System thinking skills in business analysis

To completely understand the organization, the business analyst would have to understand the people, processes, and technology within the organization.

Every organization is made up of a system which has properties, behaviors, and characteristics that appear from the relationship of its components.

To understand the complete system the whole system would have to be analyzed.

For example, just because a business analyst knows that a customer may return an item they purchased doesn’t give the business analyst the full picture.

The analyst must analyze the impact the return has on such items as inventory, finance, and store clerk training.

In the context of systems theory, the term system includes the people involved, the relationship between them, the external forces affecting their behavior, and all other relevant elements and factors.

There are some measures which could be used for effective systems thinking and they include:

  1. communicating how a change to a component affects the system as a whole.
  2. communicating how a change to a system affects the environment it is in.
  3. communicating how systems would adapt to internal and/or external pressures and changes.