As a Business Analyst, you may find yourself tasked with making recommendations on which solution to chose to fulfil the business need.
But how do you choose the best one ?
Options analysis is the process of evaluating different options in order to decide on the best course of action.
It is regularly used in project managements t ensure that all the possible options are considered before the best one is chosen.
So how is Options Analysis performed ?
To perform options analysis, you would have to complete 3 steps and those steps are:
- Options Identification: in this step, you would start with a baseline plan which identifies the current business environment. The current business environment is used to explain what would happen if nothing changes. It is also called the “do-nothing” scenario.
Then you should define the situation where a solution is implemented. This is also called the “do-minimum” scenario and it involves identifying the scenarios with the least cost and effort.
The next scenarios to be identified are the “do-something” scenario. This scenario identifies solutions that are a balance between cost, quality, time and effort.
2. Feasibility Analysis: this step is used to perform demand analysis which is the evaluation of a project’s investment through the assessment of the current and forecast demand.
Demand analysis is used to identify the organizational demand for the solution. The result of the analysis can be used in the selection of the final solution. The demand analysis has to be performed for each of the “do-nothing”, “do-minimum” and “do-something” scenarios.
The next step in the process is to analyze the current project resources such as employee resource and training requirements to identify the costs involved in each of the potential solutions.
Step 3. Option Selection: in the final step, you would have to perform the cost-benefit analysis which is the analysis of the cost versus the benefits of each of the options. It compares all the options to decide on the best possible solution, which is used in making the final solution decision.
Once all the steps are completed the Business Analyst would have all the information they would need to make a solution recommendation.