Analytical and Problem Solving Skills

“…The Analyst will [...] facilitate the identification, design and implementation of business and systems solutions in a rapidly growing and evolving business…”   What strategic initiatives might a business analyst as described above discover, and how will they deliver the “business and systems solutions” in today’s 21st Century competitive environment?
 

I was very intrigued with this concept when I read it in the Business Analysis Body of Knowledge (BABOK). This concept is so powerful and if used more in organizations can produce remarkable events; however, I have found that Systems Thinking can only be utilized to its fullest potential if the culture of the organization allows for that. However, as business analysts this is a concept that we should have in our arsenal of tools...

Facilitation is one of the most critical soft skills of the business analyst, as well as one of the most difficult to master. Working with various stakeholders requires tremendous preparation, insight and finesse in addition to an understanding of key principles of the facilitation process.

Over the years I have noticed that we, as Americans, seem to possess a knack for attacking the wrong problems which I refer to as the “Rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic” phenomenon. I see this not only in the corporate world, but in our private lives as well. Instead of addressing the correct problems, we tend to attack symptoms.

In a process improvement project, the analysis team needs to model and examine several aspects of the current (AS-IS) value chain under study. The purpose of the analysis is to create a visual diagram of the value chain along with its associated text and metrics and determine if there are possible areas of improvement (e.g., reductions in cost or time). If improvements are identified, the team constructs a modified value chain model (TO-BE) with the improvements and then conducts a gap analysis on how to transition to the new value chain. This article focuses on the analysis of the current value chain by providing a method for structuring the AS-IS and TO-BE process improvement discussion.

Regretably, many of today's Systems Analysts are still glorified programmers in sheep's clothing.  I recently came across some job postings under the title, "Systems Analyst," and it occurred to me people still do not know what it means. In the postings I saw things like "seeking a Systems Analyst with 4 - 6 years experience... Candidate must have experience with JAVA and the ATG application framework."

 Ever had to interview your boss – or a divisional general manager – or the managing director of a key customer? What about a politician or a senior executive in a government department? All these scenarios can be nerve racking, yet they’re something a business analyst may be required to do on a regular basis.

In this final paper of the series we look at decision making techniques – how to select the best idea from the many we’ve come up with – and how to justify our recommendation to our client, manager and peers.
 

For almost every analyst, the day comes when you write a set of requirements that causes engineers to bemoan a recent development project that they just coded. "If only we'd known that you wanted to build this, we would have made the last project more flexible. Now we've hardcoded in changes that will take days to rebuild."

A lot of people think that coming up with solutions to business problems is the hardest part about being a business analyst – particularly when working with a client who knows more about the business than you ever will. Don’t believe it, after all you’ve already made considerable progress in understanding the problem – and your understanding is based on level-headed analysis rather than a potentially emotional interpretation by your client.

Now it’s time to look for solutions – to be creative and think outside the square. In this paper we’ll offer a few tips and techniques for getting the creative juices flowing. We’ll show you that anyone can be creative and that solutions can come from the most unexpected places – you don’t have to be a subject matter expert to come up with valid, workable solutions to business problems.

Like all professions, business analysis has its golden rules – rules that are fundamental to the design of successful business systems. They might seem like common sense but it’s surprising how often we forget them and get ourselves into hot water.

If Agile is to become the next zeitgeist for development, what will become of the traditional Business Analyst?

We all know the traditional waterfall mantra: analyze, design, build then test... underpinned by the common belief that the more you analyze up front the more you save in maintenance later on. This has had a huge impact on the way we organize our teams: separating functions and putting a heavy emphasis on theoretical modeling.

When a project kicks off, the classic Gantt chart dictates that analysts are on-boarded early for a lengthy requirements analysis stage. Once the requirements specification is 'signed off' the analysts are often relieved of their posts for the design crew to take over. The 'sign off' fest continues until eventually the user community is (invariably) force fed a UAT phase and the fledgling product is launched; all the while resources are inhaled and exhaled as the project plan demands. The project then becomes more of a way to co-ordinate a set of individual skill sets and activities.

Many of us are familiar with the process of business analysis – start by gathering requirements from stakeholders then turn them into a specification which developers can understand. These days however, we need to do more than just document the requirements.

We need to work with stakeholders and business users to understand their systems and analyse their problems – why do you do it this way, why not that way? This is the real value add that the analyst brings to the table. It means challenging the status quo, pushing the boundaries, looking for alternative or creative solutions.

To develop a solution - unless we’re very lucky - we first need to understand the problem that drives the need. In this paper we'll look at how to understand and define business problems – part 2 will look at how to generate solution ideas and part 3 will cover how to choose the best ones.

Author: Jan Kusiak

In the past I have discussed the need to manage data (and all information resources) as a valuable resource; something to be shared and reused in order to eliminate redundancy and promote system integration.  Now, our attention turns to how data should be defined.  Well defined data elements are needed in order to properly design the logical data base as well as developing a suitable physical implementation.

The subject of current systems analysis is usually greeted with dismay or disdain by systems departments. There are many reasons for this. In many installations, the support of current systems takes more than 85% of the systems department's time, and the departments are more than ready to get on with new systems development and bury the old, non-working systems as quickly as possible. In cases where systems do not require a lot of maintenance, the systems department may find that the current systems are not giving management the kind of information it needs for effective decision making; these current systems become likely candidates for replacement.

However, there are some very legitimate reasons for documenting existing systems...