a
| Term | Description |
|---|---|
| acceptance criteria | Criteria associated with requirements, products, or the delivery cycle that must be met in order to achieve stakeholder acceptance. |
| actor (business analysis) | A human, device, or system that plays some specified role in interacting with a solution. |
| adaptive approach | An approach where the solution evolves based on a cycle of learning and discovery, with feedback loops which encourage making decisions as late as possible. |
| Agile Extension to the BABOK® Guide | A standard on the practice of business analysis in an agile context. The Agile Extension to the BABOK® Guide version 1 was published in 2013 by IIBA®, in partnership with the Agile Alliance. |
| allocation | See requirements allocation. |
| architecture | The design, structure, and behavior of the current and future states of a structure in terms of its components, and the interaction between those components. See also business architecture, enterprise architecture, and requirements architecture. |
| artifact (business analysis) | Any solution-relevant object that is created as part of business analysis efforts. |
| assumption | An influencing factor that is believed to be true but has not been confirmed to be accurate, or that could be true now but may not be in the future |
b
| Term | Description |
|---|---|
| behavioral business rule | A business rule that places an obligation (or prohibition) on conduct, action, practice, or procedure; a business rule whose purpose is to shape (govern) day-to-day business activity. Also known as operative rule. |
| benchmarking | A comparison of a decision, process, service, or system’s cost, time, quality, or other metrics to those of leading peers to identify opportunities for improvement. |
| body of knowledge | The aggregated knowledge and generally accepted practices on a topic. |
| BPM | See business process management. |
| brainstorming | A team activity that seeks to produce a broad or diverse set of options through the rapid and uncritical generation of ideas. |
| business (business analysis) | See enterprise. |
| business (business world) | An economic system where any commercial, industrial, or professional activity is performed for profit. |
| business analysis | The practice of enabling change in the context of an enterprise by defining needs and recommending solutions that deliver value to stakeholders. |
| business analysis information | Any kind of information at any level of detail that is used as an input to business analysis work, or as an output of business analysis work. |
| business analysis package | A document, presentation, or other collection of text, matrices, diagrams and models, representing business analysis information. |
| business analyst | Any person who performs business analysis, no matter their job title or organizational role. For more information, see Who is a Business Analyst? (p. 2). |
| business analysis approach | The set of processes, rules, guidelines, heuristics, and activities that are used to perform business analysis in a specific context. |
| business analysis communication plan | A description of the types of communication the business analyst will perform during business analysis, the recipients of those communications, and the form and frequency of those communications. |
| business analysis effort | The scope of activities a business analyst is engaged in during the life cycle of an initiative. |
| business analysis plan | A description of the planned activities the business analyst will execute in order to perform the business analysis work involved in a specific initiative. See also requirements management plan. |
| business architecture | The design, structure, and behavior of the current and future states of an enterprise to provide a common understanding of the organization. It is used to align the enterprise’s strategic objectives and tactical demands. |
| business case | A justification for a course of action based on the benefits to be realized by using the proposed solution, as compared to the cost, effort, and other considerations to acquire and live with that solution. |
| business decision | A decision that can be made based on strategy, executive judgment, consensus, and business rules, and that is generally made in response to events or at defined points in a business process. |
| business domain | See domain. |
| business goal | A state or condition that an organization is seeking to establish and maintain, usually expressed qualitatively rather than quantitatively. |
| business need | A problem or opportunity of strategic or tactical importance to be addressed. |
| business objective | An objective, measurable result to indicate that a business goal has been achieved. |
| business policy | A non-practicable directive that controls and influences the actions of an enterprise. |
| business problem | An issue of strategic or tactical importance preventing an enterprise or organization from achieving its goals. |
| business process | An end-to-end set of activities which collectively responds to an event, and transforms information, materials, and other resources into outputs that deliver value directly to the customers of the process. It may be internal to an organization, or it may span several organizations. |
| business process management (BPM) | A management discipline that determines how manual and automated processes are created, modified, cancelled, and governed. |
| business process re-engineering | Rethinking and redesigning business processes to generate improvements in performance measures. |
| business requirement | A representation of goals, objectives and outcomes that describe why a change has been initiated and how success will be assessed. |
| business rule | A specific, practicable, testable directive that is under the control of the business and that serves as a criterion for guiding behavior, shaping judgments, or making decisions. |
c
| Term | Description |
|---|---|
| capability | The set of activities the enterprise performs, the knowledge it has, the products and services it provides, the functions it supports, and the methods it uses to make decisions. |
| cause-and-effect diagram | See fishbone diagram. |
| change | The act of transformation in response to a need. |
| change agent | One who is a catalyst for change. |
| change control | Controlling changes to requirements and designs so that the impact of requested changes is understood and agreed-to before the changes are made. |
| change management | Planned activities, tools, and techniques to address the human side of change during a change initiative, primarily addressing the needs of the people who will be most affected by the change. |
| change strategy | A plan to move from the current state to the future state to achieve the desired business objectives. |
| change team | A cross-functional group of individuals who are mandated to implement a change. This group may be comprised of product owners, business analysts, developers, project managers, implementation subject matter experts (SMEs), or any other individual with the relevant set of skills and competencies required to implement the change. |
| checklist (business analysis) | A standard set of quality elements that reviewers use for requirements verification. |
| collaboration | The act of two or more people working together towards a common goal. |
| commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) | A prepackaged solution available in the marketplace which address all or most of the common needs of a large group of buyers of those solutions. A commercial off-the-shelf solution may require some configuration to meet the specific needs of the enterprise. |
| competitive analysis | A structured assessment which captures the key characteristics of an industry to predict the long-term profitability prospects and to determine the practices of the most significant competitors. |
| component | A uniquely identifiable element of a larger whole that fulfills a clear function. |
| concept model | An analysis model that develops the meaning of core concepts for a problem domain, defines their collective structure, and specifies the appropriate vocabulary needed to communicate about it consistently. |
| constraint (business analysis) | An influencing factor that cannot be changed, and that places a limit or restriction on a possible solution or solution option. |
| context | The circumstances that influence, are influenced by, and provide understanding of the change. |
| core concept (business analysis) | One of six ideas that are fundamental to the |
| practice of business analysis | Change, Need, Solution, Context, Stakeholder, and Value. |
| cost-benefit analysis | An analysis which compares and quantifies the financial and non-financial costs of making a change or implementing a solution compared to the benefits gained. |
| COTS | See commercial off-the-shelf. |
| create, read, update, and delete matrix (CRUD matrix) | A two-dimensional matrix showing which user roles have permission to access specific information entities, and to create new records in those entities, view the data in existing records, update or modify the data in existing records, or delete existing records. The same type of matrix can be used to show which processes, instead of users, have the create, read, update and delete rights. |
| CRUD matrix | See create, read, update, and delete matrix. |
| customer | A stakeholder who uses or may use products or services produced by the enterprise and may have contractual or moral rights that the enterprise is obliged to meet. |
