Business Systems Analysis

Overview

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.

This training may be available onsite; please contact us if you are interested.

Audience

This course is ideal for Developers who will be analysing business requirements, Business users who will be doing requirements analysis, Team leaders and project managers as well as Business and systems analysts.

The course is applicable to both first time business systems analysts as well as those IT Systems analysts with some practical experience who need training in formal business analysis methods.

Skills Gained

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 Outline

Introduction to Systems Analysis

• The impact of Information Technology
• Information System Components
• Understanding the Business
• • Business profile, business model, company type -production, service, brick-and-mortar, dot com

• Impact of the Internet
• • B2C, B2B, web-based development

• How business uses Information systems
• • Enterprise computing, transaction processing, business support, knowledge management, user productivity

• Information System Users and their Needs
• Systems Development Tools and Techniques
• Systems Development Methods
• • Structured Analysis, O-O analysis, JAD, RAD, others

• Systems Development Lifecycle
• • Systems planning, analysis, design, implementation, operation and support, development guidelines

• Information Technology Department
• Systems Analyst position
• • Responsibilities, required skills

Analysing the Business Case

• Strategic planning - IT systems development
• • Overview, from plans to results, business example, changing role of IT

• Information Systems Projects
• • Reasons for, factors affecting (internal and external), project management tools

• Evaluation of Systems Requests
• Overview of feasibility
• • Operational, technical, economic, schedule

• Setting priorities
• • Factors affecting, discretionary and non-discretionary projects

• Preliminary Investigation Overview
• • Interaction with management and users, planning, understand problem or opportunity, define project scope and constraints, fact-finding, evaluate feasibility, estimate project development time and costs, present to management

Requirements Modelling

• Systems Analysis Phase Overview
• Joint Application Development
• Rapid Application Development
• Modelling Tools
• • CASE, Functional Decomposition Diagrams, Unified Modelling Language

• System Requirements Checklist
• • Outputs, inputs, processes, performance, controls

• Future growth, costs and benefits
• • Scalability, total cost of ownership

• Fact-finding
• • Interviews, document review, questionnaires, sampling, research, observation

• Documentation

Enterprise Modelling

• Entity Relationship Diagrams
• Context Diagrams
• Data Flow Diagrams
• • Levelling, balancing

• Data Dictionary
• Process Description Tools
• • Modular Design, Structured English, Decision Tables, Decision Trees

• Logical vs Physical Models

Development Strategies

• Web-based software trends
• Software Outsourcing Options
• In-house Software Development Options
• Cost-Benefit Analysis
• Software Acquisition Example
• Systems Requirement Document
• System Design guidelines
• Prototyping

Financial Analysis

• Cost Classifications
• Benefit Classifications
• Payback Analysis
• Return on Investment Analysis
• Present Value Analysis

Communication

• Written communications
• • Style, readability, emails, memos, letters, reports

• Oral communications
• • Defining audiences, objectives, organising presentations, preparing visual aids

Additional material also provided for individual study covering project management tools.

Case Study

A real-life case study runs throughout the course, giving delegates the chance to put theory into practice.

The training course outline shown above is a standardised version representing all the dates shown and may vary from the course you attend. You will be sent the actual course outline when you enquire about a specific date.