• Prepare for and pass the BCS Foundation Exam
• Analyse development of a business strategy
• Perform business system modelling
• Identify costs, benefits, impacts, and risks for change in a business case

The Business Change Life Cycle

The role of the Business Analyst in the business change life cycle

• Producing the business case
• Other roles in the business change life cycle

The framework for business analysis activities

• Relating business analysis to strategic analysis, definition, and IT systems analysis
• The holistic approach to business analysis

Understanding the Strategic Context

Analysing the business environment

• Internal and external environments
• Analysing the business with SWOT analysis

Developing business metrics

• Identifying your Critical Success Factors (CSF)
• Creating Key Performance Indicators (KPI)
• Identifying critical success with the Balanced Business Scorecard

Project Discipline for Business Analysis Studies

• Reading the Terms of Reference or Project Initiation Document
• OSCAR (objectives, scope, constraints, authority and resources)
• What does the business wish to achieve and deliver?
• Creating SMART objectives

Understanding the Business Situation

Stakeholder identification

• Using the Stakeholder wheel
• Overview of investigative techniques

Representing a holistic view of the business situation

• Generating Rich pictures
• Making Mind Maps

Analysing Stakeholder Perspectives

Stakeholder analysis and management

• Power/Interest Grid
• Stakeholder management strategies

Identifying and defining different perspectives

• Contrasting different stakeholder perspectives
• Analysing the root cause with CATWOE

Analysing and Modelling Business Activities

Developing a Business Activity Model

• Depicting business perspectives with a Business Activity Model (BAM)
• Describing the BAM process and notation
• Identifying business events

Analysing business rules

• Distinguishing between business rule types
• Recognising business rules levels of constraint

Building the consensus Business Activity Model

• Identifying differences between business activity models
• Negotiating to resolve conflicts

Identifying Potential Solutions

Gap analysis – comparing the ideal and existing systems

• Outlining the gap analysis process
• Identifying inputs to, and outputs from, gap analysis

Defining a new business model

• Exploiting areas for change – processes, people, technology and organisation

Identifying requirements using business activity and business process models

• Classifying models that document and analyse requirements
• Recognising data/processing requirements

Making the Business Case

The Business Case life cycle

• Structuring the business case
• Identifying and shortlisting options for business change

Identifying and categorising costs and benefits

• Classifying tangible and intangible costs and benefits
• Investment appraisal techniques

Risk and impact identification, categorisation, and management

• Identifying and assessing risk impact and probability
• Risk management approaches