Business Analysis Quarter

Business Analysis Quarter (hereinafter, the Quarter) is the second of four lectures of Project Quadrivium (hereinafter, the Quadrivium):

• The Quarter is designed to introduce its learners to enterprise analysis, or, in other words, to concepts related to analyzing enterprise data in order to create enterprise information or, in other words, information needed for enterprise design; and
• The Quadrivium examines concepts of administering various types of enterprises known as enterprise administration as a whole.

The Quadrivium is the first of seven modules of Septem Artes Administrativi, which is a course designed to introduce its learners to general concepts in business administration, management, and organizational behavior.

Lecture outline

The predecessor lecture is Monitoring Quarter.

Concepts

1. Business analysis. 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 need. 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.
2. 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. A statement of required behavior, performance and other characteristics of the system to be developed.
   • Stated requirement. 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.
3. 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.
   • 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.
   • Business requirements document. A requirements package that describes business requirements and stakeholder requirements (it documents requirements of interest to the business, rather than documenting business requirements).
4. Solution requirement. A characteristic of a solution that meets the business and stakeholder requirements. May be subdivided into functional and non-functional requirements.
   • Functional requirement(s). The product capabilities, or things the product must do for its users.
   • Functional requirement. Particular behavior or metric to judge the operation of a system.
   • Non-functional requirement(s). The quality attributes, design and implementation constraints, and external interfaces that the product must have.
   • Technical requirement. A set of technical properties that a product must fulfill.
   • Quality attribute. The subset of nonfunctional requirements that describes properties of the software's operation, development, and deployment (e.g., performance, security, usability, portability, and testability).
   • 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.
5. Constraint. A constraint describes any limitations imposed on the solution that do not support the business or stakeholder needs.
   • Constraint. A limitation outside the control of a project team. For example, date time-line limits, or finite resources.
   • Design constraint. A solution requirement that limit the options available to the system designer.
   • 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.
   • 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.
6. 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.
   • 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 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.
7. User requirements document. A requirements document written for a user audience, describing user requirements and the impact of the anticipated changes on the users.
   • Requirements package. A requirements package is a set of requirements grouped together in a document or presentation for communication to stakeholders.
   • Specification. The exact customer needs that must be satisfied by a product in order for that product to be considered a success.
8. 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.
   • User story. A brief, non-technical description of a software system requirement written from the customer’s or end-user’s point of view. Either the product owner or the team writes the user stories according to the following structure: as a <type of user>, I want to <perform some task> so I can <achieve some goal.>
   • User story. A brief, non-technical statement of a software system requirement written from the end-user's point of view. A story is written according to the following structure: as a [type of user], I want to [perform some task (or execute a function)] so I can [achieve some goal (or get some value)].
   • Epic story. A large user story that, in its current state, would be difficult to estimate or to complete in a single iteration. Epic stories are typically lower priority and are waiting be broken down into smaller components.
   • Story mapping. refers to a top-down visualization, or roadmap, of product backlog. The story map starts with a goal or specific functionality, which is then broken down into user stories. A story map is created in tree format either physically, using post-its on a wall, or digitally.
   • Story point. A non-unit measure used to determine the complexity of a user story. Story points are relative, not absolute, and do not relate to actual hours—they can be anything from tee-shirt sizes to the Fibonacci Sequence.
     1. Story point. A measurement used by scrum teams to determine how much effort is required to achieve a goal.
   • Storyboard. A tool inspired by the filmmaking industry, where a visual sequence of events is used to capture a user’s interactions with a product. Depending on the audience, it may be an extremely rough sketch, purely for crystallising your own ideas.
   • User persona. A detailed hypothetical description or biography of a typical end-user who will be using the product. Personas usually take the form of a written document, complete with stock photo, name, profession, style of living, and other details pertinent to their being categorized as an end-user.
   • User persona. A fictitious identity that reflects one of the user groups for who you are designing.
   • Spike. A short, time-boxed piece of research, usually technical, on a single story that is intended to provide just enough information that the team can estimate the size of the user story.
9. 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.
   • Included use case. A use case composed of a common set of steps used by multiple use cases.
   • Use case diagram. A type of diagram defined by UML that captures all actors and use cases involved with a system or product.
   • Work product. A document or collection of notes or diagrams used by the business analyst during the requirements development process.
10. Verified requirement. 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.
    • 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.
    • Verification. The process of proving that a finished product meets specifications and requirements. (Did we build the system right?)
    • 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.
11. 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.
    • Validation. Testing to insure that the created system actually provides the value intended to its stakeholders. (Did we build the right system?).
    • Requirements validation. The work done to ensure that the stated requirements support and are aligned with the goals and objectives of the business.
    • Requirements signoff. Formal approval of a set of requirements by a sponsor or other decision maker.
12. Baseline. A point-in-time view of requirements that have been reviewed and agreed upon to serve as a basis for further development.
13. 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.
    • 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.)

Roles

1. 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.
   • Business analyst. A practitioner of business analysis.
2. User. A stakeholder, person, device, or system that directly or indirectly accesses a system.
   • 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.
3. Actor(s). The human and nonhuman roles that interact with the system.
   • Secondary actor. An actor who participates in but does not initiate a use case.
4. Product stakeholder. A group or person who has interests that may be affected by an initiative or influence over it.
   • Supplier. A stakeholder who provides products or services to an organization.
   • Sponsor. A stakeholder who authorizes or legitimizes the product development effort by contracting for or paying for the project.
   • Customer. A stakeholder who uses products or services delivered by an organization.

Methods

1. 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.
2. Decomposition. A technique that subdivides a problem into its component parts in order to facilitate analysis and understanding of those components.

Instruments

1. Requirements management tool. A software tool that stores requirements information in a database, captures requirements attributes and associations, and facilitates requirements reporting.
2. 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.

Results

1. Acceptance criteria. Specification for a set of conditions that the product must meet in order to satisfy the customer. In Agile methodology, the product owner writes statements from the customer’s point of view that explain how a user story or feature should work. In order for the story or feature to be accepted it needs to pass the acceptance criteria; otherwise, it fails.
   • Acceptance test. The derivative from the acceptance criteria that verifies whether a feature is functional. The test has only two results: pass or fail. Acceptance criteria usually include one or more acceptance tests.

Practices

The successor lecture is Product Design Quarter.