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New Post 6/8/2015 6:06 AM
Unresolved
User is offline Marcus Mackaku
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Business Analysis and information systems 
Does Business Analysis include the study of information systems?
 
New Post 6/9/2015 11:34 AM
User is offline NitWitNick
259 posts
5th Level Poster


Re: Business Analysis and information systems 
"Does Business Analysis include the study of information systems?"

You could always do non-it work like: looking at business trends, markets, your competition and other things that are connected with how your company operates and how to make money ... the solutions may or may not affect the IT Department.

Example: I go into a Burger joint because it looks like not many people are in there there. I order several types of Burgers and fries, hoping to get them fast and leave ... it takes them a long time to fill my order and it is also wrong ... you complain to corporate.

Corporate sends you there to see whats wrong ... you analyze the surrounding area and see that the place is built where a lot of vegetarians live and the competition is a bunch of health-food stores, and over the past year or so, you find out that the Fast-Food trend in that area is diminishing and less people want to eat there. You make your reports and submit it to management for them to decide what to to

However, you also notice that the people there are taking your order by writing it down and making errors. The management decides to develop some POS (Point of Sale) system to put in their other stores ... and that is done by others in IT (Build or Buy).


There ... you analyzed something and didn't have to know information systems ... but it affected them anyway for the POS System.

 I'd Like Fries With That ... 


*** Others here may have other ideas ...

 
New Post 11/30/2015 6:00 AM
User is offline Victor Chase
7 posts
10th Level Poster


Re: Business Analysis and information systems 

Sorry but I'm not clear what you mean by 'information system'.  There are so many kinds of information systems.  Perhaps if we start from a common understanding of the terms it will help. 

If I take Business Analysis to be Business-systems Analysis and Design, then that would target both the manual and the automated parts of a business as a system; and a Business-systems Analyst would aim to understand how that works now and to re-design it such that it is better at what it does. That improvement could be just to the manual parts or to the automated parts or to both or to change the border between where processes are manual and where they are automated.  It could be that just the common-sense of someone experienced in the business will improve it, but normally it needs more than common sense; it needs a methodology for applying analysis and design techniques to reliably arrive at a major improvement.  It could even be to remove the software and computers from the process ( e.g. store your bitcoin key off-line in a safe place on a paper wallet, in a sealed, tamper-evident envelope,...  ) or to remove all manual steps and fully automate.  In my opinion, a BA needs to be able to look at a system at an abstract level, ignoring how it might be physically implemented.  Then after that, be confident in designing both the manual and computer driven parts of the implementation.  Hardware specification, programming and final optimisation would normally not be a concern of the BA unless some aspect of their design was proving to be not feasible, in terms of security or performance.
Some systems such as 4GLs , BPM systems, some CRMs, etc. are able to generate a fully working solution based on a design created by a BA and so the BA would most often be the one to create the prototype and even the final software parts of the solution with little or even no conventional 3GL programmer involved.   

 
New Post 11/30/2015 10:53 PM
User is offline FrancisClarke
2 posts
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Re: Business Analysis and information systems 
 Victor Chase wrote

Sorry but I'm not clear what you mean by 'information system'.  There are so many kinds of information systems.  Perhaps if we start from a common understanding of the terms it will help. 

If I take Business Analysis to be Business-systems Analysis and Design, then that would target both the manual and the automated parts of a business as a system; and a Business-systems Analyst would aim to understand how that works now and to re-design it such that it is better at what it does. That improvement could be just to the manual parts or to the automated parts or to both or to change the border between where processes are manual and where they are automated.  It could be that just the common-sense of someone experienced in the business will improve it, but normally it needs more than common sense; it needs a methodology for applying analysis and design techniques to reliably arrive at a major improvement.  It could even be to remove the software and computers from the process ( e.g. store your bitcoin key off-line in a safe place on a paper wallet, in a sealed, tamper-evident envelope,...  ) or to remove all manual steps and fully automate.  In my opinion, a BA needs to be able to look at a system at an abstract level, ignoring how it might be physically implemented.  Then after that, be confident in designing both the manual and computer driven parts of the implementation.  Hardware specification, programming and final optimisation would normally not be a concern of the BA unless some aspect of their design was proving to be not feasible, in terms of security or performance.
Some systems such as 4GLs , BPM systems, some CRMs, etc. are able to generate a fully working solution based on a design created by a BA and so the BA would most often be the one to create the prototype and even the final software parts of the solution with little or even no conventional 3GL programmer involved.   


 

Hi, 

It is a great post, you have explained the both parts that are manual and automated really well. And I agree that experience can help you a lot.

Thanks:)

 
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