1. Business Analysis in Outsourcing
Company
November 6, 2013
Experience Report

2. About Us
 C.T.Co Ltd. is a Europe-oriented IT solutions and services provider
 C.T.Co Ltd. has extensive experience serving large companies in
the financial services industry:
 Insurance and Reinsurance
 Banking
 C.T.Co Ltd. is a project-oriented organization
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3. Kate Alighieri Pyramid © – A
Journey from Inferno to Paradiso
 Paradiso:
a project setup
when Company BSAs work directly
with clients
 Purgatorio:
a project
setup when Company BSAs work
with BAs on customer side
 Inferno:
BSA efforts and
body are sold, but the purpose is
vague. Good sample would be
reverse engineering for a
maintained/legacy project
Protean Wheel of
Fortune: set of factors that

impact your location within
Pyramid
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4. Protean Wheel Drivers
Reasonable Factors
Company Strategic Plans
Analyst’s (BSA) Skills and Techniques
Underlying Competences
Trustworthiness
Leadership
Communications Skills
Real Factors
All the factors above may fail due to
various reasons, so you may find
yourself in Inferno or Paradiso one
day
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5. Not on top of the Alighieri? So
what?
Keep calm…
Locate yourself on a pyramid
Stakeholder Analysis
Force Field Analysis
If at first you don’t succeed try, try
and try it again
Keep repeating useful consoling
Proverbs…
It’s better to light a candle than
curse the darkness
Who has never tasted bitter, knows
not what is sweet
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6. Project Setup: Paradiso
Business Analysis Planning and
Monitoring
Some Advantages
 Possibility to create more refined Plans for analytical activities
 Reducing the lack of clarity in the scope
Some Challenges
 Status Reports for various stakeholders (Company, Customers)
Risk Mitigation Hint – agree and include into Requirement Management
Plan, reduce the formalities where feasible
 Advanced spectrum of responsibilities for Lead BA
Risk Mitigation Hint – delegate, create guidelines, establish rapport and
trust with PM
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7. Project Setup: Paradiso
Requirements Elicitation
Some Advantages:
 No multiple intermediaries, less room for misinterpretation, garbled visions, ability to have
early involvement of business stakeholders
Analysis in Outsourcing
Company - Case Studies
 Advanced spectrum of Elicitation Techniques
Some Challenges:
 Every technique could be more efficient, but more sophisticated/demanding to apply
Risk Mitigation Hint => careful selection of Elicitation Techniques
 Number/count of stakeholders increased, risk of getting too many requirements (often
controversial ones), Business do not know precisely what they want
 Risk Mitigation Hint => attention on Stakeholder Analysis, identify Gate Keepers, create
and agree on conceptual/vision documents
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8. Project Setup: Paradiso
Requirements Analysis
Some Advantages
 Proximity to Product Owners enables to produce low fidelity
requirements model in a reasonable time
Some Challenges
 High fidelity model – detailed and refined specifications are expected
to be produced as a result of analysis (expectations from IT personnel)
prior to project stage despite the fact that the projects are supposed to
function in Agile mode
Risk Mitigation – manage expectations, define “the doneness” of the
specifications – what is considered “enough to start development and
design tests”, work on iterative basis and work to promote iterative
approach on requirements analysis/give a big friendly hand to prioritization
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9. Project Setup: Paradiso
 Requirements Management and
Communication: artifacts storage/traceability
might be the challenges at earlier elaboration stages.
Once solved become a bliss and salvation for the ongoing
work. Strong synchronization with IT stakeholders
required (QA, Software
Architecture, Development), working in triage mode
Analysis in Outsourcing
Company - Case Studies
 Enterprise Analysis:
more clear
understanding the place for the future
application, business processes not fully hidden from
Analyst
Solution Assessment and
Validation: less risk to develop what is not

required due to possibility to demonstrate to
business/conduct FATs and UATs
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10. Artifacts
 Agreement on artifacts:

Surprise! Some artifacts could be provided/developed
by customer for document analysis

Typical project artifacts that could be maintained
solely by customer business expert or together with
BSA:
Analysis in Outsourcing
Company - Case Studies
 Glossary
 Data Dictionary
 Business Processes
 Reference Data Values
 High-level business requirements/Conceptual
documents
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11. Data Dictionary/Data Catalogue
Sample
page 11

12. Reference Value/Common Codes
sample
page 12

13. Business Requirements Sample
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14. Project Setup: Purgatorio
Business Analysis Planning and
Monitoring
Some Advantages:
 Possibility to have some initial analysis plans (high-level plans)
 Possibility to do stakeholder analysis from both sides (BSA and customer BA)
Some Challenges:
 Insensitivity of sample size (drawing of faulty conclusions based on small
samples)
 Coordinating the analysis plans
 Distributed teams, cultural diversities, mental models
Risk Mitigation
 Constantly communicate and work on common plans
 Contribute to creation and maintenance of a non-judgemental environment
 Obtain project management support, understand the place of analysis plans
in overall project plans
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15. Project Setup: Purgatorio
Requirements Elicitation
Some Advantages:
 Major/significant part of activities are often done by Business Analysts on
customer side
Some Challenges:
 Conflicting requirements from different stakeholders
 Unspoken or assumed requirements
 Difficulty gaining access to the right stakeholders
Risk Mitigation
 Continually motivate BSA and external BAs to communicate and cooperate
with each other.
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16. Project Setup: Purgatorio
Requirements Analysis
Some Advantages:
 Having business requirements ready, some business specifications may be
ready for detailed/system analysis
Some Challenges:




Balancing with Software Architecture to be in line with requirements
Managing Expectations with QA/Testing Team
Coordinating the analysis plans
Distributed teams, cultural diversities, mental models
Risk Mitigation
 Communicate and constantly synchronize with Architects, work on your
communication skills - be polite and assertive
 Make Use Case/Feature meetings with involved personnel (triage
BADEVQA)
 Contribute to creation and maintenance of a non-judgemental and friendly
environment
 Work with Terminology – have a common Glossary in the project
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17. Project Setup: Purgatorio
Requirements Management and
Communication
Some Advantages
 Already existing collaboration tools on customer side
Some Challenges
 Multiple tools to store documentation artifacts (requirements package)
 Vague traceability structure
 Requirements’ package review on client side – time constraints/too complex models
 A lot of change requests and it is more challenging to elicit the real need behind the CR
due to intermediaries
Risk Mitigation Hints
 Revise/check the traceability – is it possible to go from business requirement till more
detailed/system specifications
 Conduct requirements presentations instead of sending lengthy documents
 Explain the necessity of sign-off (at least partial)
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18. Project Setup: Purgatorio:
Enterprise Analysis & Solution
Assessment and Validation
Some Advantages
 Typically done on customer side/not required from our company
Some Challenges
 Option #1: “Big picture” is not visible, almost hidden
 Option #2: Not totally hidden, but still vague
Risk Mitigation Hint
No explicit hints, skillful elicitation & underlying competencies are required to get more
information on business processes when required
 More attention to review and sign-off should be paid

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19. Project Setup: Purgatorio: Solution
Assessment and Validation
Some Advantages
 Having a hidden force - great QA team within company finding a lot of tricky test
scenarios and identifying gaps
 Participate in a demo sessions with business (upon agreement with business people)
Some Challenges
 QA teams are very productive - bombarding BSAs with test scenarios/review/document
tasks
Risk Mitigation Hint
 Establishing cooperation mode with QA team – agree on review cycles /overall
cooperation to function in efficient mode
 BSA’s participation in FAT/UAT as a person who communicates and clarifies
requirements, contribution of BSAs to acceptance criteria in the form of testing primers
 Explaining the notion of “business case” – prioritization aspects/what actually happens
from business side
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20. Project Setup: Inferno
Some Advantages:
 Could be less stressful in a very beginning of assignment
 Status updates do not attract much attention (management seems uninterested in the results
of BSA’s work – often due to high load on other projects/tasks)
Some Challenges:
 No clear view on the reasons why BSAs are assigned to the project or opinions highly differ
 No counterparty is assigned on customer’s side/no direct connection with the customer
 Key stakeholders are not available to share the knowledge
Risk Mitigation hints
 Work closely with Project Managers on both sides, start with internal PM to define initial scope of
activities and their purpose. Ask for help/resources to organize short interviews with key people
 Interview key stakeholders identifying gaps in existing requirements/systems
 Do not rush immediately into elicitation and analysis activities once the first target is identified
 Pay attention to analysis plans first
 Pay attention to the skill set – be not afraid to ask for additional resources and if those cannot
be provided report it as a risk
 Get out of Inferno – either the Protean Wheel will lift the project to Purgatorio
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or Paradiso or consider changing the project

21. Recommended Reading
Business Analysis & Leadership. Influencing Change
ed. by P. Pullan , J. Archer
T. P. Wise Trust in Virtual Teams
M. Scannel, M. Abrams et al.
The Big Book of
Virtual Team Building Games
N. M. Setle-Murphy
Leading Effective
Virtual Teams
Agile Extension
to the Babok
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