Common Business Analysis Techniques:
MOST
MOST stands for Mission, Objectives, Strategies, and Tactics. This is one of the commonly used techniques in the business analysis where the BA adopts the top-down approach.
Advantage: Through this technique, the BA will have a better understanding of the organization’s needs and vision, based on which the ideal strategies and tactics are employed for best results.
Mission: This is where the BA understands how different departments of the organization come together to accomplish the mission. The mission has to be clear and precise.
Objectives: The objectives should be perfectly aligned with the mission. They should be specific and accurate. The objectives defined should be S.M.A.R.T.
S- Specific
M- Measurable
A- Achievable
R- Realistic
T- Timely
Strategies: These are the necessary actions to be taken to drive the objectives.
Tactics: These are the various plans to execute the strategies. These plans should be simple enough to be carried out by all the teams and employees in the organization who do not have an understanding of the MOST technique.
SWOT
SWOT technique is also one of the most commonly implemented techniques, where the people of different departments form a team to understand how differently they react to the changes.
Advantage: The SWOT analysis helps you to view your business in a new perspective.
Strengths – These are the assets of the company which works in favor of the overall growth of the organization. Examples of strengths include the brand name, location of the company, reliable employees, product, etc.
Weakness – The drawbacks of the organization that negatively affect the company’s growth. Examples of weakness might include – unfinished products, uncooperative employees, unhealthy competition, political atmosphere, etc.
Opportunities – Opportunities for a company are the external factors that have the potential to give them an edge over their competitors. Examples could be new regulations, customer feedback, etc.
Threats – These are again the external factors that are detrimental to your business. Examples are competitors, price of the raw commodities, etc.
PESTLE
Taking into account the environmental factors that play an important role in affecting businesses, the PESTLE Analysis is performed to understand the influence of those factors on the organization.
Advantage: The PESTLE technique is simple and easy to implement. Here, the expertise and skills of the Business Analyst is tested. Here, the external factors that pose a threat to the business are not just identified but also turned in favor of the business.
P – Political
- Government Initiatives
- Government Policies
E- Economical
- Inflation
- Interest Rates Fluctuation
- Labor costs
- Energy costs
S- Social
- Population, Cultural
- Media
T – Technological
- Latest Technology
- Communication System
L- Legal
- New Regulations, Laws
- Employment, Recession
E- Environmental
- Weather, Natural Calamities, Pollution
Business Process Management (BPM)
This technique is performed to understand the business processes. It is implemented in the analysis stage of the project to identify gaps between the existing processes and future projects the business might acquire.
The following steps are typically involved in the BPM technique to drive betterment:
- Strategic Planning
- Business Process Analysis
- Process Defining and Design
- Perform Technical Analysis to attain solutions
Ideally, the BPM technique is represented using a diagram as a flow chart where processes, decisions, and information are clearly depicted.
CATWOE
This analysis is a practical approach to business analysis by understanding the mission of the business. This stresses on zeroing it down on the business issues and tackling them to see how the change affects the business and associated people.
Advantage: This analysis mainly works by taking the customers’ feedback on a single platform and addressing them as a whole. Using this technique, the BA will be able to prioritize the various opinions based on merit and work on them.
C – Customers – They are affected the most by the issues.
A – Actors – These are the ones involved in the situation.
T – Transformation – The transformation that should take place to see a change.
W – World view – How does the transformation change the business scenario?
O – Owner – The owner of the system where the change has taken place.
E – Environmental constraints – The environmental constraints and how they might affect the change.
MoSCoW
This technique is used to mainly prioritize the projects in the business. All the objectives specific to a project are assessed and prioritized into four categories. The Os in the abbreviation do not have any significance. The rest of the four letters stand for:
M – Must Have – These are the most important elements of the project which must be included for the completion of one or more projects.
S – Should Have – These elements are important but not something the project cannot proceed without. The financial, operational, and strategic aspects determine the category of the elements if they should be in the must-haves or should-have or could-haves.
C – Could Have – These are the desired elements of the project which are good to have but can be omitted with no impact. If the project is doing well in terms of meeting the deadlines and budget, the could-haves can be dismissed. However, when behind on time or budget, these elements might be included.
W – Won’t have- These are the elements that are not likely to happen in the project.
5 Whys
Sometimes the right cause is not associated with the problem and the business suffers a huge setback due to unresolved issues. The 5 whys technique helps in performing the root cause analysis to pinpoint the issue. This technique was first implemented by Toyota in the 1970s. However simple it may look, it requires human interaction and brainstorming sessions to execute this technique. The basic idea is to link the technical problems to the human gaps. The crucial point here is not asking Whys as many times to understand the root cause of the problem but to figure out when to stop asking Why, once you realize that the cause is determined.
However, the following steps need to be performed before asking the whys.
- Write about the problem in the center of the page.
- Ask the concerned people – Why did the problem occur?
- Consider case 1.
- Ask the concerned people – Why did case 1 arise?
- Consider case 2.
- Ask the concerned people – Why did case 2 arise?
- …….and so on until the root cause is found.
Six Thinking Hats
The role of the BA requires one to conduct either virtual or in-person meetings for idea generation, feedback, collecting requirements, providing inputs or for decision making. However, these meetings more than often fail as the participants either digress from the topic, sit on one topic longer dismissing the other important issues, or get emotional. This is where the six thinking hats technique proves to be effective. It helps the BA to effectively accomplish the results.
The Six Thinking Hats is the tool used for group discussion to achieve idea generation, fact-finding, and decision-making in an organized manner.
The participants wearing specific hats partake in the meeting to efficiently conduct the meeting.
Blue- Signifies the role of the meeting facilitator to keep the participants from digressing from topic, goal, and agenda.
White- Signifies the role of fact giver to provide the necessary information regarding the issue at hand.
Red- Signifies the role of the one to absorb the information and provides intuitive, instinctive value addition to the situation.
Black – Signifies the role of the one who opposes the ideas, a critic who raises concern.
Yellow- Signifies the role of a pacifier to achieve harmony by being optimistic.
Green – Signifies the role of the innovator who encourages the out of the box thinking to address the issues.
Note: All the participants of the meeting wear the same hat at a point of time and change the hats one after the other as they proceed. The participants may wear one hat for a longer period, like a white hat for fact-finding. The situation dictates the dominant hat. The order of the hats also varies based on the issue.
What is the importance of Business Analysis?
A great Business Analyst is one who can communicate, argue, and convince the stakeholders of better results/profits if they implement the change. The Business Analyst ideally recommends the business owners to invest money where there is a requirement.
Through Business Analysis, the following results can be achieved.
- Firstly, it helps you understand the basic constitution and structure of the company.
- Then, the existing flaws and loopholes are identified.
- Next, it helps in recognizing the improvement potential for recommending a perfect solution to the business owner.
- This is then followed by establishing the need for change and demonstrating it to the stakeholders.
What are the advantages of doing Business Analysis courses?
Business Analysis is delving deep into business problems to improve profits and to drive the overall betterment of the organization. Not just the role of a BA, but the Business Analysis course is a force that helps in realizing the following:
- Taking important business decisions in an organized and structured manner. Various statistical, quantitative, and predictive modeling techniques are employed in the decision-making process.
- A formal course in Business Analysis can help the job aspirant in taking up a wide variety of roles like BI Analyst, SQA Specialist, Tester, Trainer, Database Engineer, etc.
- Helps in understanding the analytical tools like decision trees, logistic regression with the use of R, SAS, and Excel.
- Helps in getting a high-paying job like Business Analyst.
