Requirement Analysis Done By Business Analyst

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Requirement Analysis Done By Business Analyst

Requirement analysis is about stating requirements in multiple ways to accomplish three things:

  • All stakeholders should understand the requirements
  • The business/customer should be able to prioritize the requirements. They should understand the need of the requirement and also understand what the requirement would do so that they can prioritize them.
  • The solution design and implementation team should be able to design and implement a solution that meets those requirements.

Often requirement analysis is done using modeling techniques.

The need for modeling can be expressed by the popular quote – “A picture is worth a thousand words”.

In this requirements phase, you depict a requirement through a visual representation. This helps to comprehend the requirement better instead of reading pages of text and it also helps to meet the aforementioned three things.

What is Visual Modeling?

Visual modeling is the graphical representation of objects and systems of interest using graphical/modeling languages. Visual modeling is a way for experts and novices to have a common understanding of otherwise complicated ideas. Wikipedia

What is Graphical Representation?

Broadly speaking, It is the process of converting a block of text into a visual model.

Visual model examples:

  • Pictures
  • Matrices (e.g. spreadsheet with rows and columns)
  • Charts
  • Diagrams

What is a graphical/modeling language?

A modeling language is any artificial language that can be used to express information or knowledge or systems in a structure that is defined by a consistent set of rules. The rules are used for interpretation of the meaning of components in the structure. Wikipedia

E.g. Unified Modeling Language (UML), Business Process Modeling Language (BPML)

How does visual modeling help?

It takes something that is complex and makes it easy to understand.

By converting something long and convoluted into a visual model it becomes very easy to understand as the visual model speaks for itself.

E.g. An organisation chart

Benefits of visual modeling?

  • It helps to easily understand complex information

  • Encourages stakeholder participation

There is consistent to-and-fro communication between you and the stakeholders to create and understand a visual model. This helps you to also gain their approval on the requirements.

  • It helps to elicit requirement efficiently

Visual representation (e.g. a process flow using post-it notes on a whiteboard) helps to understand the process better which further helps to elicit requirements from it efficiently.

  • Identify hidden problem areas

Visual modeling helps to identify missing pieces and thus help to identify the cause of a problem.

  • Analyze “what if” scenarios

It helps to identify requirements for various scenarios of a process

  • Filter irrelevant info

You will have a huge chunk of info while eliciting and modeling helps to focus on the crucial bit and filter the rest.

Note:

Elicitation and modeling can work together, and in most cases they do. Hence as a Business Analyst don’t think they are discrete steps.

What gets modeled?

  • Current state, As-Is

The various as-is processes/systems/flows/modules are modeled. They help you to understand what is being done at present. By modeling and understanding this state you can identify problems and solutions. You also identify the key steps that need to be present in the solution.

  • Future state, to-be

In this state, you answer the question, “How do we want this to work?”

For this, you have to do a gap analysis. In gap analysis, you find out what needs to be done to move from the current as-is state to the future to-be state. The “what needs to be done” are your requirements.

Examples of Visual Model

Broadly we can divide the visuals models into two categories:

  • Business Model
  • Technical Model

Business Model Examples

Technical Model Examples

The post is  based on my notes and understanding from this BA tutorial