EXIN BCS Foundation Certificate in Business Analysis – Including Exam (BCS-FBA)

1. What is Business Analysis

• • The origins of business analysis
• • The development of business analysis
• • The impact of outsourcing
• • Competitive advantage of using IT
• • Successful business change
• • The importance of the business analyst
• • Business analysts as internal consultants
• • The scope of business analysis work
• • The range of analysis activities
• • Strategic analysis and definition
• • IT systems analysis
• • Business analysis
• • Taking a holistic approach
• • The role and responsibilities of a business analyst
• • Definition of the business analyst role
• • Further aspects of the business analyst role

2. The Competencies of a Business Analyst

• • Personal qualities
• • Business knowledge
• • Professional techniques
• • The development of competencies

3. Strategy Analysis

• • The context for strategy
• • The definition of strategy (Johnson, Scholes and Whittington 2008)
• • Strategy development
• • External environment analysis
• • PESTLE analysis
• • Porter’s five forces model
• • Internal environment analysis
• • MOST analysis
• • Resource Audit
• • Boston Box
• • SWOT analysis
• • Executing strategy
• • The McKinsey 7-S model
• • The Balanced Business Scorecard
• • Critical Success Factors and Key Performance Indicators

4. The Business Analysis Process Model

• • An approach to problem-solving
• • Stages of the business analysis process model
• • Investigate the situation
• • Consider the perspectives
• • Analyse the needs
• • Evaluate the options
• • Define the requirements
• • Objectives of the process model stages
• • Procedure for each process model stage
• • Techniques used within each process model stage

5. Investigation techniques

• • Interviews
• • Advantages and disadvantages of interviewing
• • Preparing for interviewing
• • Conducting the interview
• • Following up the interview
• • Observation
• • Advantages and disadvantages of observation
• • Formal observation
• • Protocol analysis
• • Shadowing
• • Ethnographic studies
• • Workshops
• • Advantages and disadvantages of workshops
• • Preparing for the workshop
• • Facilitating the workshop
• • Techniques
• • Following the workshop
• • Scenarios
• • Advantages and disadvantages of scenarios
• • Process for developing scenarios
• • Documenting scenarios
• • Prototyping
• • Advantages and disadvantages of prototyping
• • Quantitative approaches
• • Surveys or Questionnaires
• • Special Purpose Records
• • Activity Sampling
• • Document Analysis
• • Documenting the current situation
• • Rich Pictures
• • Mind Maps

6. Stakeholder Analysis and Management

• • Stakeholder categories and identification
• • Customers
• • Partners
• • Suppliers
• • Competitors
• • Regulators
• • Owners
• • Employees
• • Managers
• • Analysing stakeholders
• • The Power/Interest Grid
• • Stakeholder management strategies
• • No or low interest and no or low power/influence
• • Some or high interest but no or low power/influence
• • No or low to high interest but some power/influence
• • No or low interest but high power/influence
• • Some interest and high power/influence
• • High interest and high power/influence
• • Managing stakeholders
• • Stakeholder plan/assessment
• • Understanding stakeholder perspectives
• • Soft Systems Methodology
• • Analysing the perspectives
• • CATWOE
• • Business activity models
• • Creating a business activity model
• • Types of activities – Plan, Enable, Do, Monitor, Control
• • Developing a consensus model

7. Modelling Business Processes

• • Organisational context
• • Functional view of an organisation
• • An alternative view of an organisation
• • The organisational view of business processes
• • Value propositions
• • Process models
• • Business events
• • Developing the business process model
• • Analysing the as-is process model
• • Improving business processes (to-be business process)
• • Business rules
• • Simplify the process
• • Remove bottlenecks
• • Change the sequence of tasks
• • Redefine process boundary
• • Automate the processing
• • Redesign the process

8. Defining the solution

• • Gap analysis
• • Identifying areas of concern
• • Framework for gap analysis (elements of POPIT model)
• • Formulating options
• • Introduction to Business Architecture
• • Definition of Business Architecture
• • Business Architecture techniques
• • Definition of a capability model
• • Definition of a value stream

9. Making a Business and Financial Case

• • The business case in the project lifecycle
• • Identifying options
• • Assessing project feasibility
• • Business feasibility
• • Technical feasibility
• • Financial feasibility
• • Structure of a business case
• • Contents of a business case
• • Categories of costs and benefits
• • Impact assessment
• • Risk assessment
• • Investment appraisal
• • Payback
• • Discounted cash flow and Internal rate of return

10. Establishing the Requirements

• • A framework for requirements engineering
• • Actors in requirements engineering
• • The business representatives
• • The project team
• • Requirements elicitation
• • Tacit and explicit knowledge
• • Requirements elicitation techniques
• • Requirements analysis
• • Requirements filters
• • SMART requirements
• • Requirements validation

11. Documenting and Managing Requirements

• • The requirements document
• • Structure
• • Content of the requirements document
• • The requirements catalogue
• • Types of requirements; general, technical, functional and non-functional
• • Hierarchy of requirements
• • Documenting a requirement
• • Managing requirements
• • Elements of requirements management

12. Modelling Requirements

• • Modelling system functions
• • Use case diagrams
• • Modelling system data
• • Entity Relationship Diagrams
• • Entities, attributes and relationships
• • Types of relationships
• • Class Models
• • Objects and classes
• • Attributes
• • Associations

13. Delivering the Requirements

• • Delivering the solution
• • Context
• • Lifecycles
• • The waterfall lifecycle
• • The ‘V’ model lifecycle
• • Incremental lifecycle
• • Iterative systems development lifecycle

14. Delivering the Business Solution

• • BA role in the business change lifecycle
• • Design stage
• • Information and Technology
• • Development
• • Testing
• • Design
• • Implementation stage
• • SARAH model
• • Realisation stage
• • Contents of the benefits plan