BA Chapters

Inputs to a specific business analysis task may be externally produced by:

A single task

Which risk response strategy can be used for both positive and negative risks?

Accept

When preparing for observation, you plan to ask questions while the work is being done. You are preparing to do ____________ observation.

Active

During an elicitation interview, you find yourself paraphrasing statements to the speaker to reinforce that you understand what is being said. What skill are you applying

Active Listening

Outputs from determining business analysis activities include the Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) and an activity list. What is defined in the activity list?

Activity descriptions and logical dependencies

When should transition requirements be defined?

After the solution has been designed

Requirements that are associated with the solution component that will implement them are called:

Allocated requirements

Which task has solution performance measures as an input?

Analyze performance measures

Who may participate in requirements elicitation activities?

Any stakeholder

Which Requirements Life Cycle Management task seeks approval and signoff on requirements or designs?

Approve requirements

The stakeholders have indicated to the business analysis team that the documented requirements are ready for use in subsequent business analysis or implementation efforts. What type of requirements has been developed at this point in time?

Approved

You are investigating how a solution affects a particular stakeholder group after that solution has been deployed. What Solution Evaluation task are you performing?

Assessing enterprise limitations

The business analysis team has analyzed the current state and defined the desired future state of the enterprise. What is the team's most likely next step?

Assessing risks

You are determining the most appropriate response to identified problems in a delivered solution. What task are you performing?

Assessing solution limitations

What is the name for the individual pieces of information that describe an entity in an entity relationship diagram?

Attribute

Assumptions and constraints defined and clarified as requirements are understood and documented with their associated:

Attributes

Which statement best describes the relationship between the lead business analyst (BA) and project manager (PM) when planning the resources and tasks for business analysis activities?

BA manages business analysis work, PM manages overall project.

Which technique compares an organization's strategies, operations, and processes against the "best-in-class" strategies, operations, and processes of their competitors and peers?

Benchmarking

Business architecture provides architectural descriptions and views to provide a common understanding of the organization for the purpose of aligning strategic objectives with tactical demands. What is another name for these views?

Blueprints

You are reviewing documents for the current system in order to confirm the existing requirements. Document analysis is an effective technique for doing this work as long as the documents being reviewed are

Both current and valid

You are working with a group trying to build a diverse list of possible approaches as to how the team might solve a specific business problem. What technique should the group consider applying?

Brainstorming

Strategy Analysis tasks focus on documenting what type of requirement?

Business

What defines the business analysis team roles, deliverables to be produced, and tasks to be performed?

Business Analysis Approach

What governs the performance of all Strategy Analysis tasks?

Business Analysis Approach

At the beginning of Business Analysis Planning and Monitoring activities, the BABOK® Guide recommends that the business analyst create which two planning deliverables?

Business Analysis Approach and Stakeholder Engagement Approach

Identifying key stakeholder roles and selecting requirements activities is done as part of which knowledge area?

Business Analysis Planning and Monitoring

What knowledge area allows the business analyst to define their approach for tracing project requirements?

Business Analysis Planning and Monitoring

What knowledge area contains the next most logical steps after the business analyst has built a business case and gained management approval for a project?

Business Analysis Planning and Monitoring

You are a business analyst addressing who will receive weekly business analysis status reports containing performance against actuals for your current project. You are performing tasks from which knowledge area?

Business Analysis Planning and Monitoring

Who determines what BABOK® Guide tasks are appropriate for their project?

Business Analysis Team

What project role focuses on understanding business problems and opportunities?

Business Analyst

Which business analysis stakeholder role is involved with all business analysis activities on a project?

Business Analyst

All of the following are part of the business requirements, except:

Business Goals

What defines the business problem for which the business analyst is seeking a solution?

Business Need

What key input is used to plan the business analysis approach for a project?

Business Need

Which input best provides you with the measurable result that the enterprise wants to achieve?

Business Objective

When does traceability begin on a project?

Business Objectives

Three business analysis deliverables are inputs to several Requirements Life Cycle Management tasks. They are used to influence and guide the business analyst in managing requirements. Which of the following deliverables is not one of the three inputs? A. Governance approach

Business analysis Approach

What business analysis deliverable is a guideline or direct input to all tasks found in the Business Analysis Planning and Monitoring knowledge area?

Business analysis governance approach

What describes the specific end results an organization is seeking to achieve and the measures to objectively assess if these end results have been achieved?

Business objectives

Which of the five perspectives focuses on how the organization performs work to deliver value across multiple functional areas to customers and stakeholders?

Business process management perspective

All of the following are games that may be used to encourage stakeholders to develop a joint view of a problem or potential solution except:

Business rules

What is another name for an organized peer-level review of a requirements document?

Business rules analysis

All of the following are elements of the approve requirements task except:

Capabilities and processes

What deliverable contains the preliminary analysis of solution alternatives or options to determine how and whether each option can provide an expected business benefit?

Change Strategy

What output contains the results of the business analyst assessing the capability gaps between existing and new capabilities of the organization?

Change Strategy

"Does the existing functionality currently meet your needs?" is an example of what type of structured interview question?

Closed-ended

You are focusing the business analysis team on examining the premises, assumptions, observations, and expectations of its team members. What type of conflicts are you most likely addressing?

Cognitive

Which statement about conducting stakeholder analysis for the business analysis activities on a project is false?

Conducted during the project phase to which it applies

What method of conflict resolution offers the highest likelihood of reaching a permanent solution?

Confrontation

When reviewing a set of related requirements, you discover that two of the requirements describe the same feature but produce different results. Based on your well-written requirements checklist, you would note that these requirements are not ____________

Consistent

What imposes limitations on your solution?

Constaints

Business analysis work is performed ____________ throughout an agile initiative and relies heavily on ____________ skills.

Continuously, interpersonal

When building a change strategy, decision analysis can be used to compare the ____________ of implementing a proposed solution against the ____________ to be gained.

Cost, benefits

Eliciting requirements using a brainstorming session enables the participants to exercise ____________ thinking.

Creative

Requirements that are intended for reuse reflect what view of the organization?

Current State

Who can perform business analysis activities on agile teams?

Customer representative or product owner

What is the best recommendation to make when the value of a change from a current state is low relative to the effort required to make that change?

DO nothing

During requirements analysis, you are selecting a modelling technique to represent the rationale or "why" of a proposed change. Which modelling technique would be the best choice?

Decision Modelling

Which Strategy Analysis task produces the solution scope as an output?

Define Change Strategy

You are currently planning the business analysis information management approach for your project. What activities will you be performing as part of this task?

Define requirements attributes, plan traceability, and plan reuse.

Which task describes how business requirements are allocated for implementation?

Define solution scope

What is the purpose of nonfunctional requirements?

Defining quality attributes and design constraints of the solution

All of the following tasks are performed when planning and monitoring business analysis activities except:

Determine solution approach

Your team needs a low-cost tool that supports rapid drawing and documentation of models. What type of tool should they choose?

Diagramming tool

Which business analysis technique allows the business analyst to leverage existing materials to analyze the current state of the enterprise relative to a business need?

Document Analysis

You have just discovered that the business process expert, who was responsible for the existing system currently being upgraded, is no longer employed by the company. Which elicitation technique might you apply in this situation?

Document Analysis

Knowledge management and collaboration tools that may be used to capture and distribute knowledge throughout an organization include:

Document repositories, wikis, and discussion forums

What term is used to define an area undergoing analysis, including both an organization and its external stakeholders?

Domain

When does the business analyst ensure the feasibility of the proposed requirements to support the business and user needs?

During requirements Analysis and Design Definition

Requirements gathering activities are also known as requirements

Elicitation

You have an implementation deadline for meeting a specific requirement on your current project. What requirements attribute indicates how soon a requirement is needed?

Emergency

Stakeholder ____________ is defined as the willingness of stakeholders to actively work and interact with the business analysis team.

Engagement

According to the BACCM™, a business analyst may recommend a change either to a solution or to the ____________ to realize the potential value of a solution.

Enterprise

According to the BABOK® Guide, perspectives are used within business analysis work to provide focus to tasks and techniques specific to the context of the initiative. The five common perspectives include all of the following except:

Enterprise Architechure

What describes an organization's business processes, software, hardware, people, operations, and projects?

Enterprise architecture

What component of an entity-relationship diagram is contained in the labeled rectangle and represents a source or destination of data?

Entity

What prototype allows you to learn about user interface needs and then to evolve the requirements into a fully functioning system?

Evolutionary

Activity flow models show how the system behaves over the course of time through the:

Execution of business processes or a series of events

You are a business analyst on a business process management project collecting data from the processes. Which life cycle activity are you performing?

Execution/Monitoring

The business analysis team has been working hard to meet tight deadlines on their project. The project manager offers them a bonus and some time off if they can meet their deadlines. Which motivational theory best describes what the project manager just did?

Expectancy Theory

What determines the optimal business analysis approach?

Expert judgment

Industry structure might present constraints, dependencies, or drivers on the current state of the enterprise. This area is a source of ____________ influencers found when analyzing the current state.

External

What four stages of team development (in the order they are experienced) would you expect your new business analysis team to go through?

Forming, storming, norming, performing

The business analyst is looking at the current state of an existing system and trying to figure out how to improve the efficiency of that system. What level of the enterprise is the business need being defined from?

From the bottom-up

During Strategy Analysis, which technique allows the business analyst to break down business goals into achievable objectives and measures?

Functional decomposition

When planning business analysis activities, the business analyst may break down the project tasks and then estimate the amount of work each task will require. What technique are they using?

Functional decomposition

Which of the following techniques can be applied when tracing requirements?

Functional decomposition

Which document determines how the business analyst obtains approval of business analysis information with their stakeholders?

Governance Approach

You are planning a focus group to elicit requirements for a new online order entry system, addressing a wide variety of end users interacting with the system in different ways. What type of users should you include in your focus group?

Heterogenius

You are a business analyst assessing a proposed change to a set of requirements. Your project is being developed in an adaptive fashion with iterative and incremental implementation techniques. How might you handle your impact analysis?

Impact analysis must be formal

The business analyst receives input from a stakeholder regarding the impacts of technical dependencies on a specific stakeholder requirement. Which stakeholder is most likely to be providing this input?

Implementation SME

When defining solution scope, which stakeholder role participates in allocating new capabilities to solution components and determining what is required to deliver those capabilities?

Implementation SME

What describes how the selected solution approach will deliver the defined solution scope?

Implementation approach

What is another name for a solution that exists in some way?

Implemented Solution

To evaluate solution performance, the solution must exist in some form and be ____________.

In use

All of the following are examples of improvement opportunities that may be found when proposing design options except:

Include performance measures

When defining your approach to requirements traceability on your project, what levels will you choose from when deciding how to trace the requirements?

Individual, model, feature

You have strong political ties with your stakeholders from previous work in the organization, enabling you to get things done. Which underlying competency will these previous relationships enhance most for your current assignment?

Influencing

You are communicating functional and nonfunctional requirements to the test team. Which communication mechanism is recommended for this situation?

Informal Presentation

Data flow diagrams show how ____________ flows through a system.

Information

What represents the information and preconditions necessary for a business analysis task to begin

Input

The business analysis plan is typically ___ with and is a ___ of the overall project plan.

Integrated, component

Which two techniques does the BABOK® Guide recommend you use to confirm the stated requirements and stakeholder concerns?

Interviews or observation

What technique ensures that issues arising from assessing enterprise limitations are addressed and resolved?

Item tracing

During agile initiatives, scope is constantly evolving. Change and rapid response to change are expected. What method is used to manage the ongoing refinements and redefinition of the project scope?

Kanban backlog List

All of the following statements about the five business analysis perspectives are true except:

Knowledge areas are applied the same way regardless of the perspective being used.

You are developing a vision of a desired future state toward which people can be motivated to work. After it is developed, you will encourage people to work toward that future state. What business analysis competency are you exhibiting?

Leadership

The process of gaining knowledge or skills is also known as:

Learning

What four dimensions are addressed in a balanced scorecard?

Learning and growth, business process, customer, financial

What is the business analyst's primary role on a business intelligence initiative?

Liaison between stakeholders and solution providers

The BACCM™ states that the business analyst is responsible for extending value beyond the current initiative they are working on. This is done by:

Maintaining requirements and designs for reuse

What performance measures will the business analyst define for business analysis activities and deliverables on a project?

Metrics

When identifying business analysis performance improvements, what technique allows you to determine the metrics used for measuring performance and determining how those metrics may be tracked?

Metrics and KPI

What technique might assist you in measuring solution performance?

Metrics and KPIs

What is the name for an abstraction representing some or all of a proposed solution?

Model

What elicitation technique might best assist you in understanding the existing processes that are being used in an online order entry system?

Observation

You are functioning as a temporary apprentice for a day in order to get a hands-on feel for how the current system is being used. This is a variation of which technique?

Observation

You understand the existing business models, structure, business unit relationships, and people. This is an example of what type of knowledge?

Organization

Where are the standards located for how and when requirements should be maintained for reuse in an organization?

Organizational Process Assets

Knowledge areas define what a business analyst needs to understand. They do not define the project:

Phases

Solution Evaluation tasks can be performed on solutions in different stages of development. You want to evaluate a solution component that is part of a limited implementation that is not fully released. What type of solution are you working on?

Pilot

When analyzing the current state, the business analyst looks at the scope of decision making at different levels in the organization. What element of the current state are they looking at?

Policies

You are a business analyst working on a project where the timing of the business analysis work is early in the project life cycle. What type of business analysis approach best fits this project?

Predictive

You are a business analyst working on an information technology project. Your project is using a waterfall life cycle model to drive the development efforts. What solution development methodology is being used?

Predictive

You are a business analyst applying statistical analysis methods to historical data to identify patterns and make predictions about future events. Your focus is on pattern recognition through data mining, predictive modelling, forecasting, and condition-driven alerts. What type of data analytics are you developing requirements for?Predictive analytics

Predictive analytics

What is the proper sequence for conducting any type of elicitation technique?

Prepare, conduct, wrap up

Business ____________ are those characteristics that are common to all organizations with a similar purpose and structure, whether or not they are in the same industry.

Principles

You are a business analyst measuring alternatives against objectives and identifying trade-offs to determine which possible solution is best. You are most likely engaged in what activity?

Problem Solving

You are a business analyst measuring alternatives against objectives and identifying tradeoffs to determine which possible solution is best. You are most likely engaged in what activity?

Problem Solving

Effective problem solving consists of what three elements?

Problem definition, alternatives identification, and decision making

What is defined as a sequence of repeatable activities executed in an organization?

Process

You are a business analyst capturing and documenting as-is and to-be business processes for your business process management project. What role are you performing?

Process Modeller

What stakeholder is responsible and accountable for the project scope?

Project Manager

Who is primarily responsible for achieving the project objectives?

Project Manager

Who is responsible for ensuring that the business analysis plan is compatible with the project plan?

Project Manager

You are a business analyst working on an agile project. Who is the key stakeholder that you need to have involved with the project from the beginning, providing continuous feedback to the team and adjusting the product as needs change?

Project Sponsor

The requirements elicitation technique that uncovers and visualizes the interface requirements before an application is designed or developed is called:

Prototyping

When assessing risks during Strategy Analysis, the business analyst should consider all of the following elements except:

Proximity

When planning how to address requests for change, the business analyst should consider the cost and time estimates of the requested change, its associated benefits and risks, and the:

Recommended course of action

A capability needed by a stakeholder to achieve an objective is also called a:

Requirement

Which guideline or tool is used during requirements prioritization to understand the relationship with other requirements and work products?

Requirements Architecture

You are a business analyst tasked with ensuring that stakeholders with approval authority agree about the requirements that the solution should meet. You are most likely performing tasks from which knowledge area?

Requirements Life Cycle Management

All of the following are knowledge areas except:

Requirements Planning and Monitoring

During requirements analysis, the business analysis team created the structure for all of the requirements of the proposed change. What was created?

Requirements architecture

A RACI matrix describes the roles of stakeholders involved in business analysis activities. What does RACI stand for?

Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, Informed

What technique would you select to discover whether a solution defect is a symptom of a deeper, underlying problem?

Root-cause analysis

You are a business analyst working on a project with a predictive development methodology focusing on established logical modelling and the separation of requirements from solutions. Which of the four information technology methodologies are you using?

SSADM

You are defining the traceability approach for your requirements. You want to make sure that the business analysis team traces the relationship between functional requirements and the solution components that implement those requirements. This is an example of which traceability relationship?

Satisfy

What technique might be used when determining the business analysis approach on a project?

Scope Modelling

Which technique organizes your requirements based on the solution components to which they are related?

Scope Modelling

All of the following tasks are performed during elicitation except:

Select elicitation techniques

You are currently reviewing a specific requirement to see if it is atomic. What is an atomic requirement?

Self-contained and capable of being understood independently

You are eliciting business requirements for an information technology project using statistical methods and mockups to identify user needs. Which method are you applying in your elicitation efforts?

Simulation

What term describes the outcome of a change that allows an enterprise to satisfy a need?

Solution

A business analyst is currently defining a set of changes to the current state of an organization that allows the organization to take advantage of a business opportunity. What is most likely being defined?

Solution Scope

What is the basis for requirements life cycle management during a project, ensuring that proposed requirements support business needs?

Solution Scope

What has been defined when all of the Strategy Analysis knowledge area tasks are complete?

Solution Scope and change strategy

The tasks and techniques in the Requirements Analysis and Design Definition knowledge area are used to define what types of requirements?

Solution and Stakeholder

Which of the following business analysis work products must be traceable to a business requirement?

Solution and Stakeholder Requirements

Business analysts working in an information technology environment consider their tasks in light of three factors. What are these three factors?

Solution scope, organizational maturity, and change scope

The output from specifying and modelling requirements is:

Specified and modelled requirements

Which of the following is a task performed as part of requirements analysis?

Specify and Model requirements

Which stakeholder approves the potential value of a solution?

Sponsor

Who typically approves the change strategy and solution scope and authorizes funding for the resulting project?

Sponsor

When prioritizing requirements, which prioritization factor takes into account the likelihood that a requirement will change?

Stability

The system users have stated their needs for revised online order entry system capabilities. The users need the ability to perform online, remote order entry when they are traveling worldwide. What type of requirements best describe this need?

Stakeholder Requirements

The business analyst has defined how, when, and why the business analysis team will work directly with project stakeholders to develop requirements. What deliverable contains this information?

Stakeholder engagement approach

What output is produced from conducting stakeholder analysis?

Stakeholder list, roles, and responsibilities

The business analysis team members are jockeying for status within the group. This is a symptom found in which stage of team development according to the Tuckman model?

Storming

You are working on a business intelligence project targeting timely, accurate, high value, and actionable information driving decision making across the organization. One focus of your project is customer engagement. What level of decision-making processes are you targeting?

Strategic

In what knowledge area is the business analyst most likely to be scoping and defining new business opportunities?

Strategy Analysis

You are making decisions about replacing or retiring a solution. One factor you consider includes the money and effort that has already been committed to this current initiative. What factor are you considering?

Sunk Cost

What two outputs are produced when preparing for elicitation?

Supporting materials and scheduled resources

What technique provides an effective method for eliciting requirements information from many people in a short period of time?

Survey

During an active observation session, the business analyst watches the user carefully, asks them probing questions, and:

Takes Detailed notes

To determine solutions to business problems, the business analyst applies a set of:

Tasks and Techniques

Which of the following capabilities is not part of your analytical thinking and problem-solving skills?

Teaching

When assessing enterprise limitations using the risk analysis and management technique, what three areas of risk should be considered?

Technology, finance, business

Your boss tells you that you should motivate your people by threatening them with additional weekend work if project deadlines are not met. What motivation theory is being suggested to you?

Theory X

Which statement about business analysis stakeholders is FALSE?

They are a set of roles that must be filled for the project.

What is the best reason for involving a business analyst in Solution Evaluation tasks?

They are most knowledgeable about the business environment.

You are able to effectively manage your time by clearly defining goals and expectations and prioritizing your work efforts. These abilities illustrate your skills in:

Time management

What states of requirements outputs are contained in the Requirements Life Cycle Management knowledge area tasks?

Traced, maintained, prioritized, and approved

The Elicitation and Collaboration knowledge area focuses on eliciting business, stakeholder, solution, and ____________ requirements.

Transition

What type of requirements should address employee training, conversion of existing information, and user acceptance testing?

Transition

All of the following types of requirements may be candidates for reuse on your project, except

Transition Requirements

Your project implementation plan defines 12 capabilities of the planned systems solution that will not be needed once the new solution is operational. What type of requirements are these?

Transition Requirements

For each blueprint you have created on your project, you are defining the current state, the future state, and one or more transition states that are used to transition to the future state. This provides insight and an understanding of how well the organization aligns to its strategy and is a ____________ for change.

Trigger

You and the project sponsor are informally discussing what the business expects from a proposed new system. You came into the discussion with no prepared questions. What type of elicitation interview are you conducting?

Unstructured

What are the three types of interfaces typically looked at during interface analysis?

User, application, and device

What requirements analysis task ensures that solution requirements align to the business requirements?

Validate requirements

What traceability relationship is used when you are including a requirement that is necessary only if another requirement is implemented?

Value

The focus of business intelligence is the transformation of data into ____________ information to support business decision making.

Value-added

What is another name for the quality check performed following analysis of a requirement?

Verification

All of the listed factors are central to a successful business architecture except:

View of the entire organization that is under analysis

You are deciding between three solution options early in the project life cycle. Your stakeholders have trouble visualizing what these solutions contain without graphical models to support the discussions. What type of teaching method would enhance their learning?

Visual

The requirements life cycle begins with the representation of a business need as a requirement. When does the requirements life cycle end?

When a solution representing the requirements is retired

When should you begin to allocate requirements to the solution components that will implement those requirements during a project?

When the solution approach is determined

Confrontation as a method of conflict resolution is best for achieving a ____________- ____________ solution

Win-Win