This article provides guidance for analyzing a business
problem, identifying its requirements, business limitations, and supporting
technologies, and formulating these elements with a business objective.
The business analysis begins with defining the business
objectives of the implementation project. It begins by analyzing the business
problems that you must solve and identifying the requirements that must be met
to achieve the business objectives. Also, consider the business limitations that
limit your ability to achieve your goals.
The business requirements and restrictions that you define,
duly documented, are the basis that you will then use to satisfy the
technological needs in the technical requirements phase.
There is no simple formula to define business requirements.
The guidelines presented here will help you get started with business analysis.
Company requirements
A business problem statement is similar to a project
summary. As part of formulating the business task, you create a business case
for the project (why the project is necessary or desirable) and define the
scope of the project (what is included in the project and what is not). You
also decide what features of the project are important to its success.
The result of the business requirements analysis should be a
document that defines how the implementation meets the business objectives. The
following paragraphs list topics that are commonly covered during business
requirements analysis.
Business objectives
Be clear about the goals of the project. A clear
understanding of the objectives helps focus design decisions. Here are some
examples of objectives:
Business collaboration that includes features such as
messaging, address book, instant messaging, and calendar services.
Enterprise to allow users to add and personalize content and
provide access to email, calendar, instant messaging, and other business services.
Enterprise resource scheduling for scheduling conference
rooms, offices, and other shared physical resources.
Enable online trading.
Mapping planned implementation goals with ongoing operations
can help guide design decisions.
Business Type
Determine which of the following types of businesses is
planned:
Direct-to-consumer business: also known as
business-to-consumer (B2C).
Business to Employee: called Business to Employee (B2E).
Business to Business: called Business to Business (B2B).
Some combination of these types.
Figure 1 shows the different types:
Volume
Be clear about the scope of the project. Be sure to identify
an area that can be addressed and avoid "open" statements that make
the objective unclear or unattainable.
A poorly defined scope can result in the implementation
design not being well aligned with the needs of the business.
Interested or interested
Identify the people and administrations interested in the
success of your implementation. All stakeholders must be actively involved in
defining business objectives and requirements.
Critical qualities
Identify critical areas for success. This allows you to
analyze the design according to the most important criteria.
Reached users
Determine the types of users the project will cover. For instance:
Current and former employees.
Active clients.
Branches or partners.
General public.
Administrators.
