ANSWER

The Business Analysis Planning and Monitoring knowledge area is all about establishing the analysis activities, processes, and communications that will be performed by analysts throughout the project.  The outcome of this knowledge area governs the business analysis tasks in all of the other knowledge areas.  These tasks include:

• Plan Business Analysis Approach
• Conduct Stakeholder Analysis
• Plan Business Analysis Activities
• Plan Business Analysis Communication
• Plan Requirements Management Process
• Manage Business Analysis Performance

The real question implied here is “Do analysts have to have an understanding of this stage if they work in a group that has an established process”.

In very small organizations where the analysis process  isn’t well established, any analyst may be required to understand and contribute to the Business Analysis Planning activities of a project. So it's more important for all analysts to have an in-depth understanding of this knowledge area in these instances.

In larger organizations often the analysis process is already established by team or even  company-wide, therefore the outputs of this knowledge area are typically predefined for a project.  However, it’s rare to find a process that doesn’t have its problem.  Having a deep understanding of this knowledge area will help analysts identify weak or even missing steps in the process before big problems occur.  These concerns can be raised to the project leaders often saving time and money.  The most common missing process areas are usually around requirement change management. 

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Chris Adams
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