What is in your Business Analysis Toolkit?

What’s in the BA Toolkit?

Marie Halsey Consulting Inc.
September 2010

Background

September 2010 Marie Halsey Consulting Inc. 2

One day …


BA has many Stakeholders …
- Sponsor
- End User
- Customer
Client

- Solution Architect
Project Delivery
- Developer
Manager Team
- DBA
- Usability Specialist
BA - Tester
- Trainer

Operational
Supplier
Support

Regulator


What Tools to Use?
It depends …
Methodology
Waterfall, iterative, agile
Project type
Custom software, COTS,
infrastructure/hardware-only
Artifacts produced
Maturity of BA organization


Types of Communication Tools…

Low-tech and hardware-based tools

Collaboration tools

Software-based tools, to produce:
Documents
Diagrams
Other Artifacts


Low-Tech & Hardware-based Tools


Collaboration Tools


Software-based Communication


Software-based Tools

Let’s look at:
the various types of software-based
communication tools
which artifacts are best suited to each type

Software Tool
Categories


Issues with Office-type Tools?
No supporting database
No associations, traceability is difficult
Re-use is difficult
No support for meta-data
No integration between diagram & elements
Requirements management is very difficult
Reporting is WYSIWYG, no automated
‘packaging’


How to choose? Follow the process!
Conduct
Assess Problems, Product
Current processes Assessmen
State
Detailed t
Toolkit
Req’ts

Identify Define Select
BA Toolkit HL Toolkit
BA Toolkit Product(s)
Needs Needs Req’ts

Identify Implement
Toolkit Toolkit Gaps BA Toolkit
Gaps


Document Your Requirements


Functional Requirements – Usability

Easy to use; intuitive, consistent interface
Easy to learn; online help, tutorials
Supports fast data capture & diagramming
‘Drag and drop’ existing elements onto diagram


Functional Requirements
– Requirements Capture and Presentation
Tree view
Parent-child hierarchy
Expand/collapse
Table/spreadsheet view
List of attributes
Parent-child structure maintained
Traceability
Matrix view
Tree view


Functional Requirements – Traceability
Directional
Hierarchical (‘Traces To’ and ‘Traces From’)
Parent-child
Non-directional (peer-to-peer)
Cross-project (project segmentation, re-use)
Flag missing traceability
Flag ‘suspect’ relationships


– Views and Reports
Searching, filtering and sorting
Tailoring and user-defined templates
Report on text, tables, diagrams, meta-data
Multiple formats (e.g., Word, Excel, HTML, XML)
Metrics (e.g., how many changed req’ts?)
Impact analysis
Packaged output appeals to all stakeholders


– Useful Features
Spell checking
Glossaries (e.g., highlight ambiguous terms)
Bulk data selection
Range (SHIFT-Click), non-contiguous (CTRL-click)
Bulk processing
Parent-child, re-parent
Update attribute values
Traceability


Functional Requirements – Use Cases
Full integration of use case with activity
diagram
Automatically maintains activity diagram
Changes to activity diagram automatically reflected
in use case, and vice versa
Use case has different attributes than use
case steps.
Automatic numbering of steps, alternate paths
Supports ‘extends’ and ‘includes’ use cases


– User Interface Prototyping
Sketches, mockups & wireframes (low fidelity)
Simulations and prototypes (high fidelity)
Templates and branding
‘Look and feel’ widgets, banners, controls
Images and snapshots of current UI
Site maps and screen transitions/flow
User comments
Associate data model elements


– Requirements Management
Change Management / Change control
Revision history
Compare versions; shows revision marks!
Notification of changes
Configuration Management
Baselines and versioning
Release management (multi-release support)
‘Living’ Master Requirements List
Re-use


– Associations and Interoperability
Business Process
Requirements
Diagram
Requirement
Attributes Business Requirement Use Case Diagram

Traces to Business Process
Data Model
Defects Activity Diagram
Stakeholder (ERD, Class Diagram)
Requirement
Logs User Interface
Traces to Use Case
(e.g., Decisions, Mockup Data Dictionary
Issues, Risks) Solution Requirement
Data Entity
(Functional &
Non-functional) Business Rule Contains
Discussions
Data Attribute
Peer-to-peer
Association

Integration/
Association
Interoperability
References Lifecycle Management Tools
Documents, Tables. Diagrams, (e.g., quality assurance,
URLs, Images, Other Artifacts development tools)


Functional Requirements - Integration

Associate diagram elements with meta-data
Associate requirements artifacts with
reference material (e.g., documents, images
and diagrams, URLs)
Import from Word and Excel
Package requirements, using all formats of
artifacts


Document Your Requirements


Non-Functional Requirements
Work offline?
Co-located or distributed team?
Client-side or web-based?
Team size?
Concurrent or ‘named’ licenses?
Multi-user support?
Project size? How many requirements?
Data security and user management?
Scalable for future growth?

Non-Functional Requirements
– Tool Administration
User-defined requirement types
Different attributes for each requirement type
Attribute formats (text, $, date/time, URL, etc.)
Attribute validation – single- and multi-valued
lists, range of values
Project templates


Keep following the process!
Conduct
Assess Problems, Product
Current processes Assessmen
State
Detailed t
Toolkit
Req’ts

Identify Define Select
BA Toolkit HL Toolkit
BA Toolkit Product(s)
Needs Needs Req’ts

Identify Implement
Toolkit Toolkit Gaps BA Toolkit
Gaps


Prepare for Product Assessment
Weight / prioritize requirements
Prepare list of candidate vendors
Check the internet, web reviews
Talk to peers, associations
Gartner reports, Forrester surveys
Consider open source software
Conduct survey based on high-level
requirements, to short-list 3-5 vendors,
Arrange for demos, training & support


And then … Caveat emptor !


Known Toolkit Challenges
Baselining, versioning, release management
Comparing versions
Integration of requirements elements
Packaging / reporting, esp. non-text and
associated elements
Ease of capturing and reporting traceability
Support for re-use


Conduct Product Assessment
Assess product compliance against detailed
requirements
1 – Compliant, with ease
2 – Compliant, with challenges
3 – Partially compliant, with workaround
4 – Partially compliant, no workaround
5 – Non-compliant
Write notes for items 2-5 (for later reference)
Determine workarounds to tool gaps
Are they worth the cost & effort?


Select Product(s)
Consider cost of ownership vs. functionality
Migration and training
Licensing, vendor support, maintenance
BA support (e.g., tool administrator(s), in-
house trainers, customized user
documentation)
Integration / interoperability of multi-vendor
toolkit
Hardware (e.g., server, database license)


Implement BA Toolkit
Develop training, guidelines, best practices,
pre-defined templates or reports
Conduct pilot to test new toolkit, including
testing of the training and documentation
Consider phased deployment to reduce
project impact, esp. with multi-vendor toolkit
Provide toolkit support
Implement feedback mechanism


One Final Thought …


Questions?

Thank you!

Marie Halsey
mhalsey@magma.ca


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