The current state is defined as the present state of a business process.
It is used to understand why the change is needed and how that change would affect the organization.
A solution cannot be made to a business process without understating the current state of that business process and what needs to change to get to the future state.
The business analyst needs to understand the current state of the business process to understand how the change might influence the organization’s processes, stakeholders, policies and technology.
How do you analyze the current state ?
It might not be easy to understand the current state of business process especially if the business process is not well defined and understood.
But there are some elements which can help you to identify and understand the current state and they include the following :
1. Business needs: The business needs are the problems that the organization is currently facing which triggered the need for a change.
Examples of some business needs include customer complaints, loss of revenue and new business opportunities.
The business need can be triggered by different people in the organization such as senior management, systems, functions, processes, customers, competitors and regulatory bodies.
If the business need is not correctly identified then the wrong solution would be implemented which might not fulfill the required need and could result in a waste of time, effort and resources.
2. Capabilities and structures: The organizational capabilities and structures are its knowledge, functions, products and services and processes.
The business analyst has to understand the organization’s capabilities and structures to understand the activities that the organization performs.
4. Technology and infrastructure: the organization’s information system is used to support their processes, customers and decisions making.
The organization’s infrastructure is used to describe its environment in relation to its physical components and capabilities.
This infrastructure includes computer hardware, physical plant and operations.
5. Policies: the organization’s policies are used to ensure that the right decisions are made, help provide guidance to staff on what to do, support organizational governance and help determine how new resources are acquired.
6. Internal assets: the business analyst should identify the internal assets of the organization such as its financial resources, patents, reputation and brand names.
7. External influencers: there are the external influencers which might present constraints, dependencies or drivers on the current state.
Some examples include industry structures, competitors, customers, suppliers, technology, political and regulatory environment