Business analysis is a professional discipline that focuses on identifying business needs and determining solutions to business problems. It is a set of tasks and techniques that work together to help businesses improve their processes, procedures, systems, policies, and services. Business analysis includes requirements analysis, which ensures that the changes made to an organization are aligned with its strategic goals. Business analysts are agents of change who identify and articulate the need for change in how organizations work and facilitate that change. They identify and define the solutions that will maximize the value delivered by an organization to its stakeholders. Business analysis is used to identify opportunities, avoid costs, understand required capabilities, and model the organization.
Some key features of business analysis include:
- Enterprise analysis or company analysis: This involves understanding the organizations goals, structure, policies, and operations.
- Requirements analysis or requirements engineering: This focuses on ensuring that the changes made to an organization are aligned with its strategic goals.
- Data analysis: Gathering, tracking, and analyzing performance metrics is central to a business analysis role.
The Business Analysis Canvas is a tool that enables business analysts to quickly present a high-level view of the activities that will be completed as part of the business analysis work allocation. The canvas is broken into several sections, including project objective, stakeholder, deliverable, impact to target operating model, and communication approach.
Business analysis is a discipline that is used in many other jobs, such as management, project management, product management, software development, quality assurance, and interaction design.
