BASIS Quality Forum Presents “Poor Business Analysis -The Culprit of IT project Failure” The Problem Statement Statistics on Project success rate Finding the reason : the Culprit The solutions The stakeholders role Ecosystem of a successful Project

1. BASIS Quality Forum Presents
“Poor Business Analysis
-The Culprit of IT project
Failure” Karim Majumder
Rezaul
(Business Analysis Professional)

2. Agenda
• Introduction by M Manjur Mahmud –
Convener BASIS Quality Forum
• The Problem Statement
• Statistics on Project success rate
• Finding the reason : the Culprit
• The solutions
• The stakeholders role
• Ecosystem of a successful Project
• Q&A

3. The Problem
Most IT Projects Deliver Little or No Business Value
• Too many failed or challenged projects.
• Significant functionality is developed but never used.
• Projects seldom deliver benefits identified in the
business case.

4. Project Success Rates
Source: Standish Chaos Report, 2009

5. Project Success Rates
Category
Description
Original
1994
Waterfall
2011
Agile
2011
Successful
Project
Completed on time and budget,
with all features and functions
as specified.
16%
14%
42%
Challenged
Project
Completed, but were over budget,
late, or lacking some originallyspecified features and functions.
53%
57%
49%
Project
Impaired/Fail
ed
Abandoned or cancelled at some
point and thus became a total loss.
31%
29%
9%
Source: Standish Group Chaos Reports

6. It Gets Worse!!!
The following projects would have been considered successful if
they had delivered all planned scope on-time and on budget using
the CHAOS criteria, but …
• Solution was ultimately not used and withdrawn because of
lack of user adoption
• Solution did not deliver on business case
• Solution did not deliver expected business benefits
• Solution had poor usability, poor performance, or high error
rates requiring rework

7. Waste: 45% of Functionality is never used
Source: Standish Group Report at XP Conference 2002 by Jim Johnson

8. Where are the Benefits?
• “78% of Information Systems projects failed to realize even 50%
of the originally identified benefits.” Source: Management Today
• “Only 40% of CFOs find that their IT investments are producing
the returns they expected. ” Source: Gartner, How to Optimize IT Investment Decisions
• “30-40% of systems to support business change deliver no
benefit whatsoever.” Source: OGC, Successful Delivery Toolkit

9. The Culprit
Most Projects Deliver Little or No Business Value
Poor business analysis is at the root of most project failures.
o Poor requirements
o Poor communications between business and development teams.
o Business cases are mostly used to secure funding and are not used to
manage project outcomes.
o Low business analysis maturity levels for most organizations

10. Top 3 Reasons for Challenged Projects
1. Lack of User Input
2. Incomplete Requirements
3. Changing Requirements
All of these are symptoms of
Poor Business Analysis
Source: Standish Chaos Report, 2011

11. The Cost of Poor Business Analysis
1. Companies with poor business analysis capability will have three times as many project
failures as successes.
2. 68% of companies are more likely to have a marginal project or outright failure than a
success due to the way they approach business analysis. In fact, 50% of this group’s
projects were “runaways” which had any 2 of the following:
• Taking over 180% of target time to deliver.
• Consuming in excess of 160% of estimated budget.
• Delivering under 70% of the target required functionality.
1. Companies pay a premium of as much as 60% on time and budget when they use poor
requirements practices on their projects.
2. Over 41% of the IT development budget for software, staff, and external professional
services will be consumed by poor requirements at the average company using average
analysts versus the optimal organization.
3. The vast majority of projects surveyed did not utilize sufficient business analysis skills
to consistently bring projects in on time and budget. The level of competency required is
higher than that employed within projects for 70% of the companies surveyed.
Source: Business Analysis Benchmark, IAG Consulting

12. The Remedy
Deserves true practice of
Effective Business Analysis
12

13. Effective Business Analysis Must Address Solution
Planning, Solution Delivery and Benefits Realization
Solution Planning
•Develop business case
•Define solution scope
•Identify stakeholder needs
•Develop requirements
Solution Delivery
•Monitor project delivery
•Assess and validate solution
•Define transition requirements
•Engage stakeholders
Benefits Realization
•Measure performance based on KPIs
•Assess performance
•Optimize as needed

14. Business Analysis is Much More than Requirements
Requirements
•Requirements Elicitation
•Requirements Development
•Requirements Management
Enterprise Analysis
•Problem Analysis
•Business Case
Organization and Process Change
•Business Process Modeling
•Business Process Improvement
•Stakeholder Analysis and Communications
•Organizational Readiness
•Organizational Change Management
Manage Delivery of Value
•Solution Assessment and Validation
•Business Benefits Realization
•Enterprise Portfolio Management

15. Business Analyst Role:
More About the Business than IT
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Business outcome oriented
Business process improvement skills
Organizational change skills
Broad (not deep) IT technical knowledge
Customer management skills
Ability to conceptualize and think
creatively
Can articulate a vision
Interpersonal skills, ethics, and integrity
Negotiation and conflict management skills
Analytical and communication skills

16. A Balanced Scorecard View of Business Value
Financial
Stakeholder
Delivering a positive ROI for
stakeholders by increasing
revenues, decreasing costs.
Satisfying the needs of
internal and external
stakeholders.
Internal Business Process
Learning and Growth
Improving performance
by reducing cycle time,
eliminating waste, avoiding
defects, increasing
efficiency, and spending less
time on non-value added
activities.
Helping users adopt the
solution resulting in
increased skills, high
employee satisfaction, and
bringing innovation to new
and existing products.

17. 7 Business Analysis Techniques To Deliver More
Value

18. Change Project Success Focus to Delivering Value
• The ultimate success of a project involves much more than
successfully delivering the solution on time, on budget, and
with all planned scope.
• The main criteria for success is whether the business
benefits as proposed during the initial business case were
achieved.

19. Why is a Business Case Needed?
• A well-defined business case is an essential first step
for delivering more value to the business.
• The successful business case allows the decision maker
to confidently choose a course of action. In
the end, it answers the question: “Should we
undertake this initiative?”
• The Business Case should not be used just for funding.
It should be updated and used in the benefits
realization management process.

20. Requirements: Three Perspectives
• Business Perspective – What business needs must be satisfied,
and what metrics identify that the project is successful?
• Customer/User Perspective – What problems needs to be
solved how will users interact with the solution?
• Technical Perspective – What technology changes are
required to ensure that the project’s objectives will be
accomplished?
Not adequately addressing all three of these perspectives
will result in a suboptimal solution.

21. 5 Types of Requirements
• According to IIBA’s BABOK, there are
five types of requirements.
• The vast majority of requirements
management tool only addresses
solution requirements.
• Business stakeholder and transition
requirements cannot be not ignored to
achieve maximum value.
• If your current requirements tool does
not support all 5 types of
requirements, find a different tool!
Business Requirements
Stakeholder Requirements
Solution Requirements
Functional
Nonfunctional
Transition Requirements

22. Good Requirements are Needed to Achieve Value
Requirement Type
Goal
Business Requirements
Maximize business value
Stakeholder
Requirements
Achieve user adoption and minimize post-implementation productivity
drop
Solution Requirements
Shorten delivery cycle and eliminate waste through less rework and
prioritization
Transition Requirements
Minimize post-implementation productivity drop

23. The Case for Good Requirements
Quality and Cost Savings
As much as a 200:1 cost savings
results from finding errors in the
requirements stage versus finding
errors in the maintenance stage of
the software lifecycle.
56% of all bugs can be traced to
errors made during the
requirements stage

24. How can better Collaboration between
the Solution Team and Stakeholders Help?
• Lack of user input is the #1 cause of project failures.
• Joint ownership of requirements results in lower costs and
higher quality solutions.
• Organization change goes more smoothly when users and
other stakeholders are involved through the entire lifecycle.
• Effective business analysis is the key for better collaboration
between stakeholders and developers.

25. Joint Responsibility for Requirements
Makes a Big Difference
Who owns Primary
Responsibility for Requirements
Budget
% of
Target
Time
% of Target
IT
162.9
172
91.4
172.9
Business
196.5
245.3
110.1
201.3
Jointly Owned
143.4
159.3
103.7
163.4
Source IAG Business Analysis Benchmark, 2008
Functionality
% of Target
Stakeholder Time
% of Target

26. Engage your Stakeholders!!!
• Learn background and purpose of project
• Document and express needs
• Document business rules
• Gather relevant background materials
• Review and validate requirements
• Participate in requirement prioritization
• Review design documents
• Participate in software and prototype demonstrations
• Participate in retrospectives and capturing lessons learned
• Provide additional information for unclear requirements
• Build test scenarios and test cases for user acceptance testing
• Perform user acceptance tests
• Approve changes to requirement specifications
• Define transition requirements
• Help prepare the organization for change

27. What is Solution Scope?
Project Scope
Solution Scope
Project Scope includes the
work needed to create a
product or deliver a service or
result. Project Scope defines
the work required to create
and deploy the product. The
project scope statement is
prepared by the project
manager.
The Solution Scope describes
the characteristics, features,
or functions of the product or
service to be built. Solution
scope is all about the solution
to be implemented: how will
it look, how will it function,
and other characteristics, etc.
A business analyst prepares
the product or solution scope.

28. Why is Solution Scope important?
• Solution scope consists of high-level Features of the proposed solution.
• Features should be prioritized based on business value.
• Features are used to capture stakeholder needs and organize requirements.
• Using features significantly reduces solution scope creep.
• Using features is highly-beneficial for both Agile and Waterfall
development, as well as implementation of Commercial Packages.
• Managing Features = Managing Business Value
Carefully defined solution scope is key to
prevent scope creep, deliver value, and
serve as a basis for gathering user needs and
developing requirement specifications.

29. Two Types of Value for the User
Value is helping the user get a job done faster, more
conveniently, and less expensively than before.
Pain Relievers
Gain Creators

30. Identify and Understand Your Users
• Identify all your various types of users
• Prepare a persona for each user type
• The personas should contain:
 Responsibilities
 Systems and Services Used
 Profile
 Expectations
• Review the persona with real users to
ensure that it adequately represents
their view.

31. What are the Key Reasons Expected Business
Benefits are not Achieved?
• The business problem was poorly defined giving rise to a
flawed business case.
• The business case was poorly developed and established an
incorrect or unrealistic expectation.
• Requirements for the solution were inaccurate,
incomplete, or were poorly defined.
• Delivery of the solution was poorly executed.
• The technical solution was fundamentally flawed.
• The delivered solution was not effectively adopted by the
business.
• The business changed significantly between inception and
project completion.

32. Value Index
Business Benefits Received
----------------------------------Solution Cost

33. Benefits Realization Management
• Benefits realization starts with defining a realistic
business case.
• Benefits do not just happen.
• Benefits realization has its own lifecycle.
• Benefits rarely happen according to plan.
• Benefits realization is a continuous process of envisioning
results, implementing, checking intermediate results, and
dynamically adjusting the path leading from investments
to business results.
• Benefits realization is a process that can and must be
managed, just like any other business process.

34. Benefits Realization Management

35. Benefits Realization Management
1. Validate and Re-Validate the Business Case
2. Create Benefit Realization Accountability
3. Create a Benefit Realization Management Plan
4. Measure and Evaluate Benefits Realization at Key Points
5. Identify Problems and Document Solutions
6. Continually Optimize Processes, Organization, and
Technology to Achieve Benefits
7. Create a Benefits Dashboard

36. Poll
To what extent does your organization perform
benefits realization management ?
• Done for every project
• Never
• Occasionally for high profile projects

37. Portfolio Management
Portfolio Management is a corporate, strategic level process for
coordinating successful delivery across an organization's entire set of
programs and projects.
•To obtain the highest return from your available resources given
an acceptable level of risk.
•To ensure balance – in terms of investment types and organizational
strategies.
•To ensure funding allocations reflect business priorities.
•To reallocate funds when performance deteriorates and/or priorities
change.
•To manage dependencies, constraints and minimize double counting of
benefits.
•To manage Portfolio-level risk and uncertainty.
•To provide transparent reporting on performance from strategic
intent to benefits realization.

38. Portfolio Management is More Than Just Projects
Project
Portfolio
Stakeholder
Portfolio
Process
Portfolio
IT Service
Portfolio
Strategy
People
Process
Technology
PPM
Org. Change
BPM
ITSM
• Project Portfolio Management (PPM) is often not understood or
embraced and is often managed quite haphazardly.
• PPM is often has different tools and processes and
organizations to manage projects, processes, applications, and
IT services.
• Enterprise portfolio management involves addressing strategy,
people, process, and technology.

39. Portfolio Management
Managing for Value
Evaluate
Value
Alignment
Fit
Innovation
Are the benefits worth the effort and risk?
•Value
•Alignment
•Fit
•Innovation
Do the projects contribute to the strategic
goals of the company?
Optimize
Do we have the resources and skills to
complete the project?
Are we willing to invest something new and
will we gain a competitive advantage?
•Re-Scope
•Re-Classify
•Re-Assign (resources)
•Re-Design (merge)
•Remove (cancel)
•Reschedule
Monitor
•KPIs
•Solution Delivery
•Benefits Realization
•Stakeholder Satisfaction

40. Business Value Lifecycle
Portfolio Management
“Doing the Right Projects”
•
•
•
•
•
Solution Scoping
Business Case
Prioritization
Approval
Closing projects
that are no longer
important
Portfolio Governance
Project Delivery
“Doing Projects Right”
•
•
•
•
•
Requirements
Design
Build
Test
Deploy
Project Management
Business Analysis
Enterprise Portfolio Management
Benefits Realization
“Harvesting the Benefits”
• Measure
• Evaluate
• Optimize

41. The Culprit is traced by the Team
So resist it for Project Success

42. Next Generation Business Analysis:
IIBA’s Business Analysis Framework
Version 3 is coming
There are big changes coming in the
role of business analysis. The focus will
be much more on understanding
stakeholders and their needs,
analyzing change, and delivering value.
Understanding how to use these
components and the relationships
between them results in understanding
your stakeholders, what they value, and
how to better deliver that value.

43. Q&A