SYSTEMS ANALYSIS AND DESIGN FINAL

Needs Assessment

) Analyze a current business problem or opportunity, (2) Analyze current and future states to determine an optimal solution that will provide value and address the business need, and (3) Assemble the results of the analysis to provide decision makers with relevant information for determining whether an investment in the proposed solution is viable.

Business Analysis Helps

1.Address business needs 2.Manage risk and reduce rework 3.Minimize product defects, recalls, lawsuits, and reduction in consumer confidence 4.Achieve stakeholder satisfaction

Needs Assessment Processes

1.Identify Problem or Opportunity 2.Assess Current State 3.Determine Future State 4.Determine Viable Options and Provide Recommendation 5.Facilitate product Roadmap Development 6.Assemble Business Case 7.Support Charter Development

5 levels of listening

1.Ignoring - making no effort to listen 2.Pretend listening - making believe or giving the appearance you are listening 3.Selective listening - hearing only parts of the conversation that interests you 4.Attentive listening - paying attention and focusing on what the speaker says, and comparing that to your own experiences 5.Empathic listening - listening and responding with both the heart and mind to understand the speaker's words, intent, and feelings

Why Perform Needs Assessment

1.Performed to examine the business environment and address either a current business problem or opportunity. 2.May be formally requested by a business stakeholder, mandated by an internal methodology, or recommended by a business analyst prior to initiating a program or project. 1.A project is a temporary endeavor undertaken to create a unique product, service, or result. 2.A program is a group of related projects, subprograms, or program activities managed in a coordinated way to obtain benefits not available from managing them individually. 3.Needs assessment work is undertaken before program or project work begins (preproject work). 4.Much of the analysis completed during the needs assessment is used for the development of a business case. 1.A business case is a documented economic feasibility study used to establish the validity of the benefits of a selected component lacking sufficient definition and use as a basis for the authorization of further project management activities. 5.It is the needs assessment and business case that build the foundation for determining the project objectives and serves as input to the project charter.

Why perform needs assessment part idk

2.SWOT Analysis 1.Stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats 2.Investigates the situation internally and externally. 1.Internally 1.Shows where the organization has current strength to help solve a problem or take advantage of an opportunity. 2.Reveals or acknowledges weaknesses that need to be alleviated to address a situation. 2.Externally 1.Generates potential opportunities in the external environment to mitigate a problem or seize an opportunity. 1.Examples include underserved markets or termination of a competitor's product line. 2.Shows threats in the market or external environment that could impede success in solving business needs. 1.Examples include increased market share by the competition or new products offered by a competitor. 3.Relevant Criteria 1.Goals and objectives provide criteria that may be used when making decisions regarding which programs or projects are best pursued.

Why perform needs assessment part three

3.Gather Relevant Data to Evaluate the Situation 1.Gather data to understand the magnitude of the problem or opportunity (size up the situation). 2.Determine appropriately sized solution. 3.If no internal data exists or cannot be feasibly collected, benchmarking may be performed. 4.Benchmarking is a comparison of the metrics or processes from one organization against a similar organization in the industry. 5.Data may not be readily available from competitors. 6.Data suitable for benchmarking (see page 14). 4.Draft the Situation Statement 1.Once the problem is understood, the business analyst drafts a situation statement by documenting the current problem that needs to be solved or the opportunity to be explored. 2.Very important step to ensure a solid understanding of the problem or opportunity the organization plans to address. 3.Format of situation statement: 1.Problem (or opportunity) of "a" 2.Has the effect of "b" 3.With the impact of "c"

Why Perform Needs Assessment Part 2

3.Identify Problem or Opportunity 1.Identify Stakeholders 1.Identify Stakeholders and categorize them into four categories (pages 12 & 13). 1.R-Responsible - Person performing the needs assessment. 2.A-Accountable - Person(s) who approve the needs assessment, including the business case, when warranted. 3.C-Consult - Person or group to be consulted for input to understand the current problem or opportunity. 4.I-Inform - Person or group who will receive the results of the needs assessment. 2.Investigate the Problem or Opportunity 1.Identify the problem being solved or the opportunity that needs to be addressed. 2."What problem are we solving?" 3."What problems do our customers have that this opportunity will address?" 4.Learn enough about the problem or opportunity to adequately understand the context of the problem or opportunity being investigated. 5.Conduct interviews with stakeholders to learn about the current environment. 6.Review existing documents about current processes, methods, or systems that support the business unit. 7.Use process modeling to document the current "as is" processes of the business. 8.Monitor or observe the business performing their work in order to discover elements of the current "as is" process.

Percentage of people who focus on things they can rather than they can't

31

Why perform needs assessment part four

5.Obtain Stakeholder Approval for the Situation Statement 1.Once the situation statement is drafted, agreement is obtained from the affected stakeholders. 2.The situation statement guides subsequent work for assessing the business need. 3.Stakeholders need to ensure the situation statement correctly defines the situation. 4.The business analyst initiates and facilitates the approval process. 5.Approval may not occur on the first review and revision or rewording may be necessary to obtain stakeholder approval. 6.The business analyst uses skills such as facilitation, negotiation, and decision making to lead stakeholders through this process.

Stakeholder Analysis Matrix Example

A stakeholder analysis matrix allows you to organize, categorize, and prioritize the information that is revealed in the stakeholder analysis process. Done well, the matrix makes it easy to discover interests that conflict, as well as where they converge. It is a useful tool both at the onset of a new project as well as when the direction or scope of a project changes.

Stakeholder analysis increase the chance for project success

Business analysts and project managers use stakeholder analysis to identity the key stakeholders and to assess interests, positions, alliances, and importance given to the project by such stakeholders. Such knowledge allows analysts and project managers to interact more effectively with stakeholders and to increase support for a given policy, program, or project. Conducting such an analysis before project implementation allows project managers to detect and take measures to avoid misunderstandings and potential opposition to the project.

Communication Skills

Communication skills are utilized to provide, receive, or elicit information from various sources. These skills are the most critical ones to master! The communication skills needed include active listening, communication tailoring, facilitation, nonverbal and verbal communication, visual communication skills, professional writing, and relationship building.

Opportunity Analysis

Definition: A study of the major facets of a potential opportunity to determine the viability of successfully launching a new solution. Opportunity analysis may require additional work to study the potential markets an organization may consider entering.

Root Cause Analysis

Definition: An analytical technique used to determine the basic underlying reason that causes a variance, a defect, or a risk. A root cause may underlie more than one variance, a defect, or a risk. When applied to business problems, root cause analysis can be used to discover the underlying causes of a problem so that solutions can be devised to reduce or eliminate them

Scrum Values

Focus, Courage, Openness, Commitment, Respect. Scrum leadership is based on servant leadership model rather than top down hierarchical approach.

Body Types

In the 1940's, William Herbert Sheldon associated body types with human temperament types. He claimed that a body type could be linked with the personality of that person. He says that a fat person with a large bone structure tends to have an outgoing and more relaxed personality while a more muscular body-typed person is more active and aggressive. A slim or scrawny person with thin muscles is usually characterized as quiet or fragile. He split up these body/personality types into three categories called somatotypes.

Leadership Skills

Leadership skills involve focusing the efforts of a group of people toward a common goal and enabling them to work as a team. Business analysts leverage these skills to lead disparate groups of stakeholders through various forms of elicitation, to sort through stakeholder differences, to help the business reach decisions on requirements and priorities, and ultimately to gain buy-in to transition a solution into the business environment. The leadership category is comprised of change agent skills, negotiation skills, personal development skills, and skills that enable the business analyst to become a trusted advisor. Personal development refers to all actions related to improving the skills of business analysts. Being a trusted advisor means stakeholders have enough confidence in an individual that the stakeholder can speak freely and candidly.

Waterfall Development Methodology

Move from phase to phase, emphasis on deliverables from one phase flowing into the next phase.

Waterfall Weaknesses

Must wait a long time before there is "visible" evidence of the new system Takes a long time from start to finish

Gait

People can often tell a person's emotional state just from how they're walking. A scientific study : Models simulate walking while angry, fearful, and so forth; then, people judge which emotion is being simulated. Subjects agree at rates higher than 60 percent —much better statistically than simply guessing.

Color

Pink has been associated with femininity. Red is the lucky color in Asia. The color red has sexual connotations, too. Women in red dresses capture men's attention more quickly, and men will sit closer and discuss more intimate things with a woman wearing red. Very recent research has shown much the same effect for women's perceptions of men wearing red: The women saw them as more sexually desirable and of higher social status. White is often seen as good, like a white knight riding to the rescue, whereas black is bad. Black is often associated with bad guys or tough guys. One series of studies found that teams with black on approximately 50 percent or more of their uniforms were penalized more than teams that did not have black in their color scheme.

Nonverbal communication in job interviews

Poise, Interest, and Expressiveness (PIE) You convey these PIE qualities through an attentive, forward lean (like immediacy), confidence (looking people in the eye, but not staring), more variation in your voice tone, gesturing when you speak, and being expressive with smiles, showing positive emotion.

Program Management

Process of managing several related projects, often with the intention of improving organization's performance.

Iterative Development Methodology

RAD Approach, develop system through series of versions

Skillset and expertise needed for the business analysis role

Se§veral varied skills and competencies are needed in order to perform the business analysis role effectively. §Many of the interpersonal skills leveraged by project managers are equally important to the practice of business analysis. §See page 4-5 in the textbook for a partial list of some of the important skills and expertise for anyone performing business analysis activities on programs and projects.

Expert Judgment

Skills and knowledge obtained from acquiring expertise in an application area, knowledge area, discipline, industry, etc. It includes the skill and knowledge acquired through the collective acquisition of business and project experience. Expert judgment includes enterprise/organizational knowledge, business acumen, industry knowledge, life cycle knowledge, political and cultural awareness, product knowledge, and standards.

Waterfall Strengths

System requirements identified long before construction begins þRequirements are "frozen" as project proceeds - no moving targets allowed

Systems Thinking

Systems thinking is a holistic approach to problem-solving. It's the opposite of analytical thinking, which separates a problem from the "bigger picture" to better understand it. Instead, systems thinking studies all the elements of a problem, along with the interactions between these elements.

Transition requirements

Temporary capabilities such as data conversion and training, and operational changes needed to transition from the Current state to the future state. (e and a req)

Body Posture

The body tends to reflect our various moods or emotional states. When people are angry, they tend to lean forward as if to attack, because anger means attacking. You tend to see more tension in the upper body, and you tend to see clenched fists. In contrast, fear is about fleeing or escaping. When people are afraid their body posture tends to lean back. The tension and fear tends to be more in the lower body because it's about escape. Happiness is about approachability. When people are happy, they tend to lean forward more. If somebody is romantically interested in someone else, they tend to lean in. In contrast, if somebody's disgusted by something they tend to lean back and pull away.

Why perform needs assessment part five

The situation is now analyzed in greater detail to discover important components such as the root causes of the problem identified in the situation statement. 1.Assess Organizational Goals and Objectives 1.Goals and Objectives 1.Organizational goals and objectives are often revealed in internal corporate strategy documents and business plans. 2.Goals are typically broad-based and span one or more years. 3.Objectives, on the other hand, are used to enable goals (they are more specific and shorter term). 4.Goals have one or more objectives and many have any number of business cases and various tactical plans to support them. Approved business cases are used as input to programs and projects. 2.SMART Goals and Objectives 1.S=Specific, M=Measurable, A= Achievable, R=relevant, T=Time-bound (see page 17).

Personal Space

There are a number of ways we express our territorial nature. The most obvious way we express our ownership is to use what scientists call markers. Some of the markers we may use to save a spot, for example, draping a jacket over a chair to reserve it. The more personal the marker, the more power it has to save your space. Scientists have found tables in a university library were more likely to be left alone if the marker was a jacket or notebook compared to a sheet of paper or an unmarked textbook. We can mark territories verbally—"Hey, that's mine,"—but we can also express the fact that someone is getting too close nonverbally. To the stranger who sits on your park bench, you may give a glare, or look them up and down. This territorial drive is so strong that others know it as well and will usually honor it.

Personal Skills

These are skills and attributes that identify the personal attributes of an individual. When a business analyst is viewed as being strong in these skills by stakeholders, the project team, and peers, the business analyst is able tobuild credibility. The personal skills category is composed of adaptability, ethics, learning, multitasking, objectivity, self-awareness, time management, and work ethic.

Nonverbal Communication

Tone of Voice Gestures Body Language Facial Expression Colors Clothes Personal Space

Tool Knowledge

Tool knowledge is composed of various categories of tools that, if mastered, enable the practitioner to work more effectively. Business analysts use various software and hardware products to help them interact with stakeholders and get work done. The tool knowledge category is comprised of communication and collaboration tools, desktop tools, reporting and analysis tools, requirement management tools, and modeling tools. Because requirements management is one of the most important components of business analysis, it is critical for the business analyst to obtain mastery of the requirements management tool in use by the organization.

Systems Development Life Cycle (SDLC)

Traditionally 5 steps, some now increased to seven. Increasing number of phases helps systems analyst to define clearer actions to achieve specific goals.

Time management

Urgent matters press on us and insist on action. We are easily diverted into responding to the urgent. Important matters have to do with results, your values, and your goals. People who spend most of their time in Q III and IV lead irresponsible lives. QII is at the heart of effective personal management. In Q II you feed opportunities and starve problems.

Analytical Skills

Used by the business analyst to process information of various types and at various levels of detail, break the information down, look at it from different viewpoints, draw conclusions, distinguish the relevant from the irrelevant, and apply information to formulate decisions or solve problems. The analytical skills category is composed of creative thinking, conceptual and detailed thinking, decision making, design thinking, numeracy, problem solving, research skills, resourcefulness, and systems thinking.

Iterative Weaknesses

Users faced with using an incomplete system for a time Users must be patient and wait for fully-functional system

Iterative Strengths

Users get a system to use quickly Users identify additional needs for later versions based on real experiences with current version

Reactive People

Violate the basic principles of human effectiveness. driven by feelings, circumstances, conditions, and environment. Impatient, critical, selfish, dishonest, victim, procrastinator (enemy of students and teachers).

Quality Requirements

a condition or capability that will be used to asses conformance by validating the acceptability of an attribute for the quality of a result. A quality characteristic of a project. (project work requirement)

Proactive

action and result oriented behavior, instead of the one that waits for things too happen and then tries to adjust (react) to them. Proactive people are driven by carefully thought about, selected and internalized values based on principles. They subordinate feelings to values. Service oriented and help people in meaningful ways.

Scrum

an agile framework, empirical exposure model which means knowledge is gained from real life experience and decisions are based on that. Clearly defines roles and organizing actionable work in order tot be more efficient in completing the work. Iterative, incremental approach which is less prescriptive than a methodology thus providing appropriate amounts of flexibility.

Intended audience of the guide

anyone who performs business analysis activities, regardless of job title or how long they perform. Anyone who works with someone who performs business analysis such as those who perform project, portfolio , program management.

Purpose of PMI guide to business analysis

define what business analysis is, demonstrate the practical application of the discipline.

solution requirements

features, functions, and characteristics of a product or service, the result that will meet the business and stakeholder requirements. (e and a req)

Agile Development

group of programming methodologies that focuses streamlining the SDLC. seeks alternatives to traditional project management. Approaches help teams respond to unpredictability through incremental , iterative work cadences and empirical feedback. Alternative to waterfall

managerial subsystem

heart of the organization that directs, organizes, and coordinates the organization in a common direction.

portfolio management

is the selection, prioritization, and control of an organization's projects and programs in line with it's strategic objectives and capacity to deliver. The goal is to balance change initiatives and business as usual while optimizing return on investment.

Interviews

most important and most used fact finding technique. The systems analyst collect information from individuals facet to face. Managers in early project stages to get broad understanding, staff can provide details and specifics later, political issues are important may be necessary to interview influential people even if they aren't too knowledgable (people to interview.)

stakeholder requirements

needs of a stakeholder or stakeholder group (e and a req)

Socio Tech System II

organizational approach that accounts for the interactions between people, procedures, and the workplace. These aren't isolated elements but parts that react to each other and influence other elements. It's made of 5 subsystems: Goals&Values, Technical, Structural, Psychosocial, Managerial.

Stakeholder Analysis

performed iteratively and is revisited throughout the project as new stakeholders are discovered or existing stakeholders are determined to no longer be impacted by the proposed solution.

Systems Development Methodology

refers to the framework that is used to structure plan control the process of developing an information system.

Psychosocial subsystem

social relationship and behavior patterns of the organizations members; it's culture.

project requirements

the actions, processes, or other conditions the project needs to meet. The focus is on aspects of project execution. (project work requirement)

Functional Requirements

the behaviors of the product (e and a req)

Nonfunctional Requirements

the environmental conditions or qualities required for the product to be effective. Referred to as quality of service requirements (a quality of the product.) (e and a req)

Business requirements

the higher levels needs of the organization as a whole (e and a req)

The relationship between project manager, business analyst, and other roles

§Business analysis begins with defining a situation and a complete understanding of the problem or opportunity that the organization wishes to address; this is considered pre-project work. §Business value may be defined as the net quantifiable benefit derived from a business endeavor. Ideally, customer and business value are aligned, but this is not always the case. §The result of pre-project activities provide information to understand the value of a given project. §Business analysis is used to perform research and elicit sufficientinformation to support business decision making to determine if and when there is value in pursuing organizational changes to business needs, and when it makes sense, to initiate a project or program to facilitate such change. §Project management seeks to optimize the delivery of value by improving the efficiency of organizations as they deliver new products, services, or results.

Purpose of the PMI guide to business analysis

§Define what the work of business analysis is and why it is important. §Describe the competencies, processes, tools, and techniques needed to effectively perform business analysis tasks and activities. §Define concepts related to business analysis that can be applied consistently across all product and project life cycles, product types, and industries to deliver successful business outcomes within portfolios, programs, and projects. §Highlight collaboration points between those who perform business analysis activities and other roles that business analysts typically need to work with collaboratively. §Provide and promote a common business analysis vocabulary for organizations and business analysis professionals.

Managing Requirements

§It is important to ensure that requirements covered by the project are identified and addressed properly during elicitation and analysis activities. §In some organizations, requirements are managed by having separate requirement documents created for each type of requirement. §Requirements may also exist in one document separated by document sections. §Requirements may also be managed with a requirements management tool, where the requirements are added to an online repository.

what happens when business analysis is properly executed on projects and programs

§Projects are more likely to be delivered (1) on time, (2) within scope, and (3) within budget. §Stakeholders are more engaged in the process and buy-in is more readily achieved. §High-quality requirements are produced resulting in the development of products and services that meet customer expectations, deliver business value, and meet stakeholder needs. §A requirement is a condition or capability that is required to be present in the product, service, or result to satisfy a business need. §Requirements management accounts for a significant portion of the work performed by the business analyst

Understanding role boundaries

§The business analyst role is often misunderstood, underutilized, and often confused with other roles such as project manager. §Another complicating factor is that many people who perform business analysis have different titles across various industries and even within the same organization. §Some organizations create the position as a "catch-all," asking analysts to perform activities outside of what is common responsibilities of the discipline, such as testing activities or administrative tasks. §Sometimes an individual is tasked with performing more than one role, such as business analyst and project manager. This is a hybrid role and will mean added responsibility distinguishing and dealing with competing priorities, tasks, and methods involved in each role.

what is good business analysis

§What is good Business Analysis? §Organizations are often tempted to provide solutions before fully understanding a situation. §Business analysis enables an organization to identify and fix the root causes of a problem instead of repeatedly addressing symptoms as they occur. §Business analysis assists in detecting new opportunities that are important to the growth and even the survival of the organization.

Technology analysis

•Analysts list important and interesting technologies. •Managers list important and interesting technologies. •The group goes through each list and identifies how each might be applied to the business and how the business might benefit. Brainstorming with special emphasis on technology use.

Identifying Stakeholders

•Asking other stakeholders •Interviews •Surveys •Reviewing existing documentation •Organization charts •Process flow diagrams •Contract agreements •Conduct Brainstorming Sessions • Hold brainstorming sessions with your team members and experts.

Document Analysis

•Collect Facts from Existing Documentation •Organizational chart. •History that led to the project. •Documentation of previous system studies and designs performed by systems analysts and consultants. •Analyze Facts to Determine Currency •Even outdated documentation may be useful, but recognize what is current and what is outdated.•Take notes, draw pictures, and use systems analysis and design tools to model what you are learning or proposing for the system. •Use Appropriate Sampling Techniques. •To Employ Document Analysis Well... •Good place to start •History •Vocabulary •Key personnel •Learn as much as you can from existing documentation. No one wants to spend time talking about things you could have learned about from existing documentation.

outcome analysis

•Consider desirable outcomes from customers' perspective. •Consider what the organization could enable the customer to do. •Brainstorm on desirable customer outcomes enabled by IS.

Observation Strengths

•Data gathered may be highly reliable. •Can see exactly what is being done. •Relatively inexpensive (compared with other fact-finding techniques). •Can do work measurements (if needed).

How to develop good questionnaire

•Determine what facts and opinions must be collected and from whom you should get them. •Based on the needed facts and opinions, determine whether free- or fixed-format questions will produce the best answers. A mix of types may be ideal. •Write the questions. •Pretest the questions on a small sample of "typical" respondents - not just other systems analysts. •Use random sampling if necessary.

what skills mean

•Effective systems developers require both specialist and generalist skills. •Specialist skill categories include knowledge of systems, computers, and models. •Generalist skills include knowledge of people, organizations, and society. •Systems design involved many aspects of trust, such as security, privacy, and confidentiality. •Trust is connected to proactivity and ethics.

Other things to consider regarding stakeholders

•Experience •Consider the number of years the stakeholder has in the industry. •Is the stakeholder new to the organization? •Seek additional resources when a gap in experience is present. •Level of influence •Can be used either to motivate or to deter or distract. •Spend more time with influential stakeholders. •Location and availability •Global workforce? •Virtual work environment? •Means of contact - conference calls, desktop sharing, web conferencing, etc.

Questionnaries contd

•Fixed-format questions •Similar to a multiple-choice exam question. •Must be able to anticipate potential answers to questions. •Easy to tabulate results. •Free-format questions •Like an essay question - open-ended. •Response is unpredictable. •Harder to tabulate results.

To identify moderate improvements

•Goal is to improve efficiency and effectiveness. •Expect moderate changes to existing systems. •Expect moderate impact and value to organization. •Types of activities: •Duration Analysis •Activity-Based Costing •Informal Benchmarking

activity elimination

•Identify what would happen if each organizational activity were eliminated. •Use "force-fit" to test all possibilities. •Insist that all activities are potentially eliminated, even if it seems preposterous. •Brainstorming technique that helps to overcome "but we've always done it that way" limitations on thinking.

About interviews

•Interview Structure •Top-Down (broad to specific; most common). •Bottom-up (specific to broad; useful for collecting details). •Question Type •Open-ended - broad concepts; opinions. •Closed-ended - learn or confirm facts and details. •Probing - resolve confusion; follow-up.

Interview Strengths

•Interviewee can respond freely and openly to questions. •Interviewee can be asked for more feedback. •Questions can be adapted or reworded for each individual. Interviewee's nonverbal communication can be observed

User Persona

•It's a comprehensive image of your real user, a typical representation of your ideal customer. It is generally based on user research and incorporates the needs, goals, and observed behavior patterns of your target audience. •A good user persona can help you figure out the subjective thoughts of what user need, thus resulting in a useful product.

Business Analysis Plan

•May be a formal written plan or an informal plan •It may be a separate plan or a subplan of the overall portfolio, program, or project plan •It should contain an estimate of the level of effort for the business analysis effort •It should cover the entire business analysis approach •Stakeholder engagement •Decisions about how to manage requirements •It should be written in a manner that will be easily understood, since it will be reviewed by key stakeholders •The plan should be built collaboratively with key stakeholders to ensure engagement and buy-in •There will be overlapping roles for the business analyst and project manager, so they should work closely together to avoid redundancy of effort and to reduce the risk of inconsistent results

questionnaire strengths

•Most can be answered quickly (if properly designed). •Relatively inexpensive. •Allow individuals to maintain anonymity. •Can be tabulated and analyzed quickly (if properly designed).

Observation

•Participate in or watch a person perform activities to learn about the system. •Use when the validity of data collected using other methods is in question. •Use when the complexity of certain aspects of the system prevents end-users from providing a clear explanation.

Observation Weaknesses

•People may perform differently when being observed. •Work may vary in difficulty and volume. •Some activities may take place at odd times. •The tasks being observed are subject to various types of interruptions.

Cultural Differences can impact how stakeholders...

•Perform their work •Interact with other team members •Contribute to the decision-making process •Interpret nonverbal communication •Understand the primary written and spoken language of the team •Question or interact with authority •View their role on the team •Raise questions or issues •Negotiate •Deal with conflict

Ways to discover true underlying requirements

•Problem Analysis •Ask users to identify problems and solutions. •Improvements tend to be small and incremental. •Rarely finds improvements with significant business value. •Root Cause Analysis •Challenge assumptions about why problem exists. •Trace symptoms to their causes to discover the "real" problem.

To do observation well

•Properly plan for observation. •Obtain approval and inform people of your purpose. •Conduct observations first when the work load is normal, followed by observations during peak periods. •Obtain samples of documents or forms that will be used by those being observed. •Apply the sampling techniques discussed earlier for observation. •Review observation notes with appropriate individuals.

Questionnaire Weaknesses

•Response is often low. How to motivate participation? •Incomplete questionnaires returned - are these worthless? •Tend to be inflexible. •Body language cannot be observed. •Cannot clarify a vague or incomplete answer to any question. •Difficult to prepare a successful questionnaire.

Techniques for grouping or analyzing stakeholders

•Similar interests. •Common needs. •Level of importance. •Roles. •Motivation. •Complexity level. •Location.

Questionnaires

•Special-purpose documents that allow the analyst to collect information and opinions from respondents. •Mass produced and distributed. •Respondents complete the questionnaire on their own time. •Facts are collected from a large number ofpeople while maintaining uniform responses. •When dealing with a large audience, no other fact-finding technique can tabulate the same facts as efficiently.

Business Analysis Planning Ensures

•Stakeholders are thoroughly identified; •Business analysis activities and deliverables are defined and agreed to; •Processes that will be used for validation, verifying, and approving requirements and solutions are acceptable to key stakeholders; •The process for proposing changes to requirements is defined and understood; and •Key stakeholders are aware of and support the activities and time commitments required to complete the requirements effort.

Socio-technical systems

•Technical abilities to design and build sophisticated computer-based information systems have progressed rapidly. •However, our ability to make these systems part of the living fabric of organizational systems has not taken place. •Some IS are never installed, while installed systems sometimes fail completely and often run into problems. •Systems developers need to take a business systems perspective when designing and implementing an IS. •STS is the term applied to a view of systems that includes both the technical and social aspects of work systems. •We need to do a social analysis of a work system in parallel with a technical analysis.

What is included in the business analysis plans

•The activities to be conducted •The deliverables to be produced •The roles required to conduct the business analysis process •The approach for: •Prioritizing requirements •Documenting requirements •Validating requirements •Communicating requirements •Approving requirements •Changing requirements

Location of stakeholders affect several analyst planning decisions such as

•The techniques that are most effective to elicit requirements. •Estimating how much time is required to complete business analysis activities. •Deciding on the formality and level of detail required for the deliverables. •Deciding the types of models to use. •Determining the approach and frequency of collaboration. Determining how requirements will be managed

Principles are self-evident, natural laws

•Universal •Timeless •Objective •At work whether or not we understand or value them

Interview Weaknesses

•Very time-consuming, and therefore costly, fact-finding approach. •Success is highly dependent on the systems analyst's human relations skills. •May be impractical due to the location of interviewees.

Information System

•information and communication technology (ICT) that an organization uses, and also the way in which people interact with this technology in support of business processes.

Proactive Model

◦Our behavior is a function of our decisions, not our conditions. ◦Between stimulus and response is a space, which represents our freedom to choose. ◦The ability to subordinate an impulse to a value is the essence of proactivity.

Principles are natural laws of human effectiveness

◦Service ◦Integrity ◦Quality or Excellence ◦Honesty ◦Fairness, Equity and Justice