Business Analysis

What it is

Business analysis maps how an organisation works today — its processes, the people involved, the systems and the gaps between them — before any solution is chosen. Its artefacts are a process map, a stakeholder list and a gap analysis. It answers “what is actually happening, and what does it cost?” rather than “what should we build?”.

Why it matters

Solutions proposed without this map routinely solve the wrong layer. A team automates a step that exists only because an approval happens to sit in the wrong department; a system is replaced when a policy change would have removed the need for it. The map also exposes who is affected, which decides whether a change is feasible at all. Its failure mode is analysis that never stops: a diagram that takes a quarter to produce and is out of date when the solution starts. Time-box the mapping to the decision it must inform.

In this track

1. Mapping the current process (04-product-process/06-business-analysis/01-mapping-the-current-process) — how the work really flows, including the exceptions and the workarounds.
2. Gap analysis and options (04-product-process/06-business-analysis/02-gap-analysis-and-options) — stating the gap, generating options and choosing before requirements are written.

Prerequisites

None.

Go deeper

• Requirements Engineering (04-product-process/05-requirements-engineering) — read this after the choice is made, to specify the option you selected.
• Stakeholder Management (04-product-process/07-stakeholder-management) — the people the map identifies, and how to keep them aligned.
• Product Discovery (04-product-process/04-product-discovery) — the product-side equivalent of framing the problem before choosing a solution.
• Service Design (03-design-ux/38-service-design) — the same end-to-end view applied to what the customer experiences.