Business analysis is a set of knowledge, tasks, and techniques used to identify business needs and determine solutions to business problems; in order to redesign of a process or organizational structure. Therefore, examine the role of the business analyst, the core concepts and leadership skills needed as a business analyst.

1. Business Analysis
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2. Business Analysis
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3. Business Analysis Essentials
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4. Business Analysis Essentials – Introduction.
☺ Look into the role and responsibilities of the
Business Analyst (BA), being the communication link
between all business areas and a critical player in
project success.
☺ Discover the techniques for ensuring project
success every step of the process, from identifying
and analyzing potential projects to making sure that
the final project product meets the requirements
identified.
☺ Learn to define the scope of work and master
requirements gathering techniques that work for a
variety of projects.
☺ Consider unique needs of customers, stakeholders,
as you work toward building, documenting,
communicating, and managing requirements.
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5. Business Analysis Essentials - Aim of publication.
To bring to the reader or the learner core
concepts and knowledge associated with
business analysis.
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6. Business Analysis Essentials – Summary.
☺ Business analysis is a set of knowledge, tasks, and
techniques used to identify business needs and determine
solutions to business problems.
☺ This in turn will allow redesigning of a process or
organizational structure.
☺ Therefore, it’s worth examining the role of the BA, the
core concepts and leadership skills needed as a BA.
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7. Business Analysis Essentials - Learning Objectives.
☺ After developing the KeyPoints outlined in this publication, you should
mainly be familiar with:

role and importance of the BA.

vocabulary standards and business analysis practices.

plan BA requirements activities.

elicit requirements from stakeholders, with an emphasis on
interviews.

analyze stated requirements, with an overview of modeling
techniques.

document requirements for different types of projects.

verify and validate requirements.

elements of requirements management and communication and the
BA's role in them.

elements of solution verification and validation and possible BA roles.

enterprise analysis: choosing appropriate projects.

necessary competencies and best practices of Business Analysis.
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8. *** About the Structure and Flow of our Presentations ***
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9. Business Analysis Essentials - Sections List.
 (Section 1) Business Analysis Core Concepts.
 (Section 2) Introduction to Requirements Planning.
 (Section 3) Eliciting Requirements.
 (Section 4) Requirements Planning and Management.
 (Section 5) Analyzing Requirements.
 (Section 6) Validating Requirements
 (Section 7) Enterprise Analysis and Business Case.
 (Section 8) Communicating and Implementing Requirements
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10. (Section 1) Business Analysis Core Concepts – Summary.
☺ Business analysis is a set of knowledge, tasks, and techniques
used to identify business needs and determine solutions to
business problems.
☺ Such solutions can be the specific development of a new system
component or, more significantly, the redesign of a process or
organizational structure.
☺ BAs practice business analysis.
☺ Therefore, one needs to examine the role of the BA, the core
concepts of business analysis, and the associated knowledge
areas.
☺ It’s also recommended to grasp the knowledge, collaboration,
and leadership skills needed as a BA.
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11. (Section 1) Business Analysis Core Concepts – HighPoints.
 Introduction to Business Analysis.
 Skills in Business Analysis.
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12. (Section 1) HighPoints: Introduction to Business Analysis.
☺ recognize the value of knowing about the core concepts and
knowledge areas associated with the business analysis
profession.
☺ describe the role of a BA.
☺ discover the requirement types, the knowledge areas of
business analysis and their associated activities.
☺ identify how the knowledge areas of business analysis
relate to one another.
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13. (Section 1) HighPoints: Skills in Business Analysis.
☺ recognize the value of knowing about knowledge,
collaboration, and leadership skills in business
analysis.
☺ distinguish the knowledge skill sets of business
analysis and their associated skills.
☺ identify the skills associated with the collaboration
skill sets of business analysis
☺ acknowledge the leadership skill sets and their
associated skills.
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14. (Section 2) Introduction to Requirements Planning – Summary.
☺ BAs must plan and closely manage requirements for
projects in accordance with existing standards in their
organizations.
☺ They must identify key roles and stakeholders, decide on a
work division strategy, identify requirements activities and
requirements risk, and manage project scope.
☺ To perform the above, you will first need to learn to
examine the requirements planning and management
knowledge area of business analysis.
☺ As it outlines the fundamental tasks of planning and
managing requirements and also outlines the general
considerations that the BA should make when planning
requirements.
☺ Also, there is a need to know to examine how to classify
roles within a project, and then outline the techniques used
to draw up a list of stakeholders, and finally demonstrate
the different work division strategies that can be applied
to a project.
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15. (Section 2) Introduction to Requirements Planning – HighPoints
 Requirements Planning and Management.
 Project Planning and Organization.
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16. (Section 2) HighPoints: Requirements Planning and Management.
☺ recognize benefits of knowing about the
fundamentals of requirements planning and
management.
☺ identify the purpose of each key tasks
involved in planning and managing
requirements in a business analysis.
☺ see the methodology-related best practices
for planning and managing requirements for a
project
☺ consider the general considerations for
planning and managing requirements for a
project.
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17. (Section 2) HighPoints: Project Planning and Organization.
☺ recognize the benefits of knowing about the techniques
used to plan and organize a project.
☺ use the criteria of the RACI matrix to determine the
responsibilities of various roles during requirements planning
and management.
☺ evaluate the techniques for drafting a stakeholder summary.
☺ determine most appropriate work division strategies to apply
to a project.
☺ identify strategies used to divide work to their examples
☺ appreciate key concepts associated with the techniques
used to implement a work division strategy for a project.
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18. (Section 3) Eliciting Requirements – Summary.
☺ Requirements elicitation is the gathering or – "drawing
out" – of system requirements.
☺ This is achieve by communicating with users, customers,
and stakeholders in the development of a system.
☺ It is a pivotal knowledge area of business analysis and,
as such, the BA must be able to elicit requirements that
are complete, clear, correct, and consistent.
☺ For this reason, readers and learners need to grasp
preparation tasks, recommended practices, and proven
techniques associated with eliciting requirements.
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19. (Section 3) Eliciting Requirements – Summary.
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20. (Section 3) Eliciting Requirements – HighPoints.
 Introduction to Eliciting Requirements.
 System and Document Elicitation Techniques.
 Individual and Group Elicitation Techniques.
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21. (Section 3) HighPoints: Introduction to Eliciting Requirements.
☺ recognize the benefits of knowing about the
recommended practices for eliciting requirements.
☺ consider key tasks for preparing requirements
elicitation.
☺ identify key tasks associated with conducting
requirements elicitation.
☺ evaluate a description of a requirements-elicitation
process for its use of recommended practices.
☺ pair requirements-elicitation best practices to
challenges that they overcome.
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22. (Section 3) HighPoints: System and Document Elicitation Techniques.
☺ recognize the benefits of knowing about elicitation
techniques system and documentation.
☺ appreciate situations in which document analysis is
appropriate.
☺ link the task items to the stages of interface
analysis that they are associated with.
☺ select the appropriate prototyping strategies for a
situation.
☺ distinguish situations where it would be appropriate
to use reverse engineering to elicit requirements.
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23. (Section 3) HighPoints: Individual and Group Elicitation Techniques.
☺ acknowledge the benefits of knowing about individual and
group elicitation techniques.
☺ analyze the use of the observation technique to elicit
requirements for a project.
☺ distinguish between the two basic approaches for
observation.
☺ recognize key concepts associated with conducting surveys
as a means of eliciting requirements.
☺ identify key concepts associated with stages of
requirements-elicitation interviews.
☺ acknowledge situations of each of the tasks associated with
stages of brainstorming.
☺ consider best practices for running and reporting on focus
group sessions.
☺ list cases of best practices for running a requirements
workshop.
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24. (Section 4) Requirements Planning and Management – Summary.
☺ BAs must be able to plan and closely manage requirements
for a project, in accordance with existing standards in the
organization.
☺ They must first identify key roles and stakeholders and
decide on a work division strategy.
☺ Then, they are ready to handle a key aspect of the BA role that is working with requirements.
☺ Working with requirements involves: identifying the activities
to be undertaken in order to identify requirements,
identifying the risks associated with various project
requirements, and managing project scope as it relates to
requirements.
☺ Therefore, one has to learn examining how to identify and
manage requirements risk, identify and estimate
requirements activities, control requirements scope, track
metrics for projects and products, and manage requirements
change.
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25. (Section 4) Requirements Planning and Management – HighPoints.
 Requirements Risk and Activities.
 Requirements Scope Management.
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26. (Section 4) HighPoints: Requirements Risk and Activities.
☺ recognize the benefits of knowing the risks and
activities associated with planning
requirements for a project.
☺ identify requirements that appear to be a risk
from the requirements list.
☺ discern the processes associated with
techniques used to define a risk response
strategy.
☺ regard cases of activities associated with
requirement-selection tasks.
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27. (Section 4) HighPoints: Requirements Scope Management.
☺ distinguish benefits of knowing about the key tasks for
managing requirements scope for a project.
☺ refer the tasks for the maintenance of requirements scope to
their purpose.
☺ identify cases of requirements problems in a traceability
matrix.
☺ differentiate between product and project metrics.
☺ align tasks for tracking metrics for projects to their
corresponding activities.
☺ name key activities linked with tracking metrics for products.
☺ denote key tasks associated with the four stages of managing
requirements change.
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28. (Section 5) Analyzing Requirements – Summary.
☺ There are various types of solution
development methodologies that BAs ought to
consider, when modeling software or business
systems.
☺ Such approaches include business process,
object-oriented, and structured analysis
methodologies.
☺ Although the decision of which methodology
to use depends on culture and standards of
the organization, BAs will only properly
represent the solution by first understanding
each of the modeling techniques.
☺ It’s therefore worth understanding how to
use process and flow, data and behavior, and
usage models to analyze requirements.
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29. (Section 5) Analyzing Requirements – HighPoints.
 Analyzing Requirements’ Prerequisites.
 Process and Flow Models.
 Data and Behavior Models.
 Using Models.
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30. (Section 5) HighPoints: Analyzing Requirements’ Prerequisites.
☺ pinpoint the benefits of knowing about the business
domain, solution development methodologies, and
business rules.
☺ link each analysis technique to the solution
development methodology with which it is likely
associated.
☺ differentiate between the different types of business
rules.
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31. (Section 5) HighPoints: Process and Flow Models.
☺ know the benefits of knowing about process and
flow modeling techniques.
☺ distinguish between different types of process
and flow modeling techniques.
☺ interpret key relationships in data flow
diagrams.
☺ determine the appropriate depiction of
components in an activity diagram.
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32. (Section 5) HighPoints: Data and Behavior Models.
☺ recognize the benefits of knowing about data and
behavior modeling techniques.
☺ distinguish between different types of data and
behavior modeling techniques.
☺ perform key data modeling tasks.
☺ sequence examples of ERD (Entity Relationship
Diagram) modeling by stage.
☺ identify the components of a class diagram.
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33. (Section 5) HighPoints: Using Models.
☺ recognize the benefits of knowing about usage
modeling techniques.
☺ distinguish between the different types of usage
modeling techniques.
☺ discern between user stories and use case
descriptions.
☺ interpret the relationships among the elements
depicted in a use case diagram.
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34. (Section 6) Validating Requirements – Summary.
☺ Once BAs model the behavior, processes, and usage of a
solution to a business problem, they must analyze and
document the requirements.
☺ To do so, they must compile accurate definitions and
descriptions of the solution to allow the project team to
correctly implement it.
☺ Thus, examine how to refine user and functional
requirements, quality of service requirements, assumptions,
and constraints for analysis.
☺ Also, look at the attributes that can be assigned to
requirements, the different types of requirements
documents available, and the processes of validating and
verifying requirements.
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35. (Section 6) Validating Requirements – HighPoints.
 Requirements Refinement.
 Requirements Documentation.
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36. (Section 6) HighPoints: Requirements Refinement.
☺ recognize the benefits of knowing how to refine
requirements.
☺ identify key concepts associated with decomposition
techniques.
☺ consider the functional requirements documentation
techniques with the situations in which they are
typically selected.
☺ classify quality of service requirements according to
type.
☺ distinguish between the assumptions and constraints
typically documented by a BA.
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37. (Section 6) HighPoints: Requirements Documentation.
☺ recognize the benefits of knowing about the key concepts and
techniques associated with requirements documentation.
☺ determine the most appropriate attributes to attach to a
requirement.
☺ differentiate between the most common types of requirements
documents.
☺ identify the characteristics of each of the three techniques for
validating requirements.
☺ distinguish between valid and invalid requirements.
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38. (Section 7) Enterprise Analysis and the Business Case – Summary.
☺ Enterprise analysis is a key knowledge area in the practice of business
analysis.
☺ During enterprise analysis, the BA identifies business opportunities,
builds a business architecture framework, and determines the best
project investment path for the enterprise.
☺ From this point, the BA puts forward a business case, which provides an
overall justification for the project.
☺ It’s therefore right to examine the collection of pre-project, early
project activities and approaches for capturing the necessary view of
the business; to provide context to requirements and functional design
work for an initiative and/or for long-term planning.
☺ This involves creating and maintaining the business architecture,
conducting feasibility studies, identifying new business opportunities,
scoping and defining the new business opportunity, preparing the
business case and conducting the risk assessment, and preparing the
decision package.
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39. (Section 7) Enterprise Analysis and Business Case – HighPoints.
 Enterprise Analysis.
 Making a Business Case.
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40. (Section 7) HighPoints: Enterprise Analysis.
☺ recognize the benefits of knowing about effective
enterprise analysis practices.
☺ appreciate the strategic responsibilities of the BA and their
associated activities.
☺ acknowledge the enterprise analysis activities performed by
the BA and their descriptions.
☺ know apart between the frameworks used to create and
maintain the business architecture.
☺ discern among the techniques used to create and maintain
the business architecture.
☺ determine which techniques to use at various stages of a
feasibility study.
☺ appreciate the tasks involved in defining the scope of a
project and their associated activities.
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41. (Section 7) HighPoints: Making a Business Case.
☺ recognize the value of knowing about steps and
techniques associated with making a business case.
☺ identify types of activities undertaken during each stage
of business case development.
☺ know business case development techniques and the
situations in which they are used.
☺ acknowledge steps involved in an initial risk assessment
and their activities.
☺ identify activities associated with preparing a decision
package.
☺ consider how BAs facilitate the project decision-making
criteria of executive management.
☺ discover how BAs fulfil their responsibilities throughout
the life of a project.
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42. (Section 8) Communicating and Implementing Requirements – Summary.
☺ BAs express output of a requirements analysis and
documentation phase by presenting, communicating, and gaining
approval of the requirements from project stakeholders.
☺ Once this solution design is agreed upon, the BA assists with
detailed design work, testing and quality assurance activities,
and supporting solution implementation.
☺ Therefore, it’s important to explore methods of creating a
requirements communication plan, developing and presenting a
requirements package, and conducting a formal review and signoff of documented requirements.
☺ All the same, look at how to review and revise solutions, assess
and select a final solution, support the implementation of that
solution, and perform post-implementation activities.
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43. (Section 8) Communicating and Implementing Requirements – HighPoints.
 Requirements Communication.
 Solution Assessment and Validation.
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44. (Section 8) HighPoints: Requirements Communication.
☺ recognize the benefits of knowing about key concepts
associated with communicating requirements.
☺ identify the considerations for developing a requirements
communication plan.
☺ recognize how to manage conflicting requirements accordingly.
☺ determine the appropriate format for a requirements package.
☺ make key decisions when creating a requirements package.
☺ differentiate between situations that require formal and
informal requirements presentations.
☺ sequence the steps for conducting a formal requirements
review.
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45. (Section 8) HighPoints: Solution Assessment and Validation.
☺ appreciate the benefits of knowing how to assess and validate
solutions.
☺ recognize tasks associated with the steps involved in reviewing
and revising solutions.
☺ identify situations that typically call for a certain type of
solution.
☺ evaluate a test strategy for a solution.
☺ distinguish key concepts associated with best practices for
implementing a solution.
☺ single out best practices for closing a project
☺ denote best practices associated with the stages of a postimplementation review.
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46. Business Analysis Essentials – Conclusion.
☺ At this point you should be familiar with the following:

identifying business analysis concepts and activities
in an organization.

reviewing a vision and scope document.

planning requirements activities for a project.

conducting an interview.

choosing elicitation techniques.

analyzing a location model.

analyzing a workflow model.

analyzing a use case model.

analyzing a CRUD matrix.

considering models that answer key questions.

reviewing a requirements document.

assessing the impact of a proposed change to a
requirements set.
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