatory requirements.
• Business requirements document. A Business Requirements Document is a requirements package that describes business requirements and stakeholder requirements (it documents requirements of interest to the business, rather than documenting business requirements).
• Business rule(s). A business rule is a specific, actionable, testable directive that is under the control of the business and supports a business policy.
• Capability. A function of an organization that enables it to achieve a business goal or objective.
• Cardinality. The number of occurrences of one entity in a data model that are linked to a second entity. Cardinality is shown on a data model with a special notation, number (e.g., 1), or letter (e.g., M for many).
• Change control board (CCB). A small group of stakeholders who will make decisions regarding the disposition and treatment of changing requirements.
• Change-driven methodology. A methodology that focuses on rapid delivery of solution capabilities in an incremental fashion and direct involvement of stakeholders to gather feedback on the solution's performance.
• Checklist. A quality control technique. They may include a standard set of quality elements that reviewers use for requirements verification and requirements validation or be specifically developed to capture issues of concern to the project.
• Class. A descriptor for a set of system objects that share the same attributes, operations, relationships, and behavior. A class represents a concept in the system under design. When used as an analysis model, a class will generally also correspond to a real-world entity.
• Class model. A type of data model that depicts information groups as classes.
• Code. A system of programming statements, symbols, and rules used to represent instructions to a computer.
• Commercial-off-the-shelf software (COTS). Software developed and sold for a particular market.
• Competitive analysis. A structured process which captures the key characteristics of an industry to predict the long-term profitability prospects and to determine the practices of the most significant competitors.
• Constraint. A constraint describes any limitations imposed on the solution that do not support the business or stakeholder needs.
• Context diagram. An analysis model that illustrates product scope by showing the system in its environment with the external entities (people and systems) that give to and receive from the system.
• Cost-benefit analysis. Analysis done to compare and quantify the financial and non-financial costs of making a change or implementing a solution compared to the benefits gained.
• Customer. A stakeholder who uses products or services delivered by an organization.
• Data dictionary. An analysis model describing the data structures and attributes needed by the system.
• Data entity. A group of related information to be stored by the system. Entities can be people, roles, places, things, organizations, occurrences in time, concepts, or documents.
• Data flow diagram (DFD). An analysis model that illustrates processes that occur, along with the flows of data to and from those processes.
• Data model. An analysis model that depicts the logical structure of data, independent of the data design or data storage mechanisms.
• Decision analysis. An approach to decision-making that examines and models the possible consequences of different decisions. Decision analysis assists in making an optimal decision under conditions of uncertainty.
• Decision table. An analysis model that specifies complex business rules or logic concisely in an easy-to-read tabular format, specifying all of the possible conditions and actions that need to be accounted for in business rules.
• Decision tree. An analysis model that provides a graphical alternative to decision tables by illustrating conditions and actions in sequence.
• Decomposition. A technique that subdivides a problem into its component parts in order to facilitate analysis and understanding of those components.
• Defect. A deficiency in a product or service that reduces its quality or varies from a desired attribute, state, or functionality. See also requirements defect.
• Deliverable. Any unique and verifiable work product or service that a party has agreed to deliver.
• Design constraints. Software requirements that limit the options available to the system designer.
• Desired outcome. The business benefits that will result from meeting the business need and the end state desired by stakeholders.
• Developer. Developers are responsible for the construction of software applications. Areas of expertise include development languages, development practices and application components.
• Dialog hierarchy. An analysis model that shows user interface dialogs arranged as hierarchies.
• Dialog map. An analysis model that illustrates the architecture of the system's user interface.
• Document analysis. Document analysis is a means to elicit requirements of an existing system by studying available documentation and identifying relevant information.
• Domain. The problem area undergoing analysis.
• Domain subject matter expert (SME). A person with specific expertise in an area or domain under investigation.
• Elicitation. An activity within requirements development that identifies sources for requirements and then uses elicitation techniques (e.g., interviews, prototypes, facilitated workshops, documentation studies) to gather requirements from those sources.
• End-user. A person or system that directly interacts with the solution. End-users can be humans who interface with the system, or systems that send or receive data files to or from the system.
• Enterprise. An organizational unit, organization, or collection of organizations that share a set of common goals and collaborate to provide specific products or services to customers.
• Enterprise architecture. Enterprise architecture is a description of an organization’s business processes, IT software and hardware, people, operations and projects, and the relationships between them.
• Entity-relationship diagram. An entity-relationship diagram is a graphical representation of the entities relevant to a chosen problem domain, the relationships between them, and their attributes.
• Evaluation. The systematic and objective assessment of a solution to determine its status and efficacy in meeting objectives over time, and to identify ways to improve the solution to better meet objectives. See also metric, indicator and monitoring.
• Event. An event is something that occurs to which an organizational unit, system, or process must respond.
• Event response table. An analysis model in table format that defines the events (i.e., the input stimuli that trigger the system to carry out some function) and their responses.
• Evolutionary prototype. A prototype that is continuously modified and updated in response to feedback from users.
• Exploratory prototype. A prototype developed to explore or verify requirements.
• External interface. An interface with other systems (hardware, software, and human) that a proposed system will interact with.
• Feasibility study. An evaluation of proposed alternatives to determine if they are technically possible within the constraints of the organization and whether they will deliver the desired benefits to the organization.
• Feature. A cohesive bundle of externally visible functionality that should align with business goals and objectives. Each feature is a logically related grouping of functional requirements or non-functional requirements described in broad strokes.
• Fishbone diagram. A diagramming technique used in root cause analysis to identify underlying causes of an observed problem, and the relationships that exist between those causes.
• Focus group. A focus group is a means to elicit ideas and attitudes about a specific product, service or opportunity in an interactive group environment. The participants share their impressions, preferences and needs, guided by a moderator.
• Force field analysis. A graphical method for depicting the forces that support and oppose a change. Involves identifying the forces, depicting them on opposite sides of a line (supporting and opposing forces) and then estimating the strength of each set of forces.
• Functional requirement(s). The product capabilities, or things the product must do for its users.
• Gap analysis. A comparison of the current state and desired future state of an organization in order to identify differences that need to be addressed.
• Glossary. A list and definition of the business terms and concepts relevant to the solution being built or enhanced.
• Horizontal prototype. A prototype that shows a shallow, and possibly wide, view of the system's functionality, but which does not generally support any actual use or interaction.
• Impact analysis. An impact analysis assesses the effects that a proposed change will have on a stakeholder or stakeholder group, project, or system.
• Implementation subject matter expert (SME). A stakeholder who will be responsible for designing, developing, and implementing the change described in the requirements and have specialized knowledge regarding the construction of one or more solution components.
• Included use case. A use case composed of a common set of steps used by multiple use cases.
• Incremental delivery. Creating working software in multiple releases so the entire product is delivered in portions over time.
• Indicator. An indicator identifies a specific numerical measurement that indicates progress toward achieving an impact, output, activity or input. See also metric.
• Initiative. Any effort undertaken with a defined goal or objective.
• Inspection. A formal type of peer review that utilizes a predefined and documented process, specific participant roles, and the capture of defect and process metrics. See also structured walkthrough.
• Interface. A shared boundary between any two persons and/or systems through which information is communicated.
• Interoperability. Ability of systems to communicate by exchanging data or services.
• Interview. A systematic approach to elicit information from a person or group of people in an informal or formal setting by asking relevant questions and documenting the responses.
• Iteration. A process in which a deliverable (or the solution overall) is progressively elaborated upon. Each iteration is a self-contained "mini-project" in which a set of activities are undertaken, resulting in the development of a subset of project deliverables. For each iteration, the team plans its work, does the work, and checks it for quality and completeness. (Iterations can occur within other iterations as well. For example, an iteration of requirements development would include elicitation, analysis, specification, and validation activities.)
• Knowledge area. A group of related tasks that support a key function of business analysis.
• Lessons learned process. A process improvement technique used to learn about and improve on a process or project. A lessons learned session involves a special meeting in which the team explores what worked, what didn't work, what could be learned from the just-completed iteration, and how to adapt processes and techniques before continuing or starting anew.
• Metadata. Metadata is information that is used to understand the context and validity of information recorded in a system.
• Methodology. A set of processes, rules, templates, and working methods that prescribe how business analysis, solution development and implementation is performed in a particular context.
• Metric. A metric is a quantifiable level of an indicator that an organization wants to accomplish at a specific point in time.
• Model(s). A representation and simplification of reality developed to convey information to a specific audience to support analysis, communication and understanding.
• Monitoring. Monitoring is a continuous process of collecting data to determine how well a solution is implemented compared to expected results. See also metric and indicator.
• Non-functional requirement(s). The quality attributes, design and implementation constraints, and external interfaces that the product must have.
• Objective. A target or metric that a person or organization seeks to meet in order to progress towards a goal.
• Object-oriented modeling. An approach to software engineering where software is comprised of components that are encapsulated groups of data and functions which can inherit behavior and attributes from other components; and whose components communicate via messages with one another. In some organizations, the same approach is used for business engineering to describe and package the logical components of the business.
• Observation. Observation is a means to elicit requirements by conducting an assessment of the stakeholder’s work environment.
• Operational support. A stakeholder who helps to keep the solution functioning, either by providing support to end-users (trainers, help desk) or by keeping the solution operational on a day-to-day basis (network and other tech support).
• Operative rule(s). The business rules an organization chooses to enforce as a matter of policy. They are intended to guide the actions of people working within the business. They may oblige people to take certain actions, prevent people from taking actions, or prescribe the conditions under which an action may be taken.
• Opportunity analysis. The process of examining new business opportunities to improve organizational performance.
• Optionality. Defining whether or not a relationship between entities in a data model is mandatory. Optionality is shown on a data model with a special notation.
• Organization. An autonomous unit within an enterprise under the management of a single individual or board, with a clearly defined boundary that works towards common goals and objectives. Organizations operate on a continuous basis, as opposed to an organizational unit or project team, which may be disbanded once its objectives are achieved.
• Organization modeling. The analysis technique used to describe roles, responsibilities and reporting structures that exist within an organization.
• Organizational process asset. All materials used by groups within an organization to define, tailor, implement, and maintain their processes.
• Enterprise readiness assessment. An assessment that describes whether stakeholders are prepared to accept the change associated with a solution and are able to use it effectively.
• Organizational unit. Any recognized association of people in the context of an organization or enterprise.
• Peer review. A validation technique in which a small group of stakeholders evaluates a portion of a work product to find errors to improve its quality.
• Plan-driven methodology. Any methodology that emphasizes planning and formal documentation of the processes used to accomplish a project and of the results of the project. Plan-driven methodologies emphasize the reduction of risk and control over outcomes over the rapid delivery of a solution.
• Prioritization. The process of determining the relative importance of a set of items in order to determine the order in which they will be addressed.
• Problem statement. A brief statement or paragraph that describes the problems in the current state and clarifies what a successful solution will look like.
• Process map. A business model that shows a business process in terms of the steps and input and output flows across multiple functions, organizations, or job roles.
• Process model. A visual model or representation of the sequential flow and control logic of a set of related activities or actions.
• Market exchangeable (product). A solution or component of a solution that is the result of a project.
• Product backlog. A set of user stories, requirements or features that have been identified as candidates for potential implementation, prioritized, and estimated.
• Product scope. The features and functions that characterize a product, service or result.
• Project. A temporary endeavor undertaken to create a unique product, service or result.
• Project charter. A document issued by the project initiator or sponsor that formally authorizes the existence of a project, and provides the project manager with the authority to apply organizational resources to project activities.
• Project manager. The stakeholder assigned by the performing organization to manage the work required to achieve the project objectives.
• Project scope. The work that must be performed to deliver a product, service, or result with the specified features and functions. See also scope.
• Prototype. A partial or preliminary version of the system.
• Quality. The degree to which a set of inherent characteristics fulfills requirements.
• Quality assurance. Activities performed to ensure that a process will deliver products that meet an appropriate level of quality.
• Quality attributes. The subset of nonfunctional requirements that describes properties of the software's operation, development, and deployment (e.g., performance, security, usability, portability, and testability).
• Regulator. A stakeholder with legal or governance authority over the solution or the process used to develop it.
• Relationship. A defined association between concepts, classes or entities. Relationships are usually named and include the cardinality of the association.
• Relationship map. A business model that shows the organizational context in terms of the relationships that exist among the organization, external customers, and providers.
• Repository. A real or virtual facility where all information on a specific topic is stored and is available for retrieval.
• Request for information (RFI). A requirements document issued to solicit vendor input on a proposed process or product. An RFI is used when the issuing organization seeks to compare different alternatives or is uncertain regarding the available options
• Request for proposal (RFP). A requirements document issued when an organization is seeking a formal proposal from vendors. An RFP typically requires that the proposals be submitted following a specific process and using sealed bids which will be evaluated against a formal evaluation methodology.
• Request for quote (RFQ). An informal solicitation of proposals from vendors.
• Requirement. (1) A condition or capability needed by a stakeholder to solve a problem or achieve an objective; (2) A condition or capability that must be met of possessed by a solution or solution component to satisfy a contract, standard, specification or other formally imposed documents; (3) A documented representation of a condition or capability as in 1) or 2).
• Requirement attribute. Metadata related to a requirement used to assist with requirements development and management.
• Requirement defect. An error in requirements caused by incorrect, incomplete, missing, or conflicting requirements.
• Requirements allocation. The process of apportioning requirements to subsystems and components (i.e., people, hardware, and software).
• Requirements iteration. An iteration that defines requirements for a subset of the solution scope. For example, an iteration of requirements would include identifying a part of the overall product scope to focus upon, identifying requirements sources for that portion of the product, analyzing stakeholders and planning how to elicit requirements from them, conducting elicitation techniques, documenting the requirements, and validating the requirements.
• Requirements management. The activities that control requirements development, including requirements change control, requirements attributes definition, and requirements traceability.
• Requirements management plan. A description of the requirements management process.
• Requirements management tool. A software tool that stores requirements information in a database, captures requirements attributes and associations, and facilitates requirements reporting.
• Requirements model. A representation of requirements using text and diagrams. Requirements models can also be called user requirements models or analysis models and can supplement textual requirements specifications.
• Requirements package. A requirements package is a set of requirements grouped together in a document or presentation for communication to stakeholders.
• Requirements risk mitigation strategy. An analysis of requirements-related risks that ranks risks and identifies actions to avoid or minimize those risks.
• Requirements signoff. Formal approval of a set of requirements by a sponsor or other decision maker.
• Requirements trace matrix. A matrix used to track requirements' relationships. Each column in the matrix provides requirements information and associated project or software development components.
• Requirements traceability. The ability to identify and document the lineage of each requirement, including its derivation (backward traceability), its allocation (forward traceability), and its relationship to other requirements.
• Requirements validation. The work done to ensure that the stated requirements support and are aligned with the goals and objectives of the business.
• Requirements verification. The work done to evaluate requirements to ensure they are defined correctly and are at an acceptable level of quality. It ensures the requirements are sufficiently defined and structured so that the solution development team can use them in the design, development and implementation of the solution.
• Requirements workshop. A requirements workshop is a structured meeting in which a carefully selected group of stakeholders collaborate to define and or refine requirements under the guidance of a skilled neutral facilitator.
• Return on investment. A measure of the profitability of a project or investment.
• Risk. An uncertain event or condition that, if it occurs, will affect the goals or objectives of a proposed change.
• Root cause analysis. Root cause analysis is a structured examination of an identified problem to understand the underlying causes.
• Scenario. An analysis model that describes a series of actions or tasks that respond to an event. Each scenario is an instance of a use case.
• Scope. The area covered by a particular activity or topic of interest. See also project scope and solution scope.
• Scope model. A model that defines the boundaries of a business domain or solution.
• Secondary actor. An actor who participates in but does not initiate a use case.
• Sequence diagram. A type of diagram that shows objects participating in interactions and the messages exchanged between them.
• Service. Work carried out or on behalf of others.
• Systems requirements specification. A requirements document written primarily for Implementation SMEs describing functional and nonfunctional requirements.
• Solution. A solution meets a business need by resolving a problem or allowing an organization to take advantage of an opportunity.
• Solution requirement. A characteristic of a solution that meets the business and stakeholder requirements. May be subdivided into functional and non-functional requirements.
• Solution scope. The set of capabilities a solution must deliver in order to meet the business need. See also scope.
• Span of control. Span of control is the number of employees a manger is directly (or indirectly) responsible for.
• Sponsor. A stakeholder who authorizes or legitimizes the product development effort by contracting for or paying for the project.
• Stakeholder. A group or person who has interests that may be affected by an initiative or influence over it.
• Stakeholder analysis. The work to identify the stakeholders who may be impacted by a proposed initiative and assess their interests and likely participation.
• Stakeholder list, roles, and responsibility designation. A listing of the stakeholders affected by a business need or proposed solution and a description of their participation in a project or other initiative.
• Stakeholder requirement. Stakeholder requirements are statements of the needs of a particular stakeholder or class of stakeholders. They describe the needs that a given stakeholder has and how that stakeholder will interact with a solution. Stakeholder requirements serve as a bridge between business requirements and the various categories of solution requirements.
• State diagram. An analysis model showing the life cycle of a data entity or class.
• Stated requirements. A requirement articulated by a stakeholder that has not been analyzed, verified, or validated. Stated requirements frequently reflect the desires of a stakeholder rather than the actual need.
• Structural rule. Structural rules determine when something is or is not true or when things fall into a certain category. They describe categorizations that may change over time.
• Structured walkthrough. A structured walkthrough is an organized peer review of a deliverable with the objective of finding errors and omissions. It is considered a form of quality assurance.
• Subject matter expert (SME). A stakeholder with specific expertise in an aspect of the problem domain or potential solution alternatives or components.
• Supplier. A stakeholder who provides products or services to an organization.
• Survey. A survey administers a set of written questions to stakeholders in order to collect responses from a large group in a relatively short period of time.
• Swimlane. The horizontal or vertical section of a process model that show which activities are performed by a particular actor or role.
• SWOT analysis. SWOT is an acronym for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats. It is a model used to understand influencing factors and how they may affect an initiative.
• System. A collection of interrelated elements that interact to achieve an objective. System elements can include hardware, software, and people. One system can be a sub-element (or subsystem) of another system.
• Technical constraint(s). Technical constraints are limitations on the design of a solution that derive from the technology used in its implementation. See also business constraint.
• Technique. Techniques alter the way a business analysis task is performed or describe a specific form the output of a task may take.
• Temporal event. A system trigger that is initiated by time.
• Tester. A stakeholder responsible for assessing the quality of, and identifying defects in, a software application.
• Throw-away prototype. A prototype used to quickly uncover and clarify interface requirements using simple tools, sometimes just paper and pencil. Usually discarded when the final system has been developed.
• Timebox. A fixed period of time to accomplish a desired outcome.
• Transition requirement(s). A classification of requirements that describe capabilities that the solution must have in order to facilitate transition from the current state of the enterprise to the desired future state, but that will not be needed once that transition is complete.
• Unified modeling language (UML). A non-proprietary modeling and specification language used to specify, visualize, and document deliverables for object-oriented software-intensive systems.
• Use case. An analysis model that describes the tasks that the system will perform for actors and the goals that the system achieves for those actors along the way.
• Use case diagram. A type of diagram defined by UML that captures all actors and use cases involved with a system or product.
• User. A stakeholder, person, device, or system that directly or indirectly accesses a system.
• User acceptance test. Test cases that users employ to judge whether the delivered system is acceptable. Each acceptance test describes a set of system inputs and expected results.
• User requirements document. A requirements document written for a user audience, describing user requirements and the impact of the anticipated changes on the users.
• User story. A high-level, informal, short description of a solution capability that provides value to a stakeholder. A user story is typically one or two sentences long and provides the minimum information necessary to allow a developer to estimate the work required to implement it.
• Validated requirement. A requirement that has been demonstrated to deliver business value and to support the business goals and objectives.
• Validation. The process of checking a product to ensure that it satisfies its intended use and conforms to its requirements. Validation ensures that you built the correct solution. Also see requirements validation.
• Variance analysis. Analysis of discrepancies between planned and actual performance, to determine the magnitude of those discrepancies and recommend corrective and preventative action as required.
• Verification. The process of checking that a deliverable produced at a given stage of development satisfies the conditions or specifications of the previous stage. Verification ensures that you built the solution correctly. Also see requirements verification.
• Verified requirements. Requirements that have been shown to demonstrate the characteristics of requirements quality and as such are cohesive, complete, consistent, correct, feasible, modifiable, unambiguous, and testable.
• Vertical prototype. A prototype that dives into the details of the interface, functionality, or both.
• Product vision statement. A brief statement or paragraph that describes the why, what, and who of the desired software product from a business point of view.
• Walkthrough. A type of peer review in which participants present, discuss, and step through a work product to find errors. Walkthroughs of requirements documentation are used to verify the correctness of requirements. See also structured walkthrough.
• Work breakdown structure (WBS). A deliverable-oriented hierarchical decomposition of the work to be executed by the project team to accomplish the project objectives and create the required deliverables. It organizes and defines the total scope of the project.
• Work product. A document or collection of notes or diagrams used by the business analyst during the requirements development process.

See also

Related lectures

• Business Analysis Quarter.

Related materials

• https://businessanalystmentor.com/business-analysis-fundamentals-4-hour-course/
• https://smart-ba.com/archives/13
• https://www.businessanalystlearnings.com/hub