Knowledge Audits for Business Analysis Indentifies

Question: Discuss about the Knowledge Audits for Business Analysis Indentifies. Answer: Introduction: As mentioned by Gregorio (2012) a business analyst indentifies the issues faced by the business organizations and find the best possible solution to address them. His job role involves introducing change within the business process. Hence, leadership qualities and the team formation faculty is a pre-requisite for him to be successful in the professional sector. Moreover, his good communication skill is typically helpful in understanding the business context, as it is highly dependent on the data collection and the problem identification procedure. However, the major job role of the business analyst involves providing creative problem solving procedure (CPS) with the help of requirement elicitation techniques. A number of techniques are available in this regard. However, brainstorming, interview, workshop and observation are some of the most popular requirement elicitation techniques. A business analyst can use them separately or in amalgamation for generating creative problem solving techniques. However, while using them, the analyst needs to be conscious about their frailties in the practical implementation and ensure the collection of the relevant ideas. Reflection: A business analyst is crucial for a commercial organization as he/she can be identified as the liaison among stakeholders in order to understand the structure, policies, and operations of an organization and to recommend solutions that enable the organization to achieve its goals (International Institute of Business Analysis) (The Professional Association dedicated to promoting the business analysis profession worldwide - IIBA | International Institute of Business Analysis 2016). According to Mark Yamell A leader is someone who demonstrate what is possible (Chang 2016). Hence, the job role of a business analyst is to identify rods to perfection and direct the employees to that for achieving the organizational goal. Hence, it can be stated that the traits of a leader are woven into the skills of a business analyst. He has to influence others to follow his suggested paths to accomplish the organizational goal. Hence, it is important for them to motivate others and make them intrinsical ly driven to follow the suggested path. As mentioned by Gregorio (2012) a business analyst needs have the skills of a transformational leader. As the transformational leader, he needs to motivate the employees to find their own goals aligned to the organizational change management. For achieving the goals of motivating others and creating an effective team the business analyst is needed to have a good communication and team building skills. As discussed by Sonteya and Seymour (2012) for implementing the system requirements (the business rules or the technological processes) or the business model requirements (organizational policies) creating an effective team is important for the BAs success. Here, he needs to concentrate on active listening and good communication. As discussed by Harmon (2014) for motivating the team members, listing to the needs and concerns of the team members is important for the BA, as he is going to introduce change within the status-quo. With caring and putting attention to the needs of the employees the BA becomes able to address the potential barriers in implementing the business solutions. On the other hand, as mentioned by Jeston and Nelis (2014) Creativity is a characteristic of every good and effective team. A BA needs to identify the business process issues and suggest innovative ways to solve them. Hence, the teams should have appropriate atmosphere for idea generation and exchange. Promoting creativity is one of the core team building skills a BA should posses. Thus, the key deliverable of a business analyst includes indentifying the business context, the issues related to it, suggest innovative ways to solve them and lead the teams to achieve this goal. However, for understanding the business context, the business analyst needs to analyse the Management processes, Operational processes and the Supporting processes. As described by Dumas et al. (2013) for understanding the above-stated processes and the challenges involved within them the business analyst has to follow a structured process. For understanding the process or the business model, the analyst needs to collect data as an effort to identify all the known information regarding the process. As discussed by Domingo et al. (2015) data finding is crucial for the business analyst as it provides the known facts that directs to the exploration of the unknown data those are essential to indentify the problem area that the business is facing. As mentioned by Lichy et al. (2016) the collected data helps the business analyst in indentifying the problem area. The problem finding process can be identified as an effort to identify the potential problem statements and isolate or prioritise them according to their implication to the business. Now, to meet the major job role, the business analyst need to find innovative or creative ideas for solving the issues the business is facing within its processes. The requirement elicitation techniques are helpful in this regard. As mentioned by Sharma and Pandey (2013) the requirement elicitation can be identified as the process of learning and understanding the needs of the stakeholders to address them in the creative problem solving procedures. The requirement elicitation techniques help in identifying the problem areas and developing creative methods to address them. Among all the strategies, Brainstorming, Interview, Observation and Requirements Workshops can be identified as some of the most effective and popular requirements elicitation techniques. As mentioned by Mulla and Girase (2012) brainstorming is a process of generating as many ideas as possible by engaging participants from different stakeholders, in an informal discussion, without focusing on anyone in particular. This process allows freethinking and the representation of all the stakeholders helps in addressing the issues faced by each stakeholders group. On the other hand, as mentioned by Iqbal and Suaib (2014) interview offers a great opportunity for rich and detailed communication. It allows the collection of a great amount of data in no time. Moreover, the unstructured interviews help in exploring the domain where the knowledge of the BA is limited. As discussed by Mulla and Girase (2012) observation helps in collecting the most authentic data, as the participants are allowed to act freely. However, as per the ethical concerns, the participants need to be made known that they are being observed for requirements elicitation. By assuring that the data will not be used for performance appraisal, the business analyst will be able to collect the most practical and authentic information of the business process. Last but not the least, the requirements workshops collects motivated participants and such group meeting generally involves the experts from different groups. Thus, it helps in indentifying the crucial requirements of various departments by eliminating the unimportant ones. These requirement elicitation techniques are helpful in identifying both the problem areas and in generating innovative problem solving procedures. As per the Osborn-Parnes problem-solving model, these strategies are more likely to be used in the idea finding and solution finding procedures (Thousand and Villa 2016). With the innovative problem solving ideas, the business analyst becomes able to identify best possible solutions to address the issues faced by the business processes. Critique: The business analyst is a leader without a title. As mentioned by Gregorio (2012) the business analysts do not have a structured and documented power of a leader. However, his job role typically asks for leadership, team building and communication strategies for leading the employees to the change management procedures. Hence, to practically implement the above-discussed strategies and techniques, the business analyst needs to have the faculty of effective communication and good listening. As he doesnt have the documented power of compelling others to carry out a job role, he has to motivate them and drive them to perform the task. Here, the personal competency of the BA is hugely responsible for introducing change within the business process. In the process of understanding the business context, the BA may face some empirical issues. As mentioned by Sonteya and Seymour (2012) identifying the major problem area and prioritising them often become hard for the Business analysts. Moreover, as discussed by Gregorio (2012) the business analysts often face resistance in collecting data from the stakeholders. Here, the strategy of effective communication and unstructured interview will be helpful for the analyst. Moreover, while using the requirements elicitation techniques, the analyst needs to focus on some issues. As mentioned by Iqbal and Suaib (2014) though, interview is the richest source of data collection; it largely depends on the competency of the participants. The interviewee needs to be aware of the goal of the interview and the design of the interview needs to be aligned to the goals. On the other hand, while organizing the brainstorming sessions, the principal of non-criticism needs to be upheld (Sharma and Pandey 2013). Mulla and Girase (2012) have mentioned that while arranging the workshops, capturing and documenting the information produced by the workshop is needed. In addition, observation may create issue of tampered data, because of the consciousness of the participants. However, due to the ethical concerns, the participants need to be made aware of the observation procedure. Thus, the practical implementation of the above stated techniques and principals involve a few challenges. The lack of documented authority and huge dependency on the personal faculties of the stakeholders and the analyst himself makes his area of functionality restricted. Hence, it is important for him to use these techniques with a few precautions. References: Chang, J.F., 2016.Business process management systems: strategy and implementation. CRC Press. 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