Hello,
I don't have any experience with business analysis but i'm wondering about something:
When you start the analysis of a business process, you want to have clear goals and objectives etc. After you have defined these objectives and goals you can start with modelling your AS-IS process, and identify areas of improvements. My opinion is that the best way to start modelling your process is to begin with identifying the bussiness functions/capabilities and the decomposition (the WHAT of the business process), so you have a clear understanding what the business process does, instead of starting with modelling the HOW and get into the details.
My question is how do you get a clear link between your objectives/goals/strategy and your AS-IS model. Is this possible when you have modelled the WHAT of the business process and by this identify the areas of improvement? By this i mean is it possible to map these objectives and goals early in the analysis phase, before modelling the details (the HOW).
Also if this is possible what is the best way to document this? Are there any methodologies to make this clear and how?
Hi Paul,
There are going to be quite a few ways of doing this mapping. In terms of a framework, I might suggest you look at http://www.businessanalysisdistancelearning.com/articles/Fundamentals%20of%20Business%20Analysis.pdf which gives a model of how analysis deliverable components map to each other.
How do you record this information - well if you are using a customisable CASE tool such as CASEWise or ProVision you can create custom fields and objects to record the mapping. If not, some kind of database (Access) could implement the mapping. Failing that, excel or similar will also do the job in a time consuming way.
As well as mapping objectives to requirements to business rules you might want to consider mapping processes to organisation units that use them, the phyisical locations of these organisation units and the data the processes logically require to opperate. There are some other components you might want to consider too andy ou can find a schema of this business model on slide 7 of http://www.businessanalysisdistancelearning.com/articles/The%20Business%20Analyst%20The%20Business%20Model%20and%20the%20Strategy.pdf
You can record this business model in the same was the analysis deliverables models. In fact I have an Access database Business Model set up and populated with some real data from a project I worked on. Will send some screen shots if of interest.
Put these two maps together and you would have a great change impact analysis tool if you get it up and working!
Let me know how you get on.
Guy
Thank you for your reply. I think i wasn't really clear about my question (english is not my best language).
In my first post i talk about decomposition of business functions of the business process. Reason why i mentioned this is because these are stable components for AS-IS and TO-BE of the business process, and show what the business process does and how all the functions create value in the business process. Like i said before i thought this could be a method of identifying the business functions that relate with your projects objectives. Is this possible?
So what i try to say here, is how/when do you get a clear picture of the objectives/problems of your project and how they relate with your business process and in what areas of the business process these objectives should/could be solved. Is it really necessary to model the process into details (the how and different levels) to identify this, or could you do this on a much easier way.
You don't need to model business processes in detail to get a clear picture of the objective/problems of your project. Since the project already started there must already have been reasons for that. Ask the project stakeholders, sponsors, and SMEs: what are the main reasons/problems/issues to be resolved with the project. Another way to ask this is " what does it mean to you for this project to be successful?".
Modeling detailed business processes has its purpose. Once you know, at the high-level, what the problem is you now need to come up with the solution. The solution does come in the context of existing processes and you need to ensure that you understand the existing processes or otherwise changes to the process, procedures, and systems may have undesired consequences.
- Adrian
When you start the analysis of a business process, you want to have clear goals and objectives etc.
Sure. much better than not having them, usually helps most with defining scope of area you want to analyze..
After you have defined these objectives and goals you can start with modelling your AS-IS process
Don't do specific AS-IS, as the people you have involved will often ask "why are you just writing down what we do today?". Model the future, what the business wants to be doing in the future. A lot of of it will still be the same as is done today but you will already be capturing what changes are needed too.
, and identify areas of improvements. My opinion is that the best way to start modelling your process is to begin with identifying the bussiness functions/capabilities and the decomposition (the WHAT of the business process), so you have a clear understanding what the business process does, instead of starting with modelling the HOW and get into the details.
BA 101: Analysis is "what"... 'how' is design.
My question is how do you get a clear link between your objectives/goals/strategy and your AS-IS model.
So, if you model the future, the mapping will be clear. They will have already been used in defining the future.
........
process models for the process steps, use cases for the details of each steps.
If you are looking for training/consulting on all this, see www.iag.biz .
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