Business Analysis Approach: guides how the business analyst undertakes an analysis of the current state.
Enterprise Limitation: used to understand the challenges that exist within the enterprise.
Organizational Strategy: an organization will have a set of goals and objectives which guides operations, establishes direction, and provides a vision for the future state. This can be implicitly or explicitly stated.
Solution Limitation: used to understand the current state and the challenges of existing solutions.
Solution Performance Goals: measure the current performance of an enterprise or solution and serve as a baseline for setting future state goals and measuring improvement.
Solution Performance Measures: describe the actual performance of existing solutions.
Stakeholder Analysis Results: stakeholders from across the organization will contribute to an understanding and analysis of the current state.
6.1.6 Techniques
Benchmarking and Market Analysis: provides an understanding of where there are opportunities for improvement in the current state. Specific frameworks that may be useful include 5 Forces analysis, PEST, STEEP, CATWOE, and others.
Business Capability Analysis: identifies gaps and prioritizes them in relation to value and risk.
Business Model Canvas: provides an understanding of the value proposition that the enterprise satisfies for its customers, the critical factors in delivering that value, and the resulting cost and revenue streams. Helpful for understanding the context for any change and identifying the problems and opportunities that may have the most significant impact.
Business Cases: used to capture information regarding the business need and opportunity.
Concept Modelling: used to capture key terms and concepts in the business domain and define the relationships between them.
Data Mining: used to obtain information on the performance of the enterprise.
Document Analysis: analyzes any existing documentation about the current state, including (but not limited to) documents created during the implementation of a solution, training manuals, issue reports, competitor information, supplier agreements, published industry benchmarks, published technology trends, and performance metrics.
Financial Analysis: used to understand the profitability of the current state and the financial capability to deliver change.
Focus Groups: solicits feedback from customers or end users about the current state.
Functional Decomposition: breaks down complex systems or relationships in the current state.
Interviews: facilitate dialogue with stakeholders to understand the current state and any needs evolving from the current state.
Item Tracking: tracks and manages issues discovered about the current state.
Lessons Learned: enables the assessment of failures and opportunities for improvement in past initiatives, which may drive a business need for process improvement.
Metrics and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs): assesses performance of the current state of an enterprise.
Mind Mapping: used to explore relevant aspects of the current state and better understand relevant factors affecting the business need.
Observation: may provide opportunities for insights into needs within the current state that have not been identified previously by a stakeholder.
Organizational Modelling: describes the roles, responsibilities, and reporting structures that exist within the current state organization.
Process Analysis: identifies opportunities to improve the current state.
Process Modelling: describes how work occurs within the current solution.
Risk Analysis and Management: identifies risks to the current state.
Root Cause Analysis: provides an understanding of the underlying causes of any problems in the current state in order to further clarify a need.
Scope Modelling: helps define the boundaries on the current state description.
Survey or Questionnaire: helps to gain an understanding of the current state from a large, varied, or disparate group of stakeholders.
SWOT Analysis: evaluates the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats to the current state enterprise.
Vendor Assessment: determines whether any vendors that are part of the current state are adequately meeting commitments, or if any changes are needed.
Workshops: engage stakeholders to collaboratively describe the current state and their needs.
6.1.7 Stakeholders
Customer: makes use of the existing solution and might have input about issues with a current solution.
Domain Subject Matter Expert: has expertise in some aspect of the current state.
End User: directly uses a solution and might have input about issues with a current solution.
Implementation Subject Matter Expert: has expertise in some aspect of the current state.
Operational Support: directly involved in supporting the operations of the organization and provides information on their ability to support the operation of an existing solution, as well as any known issues.
Project Manager: may use information on current state as input to planning.
Regulator: can inform interpretations of relevant regulations that apply to the current state in the form of business policies, business rules, procedures, or role responsibilities. The regulator might have unique input to the operational assessment, as there might be new laws and regulations with which to comply.
Sponsor: might have context for performance of existing solutions.
Supplier: might be an external influencer of the current state.
Tester: able to provide information about issues with any existing solutions.
6.1.8 Outputs
Current State Description: the context of the enterprise’s scope, capabilities, resources, performance, culture, dependencies, infrastructure, external influences, and significant relationships between these elements.
Business Requirements: the problem, opportunity, or constraint which is defined based on an understanding of the current state.
