Business Analysis Center of Excellence

Are you seeking to raise the level of business analysis competency in your organization?  Do you want a defined business analysis approach that is used consistently across the organization?

You can improve business analysis competency and skills, increase the quality of requirements and produce higher-quality solutions by enabling business analysts to do their jobs more effectively.  We’ve found a useful way to approach this work is to start with a discovery and planning effort that lays out a roadmap to achieve the goal.  We recommend five steps in all:

Step One: Business Analysis Competency Discovery and Planning.  The place to begin is to understand the current state of requirements and business analysis in your organization. Discovery and Planning is a packaged service, with deliverables that include findings and recommendations, a roadmap for how to implement the recommendations, and a business case that demonstrates the benefits of improving business analysis competency.   You can use DEA to perform just the discovery and planning phase and then determine if and how you want to go forward.  Learn about DEA’s approach to discovery and planning and how we can help set your organization up for excellence.  We can also help you with a special program that focuses on recommendations for business analysis tools.

Step Two: Business Analysis Competency Development  Work on improving the business analysis environment should begin at the same time as carrying out pilot projects. This means focusing attention on the process being used, on the tools that will support success, and on the business analyst role.

Step Three: Business Analysis Pilot Project A pilot project provides help from highly experienced business analysts working with your in-house business analysts to improve their competencies. Pilot projects provide a test bed for the techniques, help to prove the concept, and demonstrate the value of a robust, integrated requirements life cycle solution.

Step Four: Business Analysis Competency Improvement  This step involves training in the new processes and tools to build skills for your internal BAs.  It also involves rolling out the selected BA tools and incorporating those tools into project work.

Step Five: Business Competency Institutionalization  Institutionalizing business analysis competency means building an organization that can grow and share business analysis capabilities, including education, templates and guidelines; can centralize and standardize methodology deliverables and common BA project activities; and can provide governance for leveraging requirements best practices.  The organization you put in place can range from a community of practice to a highly-structured business analysis center of excellence.

The benefits to you:

• Your BAs can do their jobs effectively and with confidence
• You will develop a community of practice, using proven and continually improving techniques
• Your operations can become more predictable; as a consequence, you can plan more accurately and achieve a higher level of quality

The goal is to enable your ability to operate at a high level of business analysis maturity without outside support.  Let us begin by assessing your current state, and then by helping you plan for and establish a fully-functional Business Analysis Center of Excellence at your organization.  For a quick overview, read our recent article in the IIBA® September newsletter.

Contact DEA at info@doreenevans.com and let us know how we can help your organization.