Chapter 7 – Business Requirements Gathering
Chapter 7 – Understanding the Real Problem
This chapter focuses on the Business Analyst “thinking above the line”
and focusing on the true essence of the business. This requires reviewing the
Brown Cow Model – that is looking at the area above the line – the “What Now”.
This section examines the undiluted and core reason for the business’
existence. The next step would be to look at the future of the business, called
the “Future What”. Examining these two areas helps the Business Analyst get to
the heart of the business problem, rather than focus on possible solutions.
With the right focus the Business Analyst is not distracted by what others may
think the solution could be, but the BA delves and trawls through as much
information as possible to accurately understand the business and how it
functions, minus technology or automation. This determination to channel all
efforts towards the core purpose of the business allows the BA to be more open
to all possible solutions going forward. The chapter defines the term “
Abstraction” – this is exactly what the BA does when he/ she tears away all the
technology/ automation in the business to place the emphasis on the essence of
the business.
The term “Swim Lanes” is explained in the chapter. Swim Lanes are part
of a process model that shows a series of steps from the start of an activity
through to the end process. When a BA focuses on these swim lanes, he/ she may
get distracted by what currently exists and is working in the business, and
therefore lose sight of any better way of improving the model. Again the
emphasis is on the essence of the business and how it operates, undiluted and
without departmentalization. With this focus, the BA is able to identify the
right problem to solve. Once the BA gets the true understanding of the
business, then and only then, can he/ she proceed to look at possible
solutions.
This brings us the “Future What” – determining what to implement to
improve the business/ service and make it significantly better – more effective,
innovative and efficient. Applying innovation, systemic thinking (an end to end
system with interconnected parts), and understanding the value this business/
service has, is critical to gathering that overall understanding of the
business. At times to achieve that understanding, a BA may have to use “personas”,
especially in situations where real users may be too numerous or not be
available to provide input for the project. These personas are abstract
personalities derived from market research and surveys with varying backgrounds,
cultural perspectives and opinions, and are used as representatives of a wider
population. In addition to this, the BA’s efforts to understand the business/
service will include “challenging the constraints” that may exist – challenging
the status quo to see what alternatives may be explored in improving the
business.
The BA will make use of numerous techniques, to include Innovation workshops that generate innovations or new ideas from stakeholders and Brainstorming to
again generate a wealth of perspectives. The end result is to focus on the
future and what the business intends to achieve with the improvement to its
business/ service.
The stakeholder providing this requirement wanted to employ a touch-sensitive
ReplyDeletemap of the metro network and have the travelers indicate their destination
station using their fingers. The product would compute the appropriate
fare and, as a bonus, could show an illuminated pathway of the fastest route
to the destination. This might be a clever implementation, but the requirement
as it now stands does not get to the essence of the problem.
Understanding the real problem: - In this we find the actual quality of the business so the supply good number of products that solves the true issue.
ReplyDeleteUnder this we have: -
1. Formality guide: - your outlook doesn’t matter, the thing that matter is you should make quality products that meets the customer’s need. These techniques are important for the rabbit project, horse project and elephant project.
2. The brown cow model: - The brown cow model represents the work in four perspective that are Now-How, future-How, in which business analyst give functional facts at different stages of investigation. In this chapter we think above the line.
"Understanding the Real Problem" chapter provides an information to solve the right problem and deliver the right product by finding the true essence of the business. In this chapter business analyst learn how to get the problems by using abstraction which means focusing on ideas rather than solutions. Nowadays, Business Analysts always looking the ways through innovation to improve the customer's work. Systemic Thinking means move into the future about the work, the whole problem, the end-to-end system. Also, sometimes, systemic thinking called systems thinking. System is a set of interconnected functions and if one function does something then it may have an effect on other.
ReplyDelete