This unique desk reference offers the information, models and guidance needed to plan and deliver complete, end-to-end business analysis services. Its step-by-step approach enables maximum utility of the business analysis (BA) role, development of more complete solutions for meeting the strategic goals of a business, and dramatic and sustainable improvements in project success rates. Managing Business Analysis Services: A Framework for Sustainable Projects and Corporate Strategy Success provides chief information officers, business analysis managers and consultants the information required to maximize the efficiency and productivity of technology projects, obtain higher returns on investment from BA services, reduce operating costs, and increase alignment of products to better serve the company or the client organization.
Business Analyst's Mentor Book includes tips and best practices in a broad range of topics like: Business analysis techniques and tools Agile and waterfall methodologies Scope management Change request management Conflict management Use cases UML Requirements gathering and documentation User interface design Usability testing Software testing Automation tools Real-life examples are provided to help readers apply these best practices in their own IT organizations. The book also answers the most frequent questions of business analysts regarding software requirements management.
IT projects emerge from a business need. In practice, software developers must accomplish two big things before an IT project can begin: find out what you need to do (i.e., analyse business requirements) and plan out how to do it (i.e., project management). The biggest problem in IT projects is delivering the wrong product because IT people do not understand what business people require. This practical textbook teaches computer science students how to manage and deliver IT projects by linking business and IT requirements with project management in an incremental and straightforward approach. Business Analysis, Requirements, and Project Management: A Guide for Computing Students presents an approach to analysis management that scales the business perspective. It takes a business process view of a business proposal as a model and explains how to structure a technical problem into a recognisable pattern with problem frames. It shows how to identify core transactions and model them as use cases to create a requirements table useful to designers and coders. Linked to the analysis are three management tools: the product breakdown structure (PBS), the Gantt chart, and the Kanban board. The PBS is derived in part from the problem frame. The Gantt chart emerges from the PBS and ensures the key requirements are addressed by reference to use cases. The Kanban board is especially useful in Task Driven Development, which the text covers. This textbook consists of two interleaving parts and features a single case study. Part one addresses the business and requirements perspective. The second integrates core project management approaches and explains how both requirements and management are connected. The remainder of the book is appendices, the first of which provides solutions to the exercises presented in each chapter. The second appendix puts together much of the documentation for the case study into one place. The case study presents a real-word business scenario to expose students to professional practice.
"There are many books about topics and disciplines in Information Technology. But most books concentrate on a single area. This book is an exception - it looks at three disciplines and ties them together. Excellent idea. Congratulations to Koray for putting this book together, and also for his generosity in donating profits to schools." -- Dorothy Graham, Best-selling Author "Koray does a great job of using clever, insightful metaphors to illustrate concepts. He writes in an accessible, easy-to-read style. I hope you enjoy reading this book as much as I did." -- Rex Black, Best-selling Author "In his book Koray uses two phrases again and again. The first is "Quality is not tested, but built."The other phrase is ..". should first be handled as a people issue rather than a technology issue." To those in the IT world who need an understanding of these principles, I recommend this book." -- Lee Copeland, Best-selling Author This book is a quick guide to business analysis, software testing, and usability disciplines. Throughout the book, different perspectives are brought to the following interesting comparisons and relationships: Business Analysis - Business analysts and software testers - Usability specialists and business analysts - System analysts and business analysts - Project management and business analysis - Business requirements and system requirements - Use cases and user requirements - The object-oriented approach versus the business process approach - Functional requirements and non-functional requirements - Scope management and stakeholder management - Change management and project management - Process flows, class diagrams, and sequence diagrams - Use case modelling and project scope definition - In-scope items and out-of-scope items - Unclear requirements and test cases - Traceability matrix and gold plating - Change request management process and requirements management tools - Impact analysis and traceability matrix - Project Management Institute (PMI) knowledge areas and business analysis Software Testing - Software test design techniques and high jump techniques - Software testing and road traffic - Priority versus severity - Risk and software testing - Software testing levels and software testing types - Black-box testing versus white-box testing - Statement coverage versus decision coverage Usability - User Experience (UX) and usability - Usability specialists and business analysts - Usability testing versus user acceptance testing - Interaction design and process flow design - User profiling versus persona identification - Interface design and interaction design This book targets broad range of professionals such as: - Business analysts, software testers, usability specialists and UX designers - Systems analysts and developers - Project managers, entrepreneurs, product owners, scrum masters and product managers - Business units, sales managers and marketing managers - Business consultants, management consultants, C-level executives - Managers of all divisions"
Business analysis (BA) is an important business operation, and with some coordinated effort, it can become an efficient and valuable business service. This book takes you through the creation and management of a BA service, from setting strategy to recruiting business analysts, to continuous improvement, through to useful supporting tools and technology. Top tips, case studies and worked examples are included throughout. This book perfectly compliments the bestselling BCS books 'Business Analysis' and 'Business Analysis Techniques.'
Strategic Business Analysis shows students how to carry out a strategic analysis of a business, with clear guidelines on where and how to apply the core strategic techniques and models that are the integral tools of strategic management. The authors identify the key questions in strategic analysis and provide an understandable framework for answering these questions. Several case studies are used to focus understanding and enable a more thorough analysis of the concepts and issues, especially useful for students involved with case study analysis. Accompanying the text is a CD-Rom containing the models, tutorial guidance, and a PowerPoint presentation. A blank template is provided for each model, enabling students to actively interact and enter their own data - an effective 'what if...' facility. This will enable students to appreciate the limitations as well as the advantages of the strategic models.
The Standard for Business Analysis – First Edition is a new PMI foundational standard, developed as a basis for business analysis for portfolio, program, and project management. This standard illustrates how project management processes and business analysis processes are complementary activities, where the primary focus of project management processes is the project and the primary focus of business analysis processes is the product. This is a process-based standard, aligned with A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK® Guide) – Sixth Edition, and to be used as a standard framework contributing to the business analysis body of knowledge.
Written by the lead developers of Analysis Services at Microsoft, this book begins with an overview showing how Analysis Services and MDX can be used to build data warehouses and multidimensional databases The authors then describe the development processes for building dimensions and cubes from various data sources Demonstrating a variety of techniques in real-world scenarios, the book shows how MDX can be used to query databases to provide sophisticated analysis of business problems Finally, the book explains how Analysis Services can be used with other components of SQL Server, including DTS, data mining, and Report Services, to provide comprehensive, end-to-end solutions
This book undertakes to marry the concepts of "Concept Mapping" with a "Design Thinking" approach in the context of business analysis. While in the past a lot of attention has been paid to the business process side, this book now focusses information quality and valuation, master data and hierarchy management, business rules automation and business semantics as examples for business innovation opportunities. The book shows how to take "Business Concept Maps" further as information models for new IT paradigms. In a way this books redefines and extends business analysis towards solutions that can be described as business synthesis or business development. Business modellers, analysts and controllers, as well as enterprise information architects, will benefit from the intuitive modelling and designing approach presented in this book. The pragmatic and agile methods presented can be directly applied to improve the way organizations manage their business concepts and their relationships. "This book is a great contribution to the information management community. It combines a theoretical foundation with practical methods for dealing with important problems. This is rare and very useful. Conceptual models that communicate business reality effectively require some degree of creative imagination. As such, they combine the results of business analysis with communication design, as is extensively covered in this book." Dr. Malcolm Chisholm, President at AskGet.com Inc. “Truly understanding business requirements has always been a major stumbling block in business intelligence (BI) projects. In this book, Thomas Frisendal introduces a powerful technique—business concept mapping—that creates a virtual mind-meld between business users and business analysts. Frisendal does a wonderful explaining and demonstrating how this tool can improve the outcome of BI and other development projects ." Wayne Eckerson, executive director, BI Leadership Forum
When used with the MDX query language, SQL Server Analysis Services allows developers to build full-scale database applications to support such business functions as budgeting, forecasting, and market analysis. Shows readers how to build data warehouses and multi-dimensional databases, query databases, and use Analysis Services and other components of SQL Server to provide end-to-end solutions Revised, updated, and enhanced, the book discusses new features such as improved integration with Office and Excel 2007; query performance enhancements; improvements to aggregation designer, dimension designer, cube and dimension wizards, and cell writeback; extensibility and personalization; data mining; and more
