Here's a complete and comprehensive compendium of all things business analysis listed from A - Z. Be sure to bookmark this page!
A/B Testing is an optimization technique that facilitates the comparison of two different versions of a design or idea to see which one gets closer to the predefined goal.
A kind of flow chart defined in the Unified Modelling Language (UML) that is used to represent diagrammatically a process and the differing paths through it. Activity diagrams are often used as a visual alternative to text to describe the tasks in a swimlane digram in more detail.
An approach to software development based upon the Agile Manifesto and which advocates for incremental and early delivery of business value, continuous improvement of the product being created and the processes used to create the product, scope flexibility and pragmatism, close collaboration within the team and a delivery of well-tested products that reflect customer needs.
A technique used during meetings and workshops whereby participants suggest ideas and opinions relating to the issue or problem. Brainstorming is predicated on the idea from one person will generate suggestions from others and that more suggestions will be formulated if judgement is suspended initially.
A specialist service that enables value for organizations by offering the following services:
A document that describes the findings from a business analysis study and conveys a recommended course of action for senior management to consider. A business case normally includes an introduction, executive summary, description of the current state, viable options to consider, analysis of costs and benefits, impact assessment, risk assessment, recommendations and relevant appendices that provide additional detailed supporting information.
Constraints, Assumptions, Risks, Dependencies & Issues on a proposed or actual project. Similar to a RAID log.
A research strategy involving in-depth investigation of single events or instances in context, using multiple sources of research evidence.
A general term for the delivery of hosted services over the internet. Common service models, listed in levels of abstraction, include: Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS).
A representation of the data held and used within an organization.
An approach to generating options and solutions that encourages the use of product design techniques, notions and ideas such as prototyping, experimentation and convergent and divergent thinking. Design thinking is focused on outcomes and the customer's views and needs.
Someone involved in the investigation of a business or IT system who can provide expertise in best practice within the industry or sector. The role could be filled by a member of the user community or a consultant.
A structural blueprint that defines and stipulates the overall structure and operations of organizations. Enterprise architecture enables for an overall view, perspective and architecture for an organization that embraces coherence, consistency, continuity and community.
A type of data model where the data objects are represented as entities and the logical business connections between them are shown as relationships.
A closed situation designed to measure the effect that an action has on a situation by demonstrating a casual relationship or determining conclusively that one thing is the result of another.
The degree to which a proposed course of action is viable given the business, technical and financial constraints imposed by the organisation and the environment in which it operates.
A visual technique developed by Dr Kaoru Ishikawa whereby a problem and its causes are represented as a skeleton of a fish. The head depicts the problem or main issue and the backbone represent the causes.
A type of requirement that stipulates what a feature or function within a system should do.
The comparison of two views of a business system: the current (as-is) situation and the desired (to-be) state/outcome. A gap analysis aims to effectively align problems and goals, resulting in opportunities, idea creation and greater levels of transparency in problem solving.
A high level requirement documenting an important business imperative, constraints and or policies.
The specific point in a swimlane diagram where a process passes from a task within one swimlane to another task in another swimlane, resulting in new responsibilities for the new actor involved.
The consideration of the impact a proposed change will have on a business system, including the people working within it.
A fundamental research method and a form of requirements elicitation in which a single analyst in direct contact with participants, collects firsthand personal accounts of experience, opinions, attitudes and perceptions to discover their requirements.
An approach to software development where development where a solution evolves through a series of iterations, each of which adds features, functionality or performance to what has been developed before.
Measures used to assess the performance of an organization, department or IT system.
A business model used to analyze consumer preferences for different features and group them into several categories.
An approach to business process improvement focused on cutting out waste in a process.
The gradual and systematic development of an organization's strategy, particularly where the business environment is relatively stable.
The process of moving an organization from an existing business process or IT system to a new one.
A graphical representation of an issue as a diagram with the name of the issue in the center and aspects associated with it as radiating branches. A mind map provides a method of visually organizing a problem space to better understand it.
An approach to prioritizing requirements. MoSCoW is an acronym that stands for:
The amount an investment is worth once all the net annual cash flows in the years following the current one are adjusted to today's value of money. The NPV is calculated using the discounted cash flow approach to investment appraisal.
A type of requirement that defines a quality or performance characteristic for a system or specified functional requirements.
An object is something within a business system for which a set of attributes and functions can be specified.
A technique used within requirements elicitation where an analyst observes work being performed with a view to identifying issues and or requirements to improve a business situation.
A model showing the place of an organization within the wider world and in relation to the external business environment within which it operates. The external environment encompasses the organization's competitors, suppliers and customers.
A consolidation of archetypal descriptions of user behavior patterns into representative profiles, to humanize, design focus, test scenarios and aid design and business communication.
A technique used to analyze the external business environment of an organization. The technique involves the analysis of the political, economic, socio-cultural, technological, legal and environmental forces that may impact upon an organization, department or team.
In agile approaches, a repository of the requirements and work items to be considered during the project.
In requirements elicitation, techniques that aim to uncover quantifiable data.
A survey instrument designed for collecting self-report information from people about their characteristics, thoughts, feelings, perceptions, behaviors or attitudes; usually in written/typed form.
A linear responsibility matrix that identifies stakeholder roles and responsbilities either durting an organisational change process or to support business-as-usual operations.
A feature that the business staff need the new system to provide.
The systematic and methodical examination of requirements discovered during requirements elicitation with a view to checking their correctness, validity and completeness.
A generic name for a document containing information about the requirements for a proposed information system.
A part of the requirements engineering framework that involves a proactive approach to investigating requirements required to resolve a business problem or enable a business opportunity. This step typically involves working with the business staff and helping them visulize and articulate their requirements.
The identification, assessment, monitoring and control of significant risks during the development, design and implementation of IT systems.
A narrative that explores the future use of a product from. a user's perspective, helping design teams reason about its place in a person's day-to-day life.
A mnemonic used to ensure that objective are clearly defined in that they are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound.
An individual, group of individuals or organization with an interest in the proposed change. Categories of stakeholder include customers, employees, managers, partners, regulators, owners, suppliers and contractors.
A model that depicts how an organization must be established to support the execution of its strategy.
A representation of a business process within an organization as it is to be performed in the future.
An essential principle of requirements engineering whereby requirements can be traced from their origin to their resolution and back from the resolution to the origin, and to the strategic context that gave rise to the requirement.
A suite of diagrammatic techniques that are used to model business and IT systems.
A feature that an actor wants a system to offer; it is a 'case of use' of the system by a specific actor and articulates the interaction between the system and the actor.
A technique used within agile development where a feature required by a user role is stated in terms of what a system should do and why the delivery of the required feature would be beneficial.
A variant of the waterfall lifecycle where the earlier analysis and design stages of a project are represented by the left, downwards-facing side of a letter 'V' and the testing stages by the right. upwards facing.
A form of analysis that maps the extent to which a product's aspirational qualities align to people's idealized lifestyle version of themselves.
A form of systems development lifecycle where the work is undertaken in discrete, disparate and sequential stages.
A meeting attended by business actors from a range of business areas and run by a facilitator, for the purpose of eliciting, analyzing or validating information. Usually predicated with an agenda prior, the workshop results are recorded and distributed upon completion.
An approach to developing and testing software where pairs of developers work together to create software against a tightly-defined timescale (usually 40 hours).
