Business Systems Analysis

Audience

This course is designed for business and systems analysts, developers, business users, team leaders and project managers.

Prerequisites

Those attending should have some basic knowledge of the information systems development process and information technology.

Duration

5 days. Lecture-based with examples and a case study.

Course Objectives

Business Analysis is about identifying and understanding business requirements so that information systems will meet business needs. Many IT development projects fail to deliver because not enough effort is spent on analysing and prioritising business requirements. This course introduces delegates to the skills and knowledge needed to do this. The central theme is that system development should be business driven rather than led by technology. It encompasses the view that information systems include business processes as well as information technology. The course covers essential approaches to requirements elicitation, business analysis and financial justification – all within a project framework. It is practical and interactive delivered using a mixture of lectures, workshops and case study exercises. Participants will learn how to elicit and document user requirements, construct high level business models, produce more detailed business models and use these models within a variety of development lifecycles. At the end of the course, participants will be able to:

• Identify relevant techniques used in business analysis and where they are best used in the system development life cycle.
• Understand the importance of strategic analysis and its associated techniques.
• Be able to carry out a preliminary investigation including a feasibility study.
• Elicit business requirements using traditional fact-finding methods and techniques such as JAD, prototyping and Use Cases.
• Model as-is and to-be business processes at various levels from context diagrams down to the documentation of elementary processes.
• Build an entity-relationship diagram (data model) and understand where and why it is used.
• Understand how business analysis leads into system design.
• Carry out a basic cost-benefit analysis using financial techniques and tools.
• Understand the fundamentals of effective communication.

Course Content

Introduction to Systems Analysis
Overview of Information Technology, its impact and components
How business uses information systems
Information system users and their needs
Overview of systems development techniques - modelling, prototyping
CASE tools
Overview of systems development methods - structured analysis, rapid application development (RAD), object-oriented analysis, agile methods
Systems development life cycle
Systems planning, analysis, design, implementation, operation and support, maintenance
Analyst responsibilities and required skills

Analysing the Business Case
Strategic planning, SWOT analysis
Reasons for systems projects
Initiation of information systems projects
Evaluation of systems and change requests
Preliminary investigation
Planning the preliminary investigation
Understanding the problem, Ishikawa diagrams
Project scope and constraints
Fact finding
Feasibility
Operational, technical, economic and schedule feasibility
Estimating development time and costs

Requirements Modelling
The Analysis phase
Joint Application Development, participants, roles, agenda, JAD session process, guidelines
Prototyping, types of prototype, prototyping tools
Modelling tools, CASE tools
Functional decomposition diagrams
Use cases and requirements
Actors and use cases, basic and alternative flows, documenting use cases
Categories of requirements - outputs, inputs, processes, non-functional, controls
Impact of future growth, scalability
Fact-finding, the Zachman framework
Interviews, document review, questionnaires, sampling, research, observation
Documenting requirements

Enterprise Modelling
Data flow diagrams, notation, use in analysis, logical and physical models
Processes, data stores, data flows, external entities
Context diagrams
Data flow diagram development, good practice
Lower level data flow diagrams
Entity relationship diagrams (data models), use in analysis
Entities, attributes, keys, relationships, cardinality, optional attributes, mutually exclusive relationships
Data model development, business rules
Data dictionaries, documenting data elements, data flows, data stores, etc.
Process descriptions - modular design, structured English, decision tables, decision trees

Development Strategies
Web-based software trends
Software outsourcing options
In-house software development, packages, tailoring packages
Development options
Systems requirement document

Financial Analysis
Cost classifications
Benefit classifications
Payback analysis
Return on investment analysis
Present value analysis
Use of spreadsheets in financial analysis

Communication
Guidelines for successful communication
Written communication, writing style, readability, scoring methods, reports
Meetings
Oral presentations, preparation, visual aids, delivery

Case Study
A realistic case study runs throughout the course, giving delegates the chance to put theory into practice.