As we continue the discussion on the information technology perspective, let us consider the business analysis scope in relation to this perspective.
There are a few key roles that affect the business analysis scope in the information technology perspective and they include:
1 Change Sponsor: this is an executive who has a vested interest in the success of this initiative. It may be the individual who initially requested for the change, and they may be in the business, IT departments, or somewhere in-between the two.
Change sponsors can have the following roles:
- Technical team member.
- IT executive.
- Software application owner.
- Process owner.
- Business owner.
- Organizational product manager.
- Organizational regulatory representative e.g. Legal or Audit.
2 Change Targets: When changes are made they can impact numerous departments, processes, applications, and functions. So, the business analyst should identify all the areas which would be affected by the proposed change.
The business analyst should also look at the big picture of how the change would affect the enterprise and should not only focus on how the initiative would impact the stakeholders who have an interest in the change.
To achieve this, the business analyst would have to use a combination of process and functional analysis. They should also pay special interest to the technical interfaces as well as process handoffs.
3 Business Analyst Position: there may be numerous business analysts in the information technology department. These business analysts may have different job titles such as data analysts, business process analyst, process owner, business systems analyst and business intelligence analysts.
These business analysts may also have any of these backgrounds:
• A business analyst who works with the business users of an IT system.
• An IT business analyst who acts as the liaison between the technical team and the business group which uses the application.
• A subject matter expert (SME) who has experience with the current software implementation.
• A software user who has experience with both the business processes and software functionalities.
• A systems analyst who has experience in the business process and its domain.
• A business process owner who has experience with the business processes but who may not have any IT experience.
• An IT person with technical experience.
• A commercial-off-the-shelf representative who can configure the packaged solution to fulfill the enterprise’s needs.
4 Business Analysis Outcomes: The business analyst should also consider the business processes, data and business intelligence information which could be affected by the IT initiative.
The business analysts should plan the business analysis effort and the deliverables using a change approach that that incorporates the affected parts of the enterprise.
This change approach might also be influenced by the organizational standards, methodologies and techniques.
The business analysts may also be responsible for the following deliverables :
- Complete, testable, prioritized, and verified requirements.
- Analysis on solution alternatives.
- Business rules.
- Fit gap analysis.
- Functional decomposition.
- Use cases, scenarios, and user stories.
- Interface analysis.
- Prototypes.
- Process analysis.
- Process models.
- State models.
- Decision models.
- Scope models.
- Data models.