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9) Techniques (part 2) - Coggle Diagram

- - - - • Estimates provide a rationale for an assigned budget, time frame, or size of a set of elements.
      - • Without an estimate, teams making a change may be provided an unrealistic budget or schedule for their work.
      - • Having a small team of knowledgeable individuals provide an estimate by following a defined technique generally results in a closer predictor of the actual value than if an estimate was made by one individual.
      - • Updating an estimate throughout a work cycle, in which the estimated elements are refined over time, incorporates knowledge and helps ensure success.
    - - • Estimates are only as accurate as the level of knowledge about the elements being estimated. Without organization or local knowledge, estimates can vary widely from the actual values determined later.
      - • Using just one estimation method may lead stakeholders to have unrealistic expectations.
- - - - Return on Investment
      - Discount Rate
      - Present Value
      - Net Present Value
      - Internal Rate of Return
      - Payback Period
  - - - • Financial analysis allows executive decision makers to objectively compare very different investments from different perspectives.
      - • It reduces the uncertainty of a change or solution by requiring the identification and analysis of factors that will influence the investment.
      - • Assumptions and estimates built into the benefits and costs, and into the financial calculations, are clearly stated so that they may be challenged or approved.
      - • If the context, business need, or stakeholder needs change during a change initiative, it allows the business analyst to objectively re-evaluate the recommended solution.
    - - • Positive financial numbers may give a false sense of security—they may not provide all the information required to understand an initiative.
      - • Because financial analysis is forward looking, there will always be some uncertainty about expected costs and benefits
      - • Some costs and benefits are difficult to quantify financially.
- - - - • Effective for learning people's attitudes, experiences, and desires.
      - • The ability to elicit data from a group of people in a single session saves both time and costs as compared to conducting individual interviews with the same number of people.
      - • An online focus group is useful when travel budgets are limited and participants are distributed geographically.
      - • Active discussion and the ability to ask others questions creates an environment in which participants can consider their personal view in relation to other perspectives.
      - • Online focus group sessions can be recorded easily for playback.
    - - • In a group setting, participants may be concerned about issues of trust or may be unwilling to discuss sensitive or personal topics.
      - • Data collected about what people say may not be consistent with how people actually behave.
      - • If the group is too homogeneous their responses may not represent the complete set of requirements.
      - • A skilled moderator is needed to manage group interactions and discussions.
      - • It may be difficult to schedule the group for the same date and time.
      - • Online focus groups limit interaction between participants.
      - • It is difficult for the moderator of an online focus group to determine attitudes without being able to read body language.
      - • One vocal participant could sway the results of the focus group.
- - - - • Makes complex endeavours possible by breaking down complex problems into feasible parts.
      - • Provides a structured approach to building a shared understanding of complex matters among a diverse group of stakeholders.
      - • Simplifies measurement and estimation of the amount of work involved in pursuing a course of action, defining scope of work, and defining process metrics and indicators
    - - • Missing or incorrect information at the time decomposition is performed may later cause a need to revise the results of decomposition partially or entirely.
      - • Many systems cannot be fully represented by simple hierarchical relationships between components because the interactions between components cause emergent characteristics and behaviours.
      - • Every complex subject allows multiple alternative decompositions. Exploring all alternatives can be a challenging and time-consuming task, while sticking with a single alternative may disregard important opportunities and result in a suboptimal solution.
      - • Performing functional decomposition may involve deep knowledge of the subject and extensive collaboration with diverse stakeholders.
- - - - • A glossary promotes common understanding of the business domain and better communication among all stakeholders.
      - • Capturing the definitions as part of an enterprise's documentation provides a single reference and encourages consistency.
      - • Simplifies the writing and maintenance of other business analysis information including but not limited to requirements, business rules, and change strategy.
    - - • A glossary requires an owner to perform timely maintenance, otherwise it becomes outdated and may be ignored.
      - • It may be challenging for different stakeholders to agree on a single definition for a term.
- - - - • By engaging in interface analysis early on, increased functional coverage is provided.
      - • Clear specification of the interfaces provides a structured means of allocating requirements, business rules, and constraints to the solution.
      - • Due to its broad application, it avoids over analysis of fine detail.
    - - • Does not provide insight into other aspects of the solution since the analysis does not assess the internal components.
- - - - • Significant time is required to plan for and conduct interviews.
      - • Requires considerable commitment and involvement of the participants.
      - • Training is required to conduct effective interviews.
      - • Based on the level of clarity provided during the interview, the resulting documentation may be subject to the interviewer's interpretation.
      - • There is a risk of unintentionally leading the interviewee.
    - - • Allows the interviewer and participant to have full discussions and explanations of the questions and answers.
      - • Simple, direct technique that can be used in a variety of situations.
      - • Encourages participation by and establishes rapport with stakeholders.
      - • Enables observations of non-verbal behaviour.
      - • The interviewer can ask follow-up and probing questions to confirm their own understanding.
      - • Maintains focus through the use of clear objectives for the interview that are agreed upon by all participants and can be met in the time allotted.
      - • Allows interviewees to express opinions in private that they may be reluctant to express in public, especially when interview results are kept confidential.
- - - - • Ensures concerns around stakeholder requirements are captured, tracked, and resolved to the stakeholder’s satisfaction.
      - • Allows stakeholders to rank the importance of outstanding items.
    - - • If not careful, the copious recording of data about items may outweigh any benefits realized.
      - • It may use time that could be better spent on other efforts and stakeholders could become mired in details and statistics.
- - - - • Useful in identifying opportunities or areas of improvement.
      - • Assists in building team morale after a difficult period.
      - • Reinforces positive experiences and successes.
      - • Reduces risks for future actions.
      - • Provides tangible value or metrics as a result of the effort.
      - • Recognizes strengths or shortcomings with the project structure, methodology, or tools that were used.
    - - • Honest discussion may not occur if participants try to assign blame during these sessions.
      - • Participants may be reluctant to document and discuss problems
      - • Proactive facilitation may be required to ensure that the discussions remain focused on solutions and improvement opportunities.
- - - - • Establishing a monitoring and evaluation system allows stakeholders to understand the extent to which a solution meets an objective, as well as how effective the inputs and activities of developing the solution (outputs) were.
      - • Indicators, metrics, and reporting also facilitate organizational alignment, linking goals to objectives, supporting solutions, underlying tasks, and resources.
    - - • Gathering excessive amounts of data beyond what is needed will result in unnecessary expense in collecting, analyzing, and reporting. It will also distract project members from other responsibilities. On Agile projects, this will be particularly relevant.
      - • A bureaucratic metrics program fails from collecting too much data and not generating useful reports that will allow timely action. Those charged with collecting metric data must be given feedback to understand how their actions are affecting the quality of the project results.
      - • When metrics are used to assess performance, the individuals being measured are likely to act to increase their performance on those metrics, even if this causes sub-optimal performance on other activities.
- - - - • Can be used as an effective collaboration and communication tool.
      - • Summarizes complex thoughts, ideas, and information in a way that shows the overall structure.
      - • Associations and sub-topics facilitate understanding and decision making.
      - • Enable creative problem solving by articulating associations and generating new associations.
      - • Can be helpful in preparing and delivering presentations.
    - - • Can be misused as a brainstorming tool, and the related documenting of ideas and creating associations may inhibit idea generation.
      - • A shared understanding of a mind map can be difficult to communicate.
- - - - • Clearly states the constraints that apply to a set of functional requirements.
      - • Provides measurable expressions of how well the functional requirements must perform, leaving it to the functional requirements to express what the solution must do or how it must behave. This will also have a strong influence on whether the solution is accepted by the users.
    - - • The clarity and usefulness of a non-functional requirement depends on what the stakeholders know about the needs for the solution and how well they can express those needs.
      - • Expectations of multiple users may be quite different, and getting agreement on quality attributes may be difficult because of the users' subjective perception of quality. For example, what might be 'too fast' to one user might be 'too slow' to another.
      - • A set of non-functional requirements may have inherent conflicts and require negotiation. For example, some security requirements may require compromises on performance requirements.
      - • Overly strict requirements or constraints can add more time and cost to the solution, which may have negative impacts and weaken adoption by users.
      - • Many non-functional requirements are qualitative and therefore may be difficult to be measured on a scale, and may garner a degree of subjectivity by the users as to how they believe the particular requirements ultimately meet their needs.
- - - - • Observers can gain realistic and practical insight about the activities and their tasks within an overall process.
      - • Instances of informally performed tasks as well as any workarounds can be identified.
      - • Productivity can be viewed firsthand and realistically compared against any established performance standards or metrics.
      - • Recommendations for improvement are supported by objective and quantitative evidence.
    - - • May be disruptive to the performance of the participant and the overall organization.
      - • Can be threatening and intrusive to the person being observed.
      - • While being observed, a participant may alter their work practices.
      - • Significant time is required to plan for and conduct observations.
      - • Not suitable for evaluating knowledge-based activities since these are not directly observable.
- - - - • Organizational models are common in most organizations.
      - • Including an organizational model in business analysis information allows team members to provide support. Future projects may benefit from knowing who was involved in this project and what their role entailed.
    - - • Organizational models are sometimes out of date
      - • Informal lines of authority, influence, and communication not reflected in the org chart are more difficult to identify and may conflict with the organizational chart.
- - - - • Facilitates consensus building and trade-offs and ensures that solution value is realized and initiative timelines are met.
    - - • Some stakeholders may attempt to avoid difficult choices and fail to recognize the necessity for making trade-offs.
      - • The solution team may intentionally or unintentionally try to influence the result of the prioritization process by overestimating the difficulty or complexity of implementing certain requirements.
      - • Metrics and key performance indicators are often not available when prioritizing business analysis information; therefore, a stakeholder’s perspective of the importance may be subjective.
- - - - • Ensures solutions address the right issues, minimizing waste.
      - • Many different techniques and methodologies can be used and provide teams with great flexibility in approach.
    - - • Can be time-consuming.
      - • There are many techniques and methodologies in process analysis. It can be challenging to decipher which to use and how rigorously to follow them, given the scope and purpose.
      - • May prove ineffective at process improvement in knowledge or decisionintensive processes.
- - - - Flowchart
      - Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN)
      - Activity Diagram
  - - - • Appeals to the basic human understanding of sequential activities.
      - • Most stakeholders are comfortable with the concepts and basic elements of a process model.
      - • The use of levels can accommodate the different perspectives of various stakeholder groups.
      - • Effective at showing how to handle a large number of scenarios and parallel branches.
      - • Can help identify any stakeholder groups that may have otherwise been overlooked.
      - • Facilitates the identification of potential improvements by highlighting “pain points” in the process structure (i.e. process visualization).
      - • Likely to have value in its own right. They provide documentation for compliance purposes and can be used by business stakeholders for training and coordination of activities.
      - • Can be used as a baseline for continuous improvement.
      - • Ensures labelling consistency across artifacts.
      - • Provides transparency and clarity to process owners and participants on activity responsibilities, sequence and hand-overs.
    - - • To many people in IT, a formal process model tends to reflect an older and more document-heavy approach to software development. Therefore, project time is not allocated to developing a process model, especially of the current state or problem domain.
      - • Can become extremely complex and unwieldy if not structured carefully. This is especially true if business rules and decisions are not managed separately from the process.
      - • Complex processes can involve many activities and roles; this can make them almost impossible for a single individual to understand and ‘sign off’.
      - • Problems in a process cannot always be identified by looking at a high-level model. A more detailed model with reference to metadata (such as path frequency, cost, and time factors) is usually required. It is often necessary to
        engage with stakeholders directly to find the operational problems they have encountered while working with a process.
      - • In a highly dynamic environment where things change quickly, process models can become obsolete.
      - • May prove difficult to maintain if the process model only serves as documentation, as stakeholders may alter the process to meet their needs without updating the model.
- - - - • Provides a visual representation for the future state.
      - • Allows for stakeholders to provide input and feedback early in the design process.
      - • When using throw-away or paper prototyping methods, users may feel more comfortable being critical of the mock-up because it is not polished and release-ready
      - • A narrow yet deep vertical prototype can be used for technical feasibility studies, proof of concept efforts, or to uncover technology and process gaps.
    - - • If the system or process is highly complex, the prototyping process may become bogged down with discussion of 'how' rather than 'what', which can make the process take considerable time, effort, and facilitation skill.
      - • Underlying technology may need to be understood or assumed in order to initiate prototyping.
      - • If the prototype is deeply elaborate and detailed, stakeholders may develop unrealistic expectations for the final solution. These can range from assumed completion dates to higher expectations of performance, reliability, and usability.
      - • Stakeholders may focus on the design specifications of the solution rather than the requirements that any solution must address. This can, in turn, constrain the solution design. Developers may believe that they must provide a user
        interface that precisely matches the prototype, even if more elegant technology and interface approaches exist.