BUSINESS ANALYSIS

Chapter 3:
Investigation techniques

HCM – Apr-21

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 Objectives

Be able to:
Apply tools and techniques to study
background material: project initiation
document, terms of reference
Carry out initial investigation with key
stakeholders
Document the results of the investigation

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 Agenda

 Introduction
 Prior Research
 Investigation Techniques
 Quantitative approaches
• Interviews
• Observation
• Workshops
• Scenarios
• Prototyping
 Quantitative approaches
• Questionnaires
• Special purpose records
• Activity sampling
• Document analysis

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 Difficulties of Investigation

 Thin spread of domain knowledge

 The knowledge might be distributed across many sources
 It is rarely available in an explicit form (I.e. not written down)
 There will be conflicts between knowledge from different sources
 Remember the principle of complementarity!

 Tacit knowledge (The “say-do” problem)

 People find it hard to describe knowledge they regularly use

 Limited Observability
 The problem owners might be too busy coping with the current system
 Presence of an observer may change the problem
 E.g. Probe Effect; Hawthorne Effect

 Bias
 People may not be free to tell you what you need to know
 People may not want to tell you what you need to know
 The outcome will affect them, so they may try to influence you (hidden
agendas)

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 Example

 Loan approval department in a large bank

 The analyst is trying to elicit the rules and procedures for approving
a loan

 Why this might be difficult:

 Implicit knowledge:
 There is no document in which the rules for approving loans are written
down
 Conflicting information:
 Different bank staff have different ideas about what the rules are
 Say-do problem:
 The loan approval process described to you by the loan approval officers
is quite different from your observations of what they actually do
 Probe effect:
 The loan approval process used by the officers while you are observing is
different from the one they normally use
 Bias:
 The loan approval officers fear that your job is to computerize their
jobs out of existence, so they are deliberately emphasizing the need for
case-by-case discretion (to convince you it has to be done by a human!)

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 Prior Research

 Study the company website

 Study company reports

 Study procedure manuals and

documentation

 Study the organisation chart

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 Prior Research

 Advantages:
 Helps the analyst to get an understanding of the
organization before meeting the people who work there.
 Helps to prepare for other types of fact finding
 e.g. by being aware of the business objectives of the
organization.
 may provide detailed requirements for the current system.

 Disadvantages:
 written documents often do not match up to reality.
 Can be long-winded with much irrelevant detail

 Appropriate for
 Whenever you not familiar with the organization being
investigated.

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 Types of Investigation
Techniques

Qualitative – understanding what is

needed
 one-to-one sessions (interview,
observation)
 collaborative sessions (workshops or focus
groups)

Quantitative – concerned with

volumes and frequencies.
 Investigation Techniques

Qualitative Quantitative
Interviews Questionnaires

Observation Special purpose

records
Workshops
Activity sampling
Scenarios

Prototyping Document analysis

 Interviews

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 Interviews

Prepare for Carry out

Conduct
the follow-up
interview
interview actions

Who?
Why?
What?
When?
Where?
 Prepare for the interview

 Who is it we want to talk to?

 Why do we want to talk to each of

these people?

 What specifically do we want from

each interviewee?
 When is the best to have the
interview
 When in the project to see this person?
 When in the day or week is it best see
them?
 Where to hold the interview?
 Conduct the interview

Create an agenda

Sent it to the interviewee

Questions &
Introduction Close
Answers
10% 10%
80%
 Conduct the interview

Questions &
Introduction Close
Answers
10% 10%
80%

During the introduction, we need to

build rapport, explain again why we
are there and outline what we are
hoping to get from the discussion
 Conduct the interview

Questions &
Introduction Close
Answers
10% 10%
80%

Get the real facts and figures (and dig

down into difficult areas if necessary)
Find out areas where this stakeholder has
problems, what they are and what effects
these have on them and the organization
Find out what are their requirements for
improvement
 Close the interview

Questions &
Introduction Close
Answers
10% 10%
80%

At the end of the interview, thank the

interviewee for their time, explain what
happens next on the project – including
offering them a copy of your notes –
and make sure you can come back for
more information if necessary
 Interviews

Advantages Disadvantages

• Build a relationship with • Take time

the business • Hard to compare
stakeholders different respondents
• Get important • Schedule for interview
information meeting
• A chance to collect
examples of documents,
forms and reports
• Appreciation of political
factors that may occur;

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 Interviewing Tips

 Starting off…
 Begin the interview with an innocuous topic to set people at ease
 e.g. the weather, the score in last night’s hockey game
 e.g. comment on an object on the person’s desk: “…what a beautiful
photograph! Did you take that?”
 Ask if you can record the interview
 Make sure the tape recorder is visible
 Say that they can turn it off at any time.
 Ask easy questions first
 perhaps personal information
 e.g. “How long have you worked in your present position?”
 Follow up interesting leads
 E.g. if you hear something that indicates your plan of action may be
wrong,
 e.g.,“Could we pursue what you just said a little further?”
 Ask open-ended questions towards the end
 e.g. “Is there anything else you would like to add?”

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Why workshops?

Ownership
Productivity
Consensus
Quality of
decisions
Overall
perspective
Speed
 Workshop structure

Prepare for Carry out

Conduct
the follow-up
workshop
workshop actions

Objectives?
Stakeholders?
Concerns?
Structure?
Techniques?
Venue?
 Workshop structure

Prepare for Carry out

Conduct
the follow-up
workshop
workshop actions

Focus on objectives
Confirm objectives Keep on track Summarise key
Get buy-in Participants express points
Sponsor opens opinions & concerns Assign actions
Keep a record
 Workshop structure

Prepare for Carry out

Conduct
the follow-up
workshop
workshop actions

Key points
Actions specified, assigned and understood
Workshop techniques
 Workshop

Advantages Disadvantages

• Gain a broad view of the • Take time

area under investigation • A forceful participant can
• Increase speed and dominate the discussion
productivity • Decisions are reversed
• Obtain buy-in and after the workshop has
acceptance for the ended
project or business
initiative
• Gain a consensus view
or group agreement

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 Observation

Observation is the next approach,

where the BA looks at the work
environment or observes the people
and processes in actions
Formal
observation

Protocol
Shadowing
analysis

Ethnographic
study
 Observation

Advantages Disadvantages

• Have a much better • Practicability

understanding of • Observer Bias
the problems and • Observer Effect
difficulties faced by
the business users
• Devise workable
solutions, fitted to
the working
environment

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 Scenarios

 Scenario analysis is essentially telling the

story of a task or transaction
 A scenario will trace the set of actions that
are initiated by a business event and that
have to be completed in order to achieve a
successful outcome.
 Its value is that it helps a user who is
uncertain about what is needed from a
new business process or system to
visualise it more clearly
 Scenarios are also useful when analysing
or redesigning business processes
 Scenarios steps

Identify Identify Define Identify

task or steps & control exceptions
interaction sequence conditions situations

What? How?

- Happy flows - Use case descriptions

- Unhappy flows - Use case diagrams
 Scenarios

Advantages Disadvantages

• Remove the opportunity • Time-consuming to

for omissions generate
• Helps the business user • Limited software tool
visualise all possible support
situations and removes
uncertainty
• Provide a basis for
developing prototypes
• Are used for preparing
acceptance test scripts

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 Prototyping

Elicit

Analyse
Requirements
Demonstrate

Validate
 Prototyping

 Use Axure RP to develop Prototyping

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 Prototyping

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 Prototyping
Advantages
• Clarify any uncertainty and
confirm to the stakeholders
that we have understood
• Help the stakeholders
identify new requirements
• Demonstrate the look and
feel of the proposed system
and elicit usability
requirements
• Validate the system
requirements and identify
any errors
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Disadvantages
• Can spin out of control,
with endless iterations
taking place
• Users may think the system
is now complete and ready
for use
• User expectations can be
raised unnecessarily by a
prototype
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 Investigation Techniques

Qualitative Quantitative
Interviews Questionnaires

Observation Special purpose

records
Workshops
Activity sampling
Scenarios

Prototyping Document analysis

 Questionnaires

Questionnaires can be useful if we need

to get a limited amount of information
from a lot of people and interviewing
them all would not be practical or
costeffective.

Questionnaires are difficult to use

successfully and they have to be
designed carefully in order to have any
possibility of success.
 Questionnaire structure

Questionnaire title
Heading section • Explanation
• Incentive
• Return
Classification section • Details for
categorisation
Data section • Questions
• Range of answers
 Special purpose records

This technique involves the business

users in keeping a record about a
specific issue or task.

For example, they could keep a simple

five-bar-gate record about how often
they need to transfer telephone calls;
this could provide the analyst with
information about the problems with
the business process and the scale of
those problems
 Activity sampling

This is a further quantitative form of

observation and can be used when it is
necessary to know how people divide
their work time among a range of
activities.

For example, how much time is spent

on invoicing each day? How much on
reconciling payments? How much on
sorting out complaints?
 Document analysis

 Document analysis involves reviewing

samples of documents to uncover
information about an organisation, process
or system

 Ask questions about the documents!

 How is the document completed?
 Who completes the document?
 Are there any validations or controls on the
document?
 Document analysis - Example

 Questions:
What does this data
tell you?
What would you do
with this data?

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 Document the business situation

 While the investigation of the current

business situation is going on, the analyst
will need to record the findings so as to
come to understand the range of issues
and business needs

 How?
 Rich pictures
 Mind maps
 Business process models
 Spaghetti maps
 Other
 Rich pictures

It is one of the few that provide an

overview of an entire business situation
It does not have a fixed notation, but
allows the analyst to use any symbols
or annotations that are relevant and
useful
It can show the human characteristics
of the business situation and can reflect
areas such as the culture of the
organisation
Rich pictures
 Mind maps

It is a useful tool for summarising a lot

of information in a simple visual form
that highlights connections between
different ideas and topics.

The business system or problem under

consideration is drawn at the centre of
the diagram with the main elements
shown as the first level of branches
radiating from the central point
Mind maps
 Business process models

It is helpful to draw a business process

model or ‘swim-lane’ diagram, which
shows all of the tasks carried out in a
process, the actors responsible for
carrying them out and the flow of the
process
 Spaghetti maps

A spaghetti map is a diagrammatic

technique that is used to show the
movement and interactions of the
stakeholders when performing
particular tasks and processes.
It is called a spaghetti map because as
the movements are drawn the diagram
created resembles a plate of spaghetti,
with lines crossing back and forth
without any apparent formality or
design.
Spaghetti maps
Fishbone diagrams
 Business needs log

 Once the key causes of a problem have

been identified, we can begin to consider
how the problem may be addressed, and
this may lead to the identification of some
high-level business requirements
 key business aims to be met in any new
process or system
 high-level requirements relating to the
functionality of any IT solution
 issues to be addressed
 brand-new facilities that must be provided by
the solution
Business needs log
 Review Questions

 Q1: List some discovery techniques that can be

used in a workshop.
 Q2: List four investigation that are primarily
quantitative.
 Q3: Name an investigation technique that can
help the business users to visualize the
requirements. Name an investigation technique
that can help the business users to identify
exception situations.
 Q4: Give two advantages and two
disadvantages of observation as an investigation
technique.
 Q5: Give two disadvantages of using prototyping
 Q6: What should be done during the closure
section of an interview?
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BUSINESS ANALYSIS

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 Exercises

For your project, please apply tools and

techniques in this chapter to:
Study background material: project
initiation document, terms of reference;
Carry out initial investigation with key
stakeholders
Document the results of the investigation

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 For Next Week

Read Chapter 6
 Stakeholder in Business
 Stakeholder Management Process
• Identify Stakeholders
• Analyze Stakeholders
• Prioritize Stakeholders
• Engage Stakeholders
• Communicate Often

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