BANA

1. Explain the role of and typical tasks conducted by a business analyst

2. Discuss the value of business analysis when approaching complex business problems
3. Use the Business Analysis Core Concept Model (BACCM) to analyze problems and develop solutions
4. Summarize the key traits and attitudes needed to be a successful business analyst
5. Discuss the similarities and differences between business analysis and project management
6. Define Key Industry Terms
7. Determine the scope of a given project
8. Discuss business analysis knowledge areas and explain the processes within each area
9. Explain the various Requirements Types
10. Examine the relationship between requirements and design as it relates to the activities performed
by a Business Analyst
11. Identify key stakeholders and develop stakeholder personas for a given project
12. Manage stakeholder expectations using a variety of methods
13. Develop an appropriate problem statement for a given project factoring in stakeholder
requirements
14. Differentiate between and select an appropriate system development methodology for a given
project
Module 1 What is Business Analysis? Lesson Overview

 What is business analysis?

 What are key terms used in business
analysis?
 Examples of key problems solved within
business analysis
 What is the difference between business
analysis and project management?
Module 2 The Roles and Functions of the Lesson Overview
Business Analyst
 Functions of the business analyst
 What relationships a business analyst creates
 The business analyst relationship with the
project manager
 The business analyst and the business
 The business analyst and IT
 Common roles in the business analyst
profession
Module 3 Business Analysis Key Lesson Overview
Concepts
 What are the terms used in business
analysis?
 IIBA’s® Business Analysis Core Concept
Model (BACCM)
Module 4 Defining Stakeholders Lesson Overview

 What is a stakeholder?
 Identify types of stakeholders
 What are the different roles of a
stakeholder?
 Create a stakeholder list, maps and/or
personas

Module 5 Defining the Business Need Lesson Overview

 Define business problem/scope

 Determining risk
 Develop project goals and objectives

Module 6 Understanding and Selecting Lesson Overview

the System Development
Methodology  LEAN/Six Sigma
 Agile
 Waterfall
Module 7 Understanding Requirements Lesson Overview

 What are functional and nonfunctional

requirements?
 What are stakeholder and project
requirements?
 What are solution requirements?
 What are transition requirements?
Module 8 Business Analysis Knowledge Lesson Overview
Areas
 Business analysis planning and monitoring
 Elicitation and collaboration
 Requirements life cycle management
 Strategy analysis
 Requirements analysis and Design definition
 Solution evaluation
Module 9 Requirements Elicitation and Lesson Overview
Analysis; Business Analysis
Tools and Techniques  More details on elicitation and collaboration
 More details on requirements life cycle
management
 Tools and techniques to define requirements
 Tools and techniques to document
requirements Common Agile techniques

Module 10 Requirements and Beyond; Lesson Overview

What is it that Makes a
Business Analyst Successful?  What goes after documenting requirements?
 Design and development
 Traceability and monitoring
 Implementation and support
 Analytical thinking and problem solving
 Behavioral characteristics
 Business knowledge
 Communication skills
 Interaction skills
 Tools and technology
 Business analysis principles (K level 4/5)

1.1 The rationale for business analysis

 Why is business analysis important?
 What benefits can business analysis offer organisations?

1.2 Sectors of the economy

 Public/Government sector
 Private/Commercial sector
 Not-for-profit sector
 Drivers for each sector
 Sources of finance for organisations
 Relevance to business analysts of understanding of sectors and sources of
income

1.3 The legal and regulatory framework for business analysis

 Data protection for personal data
 Unauthorised access to information systems
 Disability access provisions
 Business compliance
 The link between the legal framework and requirements

*Note this section is not concerned with the detail of the relevant laws but the
underlying rationale for each area and the relevance to the business analyst.

1.4 Professionalism and business analysis

 The role of BCS in professional development of business analysts
 The importance of a code of conduct/ Professional standards
1.5 Business analysis within a selected lifecycle
 A lifecycle that includes business analysis activity
 Stages of the selected lifecycle
 Roles within the selected lifecycle
- Project manager
- Business analyst
- Architect
- Developer
- Tester

*Note candidates should be able to discuss one lifecycle relevant to business

analysis. This lifecycle may be a business change lifecycle or a systems
development lifecycle.

2 Business analysis techniques (K level 4/5)

2.1 Business environment analysis

 A technique to analyse the influences from the external business environment.
 A technique to analyse the capability of the internal business environment.

2.2 SWOT analysis

 Links to the internal business environment analysis (strengths and
weaknesses).
 Links to the external business environment analysis (opportunities and threats).
 Using the SWOT analysis.

2.3 Business performance measurement

 Critical Success Factors (CSFs)
 Key Performance Indicators(KPIs)
 Performance targets
 The link between CSFs, KPIs and performance targets
 The Balanced Business Scorecard

2.4 Investigating and documenting existing business situations

 Investigation techniques:
- Interviews
- Workshops
- Observation
- Shadowing
- Questionnaires
- Document analysis
- Sampling
- Special purpose records
- Scenarios
- Prototyping
 Advantages and disadvantages of the techniques
 Applying the techniques to different business situations
 At least one technique used to document existing business situations.
 *Note the technique to document a business situation must provide a means of
documenting the various aspects of the existing business situation, not just one view.
For example, an ‘as is’ business process model may be a supplementary technique
but would not provide sufficient information to document the entire business situation.

2.5 Stakeholder analysis and business perspectives

 Techniques used to identify stakeholders
 Categories of stakeholder
- Business stakeholders – project sponsor, business managers, end-users,
domain expert
- External stakeholders – customers, suppliers, regulators
 One technique to analyse and prioritise stakeholders
 Strategies for ongoing stakeholder communication and management
 Rationale for understanding business perspectives
 One technique to analyse a business perspective
 Approach to resolving conflicts in business perspective

2.6 Modelling business activities

 Rationale for modelling a conceptual view of activities
 A technique to model a conceptual view of business activities
- Types of activities
- Dependencies between activities
 Relationship between the business perspective and the business activity model
 Approaches to building a consensus business activity model

2.7 Business events

 Types of business event
- External
- Internal
- Time-based
 Rationale for analysing business events

2.8 Business rules

 Types of business rule
- Constraints on the organisation, including internal and external constraints
- Operational guidance
 Relevance of business rules to business and system process modelling

2.9 Gap analysis

 The process for gap analysis
 Techniques used in gap analysis:
- to represent the existing business situation
- to represent the desired business situation
- to analyse areas of activity
- to identify potential actions for business improvement
 Use of actions to define options for business change
3 Business case development (K level 4/5)

3.1 Rationale for making a business case

3.2 Contents of a business case

 Background description
 Options and their descriptions (see 3.3)
 Costs – areas of cost, tangible and intangible costs, quantifying costs
 Benefits – areas of business benefit, tangible and intangible benefits,
quantifying benefits
 Cost/benefit analysis using investment appraisal techniques (see 3.5)
 Risks – areas of risk, types of risk, risk analysis (see 3.6)
 Impacts – (see 3.7)
 Recommendations – the preferred option

3.3 Options
 Defining a range of options
 The ‘do nothing’ option

3.4 The financial case

 Rationale for making the financial case

3.5 Investment appraisal techniques

 Payback period or break even analysis
 Discounted Cash Flow/Net Present Value analysis
 Rationale for Internal Rate of Return analysis

3.6 Risk analysis

 Assessing the impact of the risks
 Assessing the probability of the risks
 Risk management approaches
- risk acceptance
- risk avoidance
- risk mitigation

3.7 Impact analysis

 Analysing the impacts on the organisation’s culture and behaviour

3.8 Rationale for benefits realisation

 Importance of benefits realisation activity
 Post-implementation reviews
4 Requirements definition (K level 4/5)

4.1 Requirements Engineering

 Rationale for requirements engineering
 Definition of a requirement
 Hierarchy of requirements
 Elements of the requirements engineering approach

4.2 Requirements elicitation

 Techniques to elicit requirements (see list of techniques in 2.4)
 Applying the techniques when eliciting requirements
 Knowledge types
- Tacit
- Non-tacit/Explicit
- Relevance of techniques when eliciting different knowledge types

4.3 Requirements Analysis

 Separation between requirements analysis and elicitation
 Requirements analysis tasks
- Checking congruence with business objectives and the business case
- Checking feasibility
- Prioritisation – the structure and application of a technique to allocate a
priority to each requirement. The link between the prioritisation technique
and the lifecycle for delivery of the solution.
- Structuring the requirements
- Dealing with overlapping, duplicate and conflicting requirements
 Quality characteristics of the requirements
- testability
- unambiguous
- relevant
- clear
- complete
- consistent
- traceable

4.4 Requirements Validation

 Rationale for requirements validation
 Requirements validation process
 Roles and responsibilities in requirements validation
5 Requirements management and documentation (K level 4/5)

5.1 Requirements Management

 Rationale for requirements management
 Elements of requirements management
- Identifying requirements
- Source of the requirement
- Owner of the requirement
- Cross-references for the requirement
- Change control
- Version control
- Storage of the documented requirements
 Traceability
- Forwards-from traceability
- Backwards-to traceability

5.2 Change control

 Change control process

5.3 Version control

 Configuration management process
 Levels of configuration item – individual requirement or document
 Version numbering

5.4 Tools in requirements management

 Functionality provided by tools
- Storage of documentation and models
- Linkage and cross-referencing
- Change and version control
- Access restrictions

5.5 Types of requirements

 General requirements
 Technical requirements
 Functional requirements
 Non-functional requirements

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BA Oral Examination Syllabus

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5.6 Documenting requirements
 Contents of the requirements document
- Background description
- Process models
- Data model
- Requirements Catalogue
- Glossary of terms
 Requirements catalogue entries, elements described for each requirement:
- identifier
- name
- description
- business area
- type of requirement
- author
- source
- owner
- priority
- rationale/justification
- cross-referenced requirements
- cross-referenced documents
- acceptance criteria
- status/resolution
- version number and date
 Purpose of the requirements catalogue elements.

5.7 Requirements modelling

 Purpose of modelling requirements
 Process modelling
- A technique to model the processing of a system
- The notation and structure of the process modelling technique to show:
o the actors associated with the processing
o the functions to be delivered by the system
o the associations between the actors and the functions
o the boundary of the system
- Use of the process modelling technique
 Data modelling
- A technique to model the data of a system
- The notation and structure of the data modelling technique
o the groupings of data
o the degree of the relationships between data groupings
o the concept of optional links between data groupings
- Business rules and the data model

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BA Oral Examination Syllabus

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6 Knowledge-based specialism (K level 2/3)

6.1 The role of the business analyst

 Areas covered by business analysis
- Business system investigation
- Feasibility study
- Requirements definition
- User acceptance testing
- Implementation support
- Post-implementation review
- Benefits realisation
 The holistic view of a business system
- People
- Process
- Organisation
- Information and Technology
 Competencies of a business analyst
- Business domain knowledge
- Personal and behavioural skills
- Professional skills

6.2 Relevance of the selected module to business analysis

 Rationale for gaining the knowledge from the selected module
 Relevance of specialist module techniques to business analysis work

*Note candidates are required to be able to discuss the techniques covered in their
selected specialist module.

6.3 Projects and business analysis

 Initiating a project
 Project scope
 Business analysis deliverables
 Business and project objectives

6.4 IT and business change

 The use of IT to enable business change

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BA Oral Examination Syllabus

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 7 Practitioner specialism (K level 2/3)

For the selected module:

7.1 Relevance to the business analyst role

 Use of the approach in business analysis work
 Use of the techniques in business analysis work

7.2 Relevance of the module to an organisation

7.3 Description of the module

 The approach adopted in the module
- Rationale for the approach
- Overview of the approach
 The techniques covered by the module
- Rationale for using the techniques
- Relevance of the techniques
- Application of the techniques

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BA Oral Examination Syllabus