It is difficult to imagine a modern business without tools to support management decisions. That’s right, we are talking about business analysis (BA). Solutions for business analysis are very popular among companies operating in various fields, including IT. Business analysis is something that is necessarily used by large, medium-sized, and even small businesses today.

Almost any software or system allows you to collect analytical data necessary for building a strategy or making tactical decisions. The task of business analysis is to collect all the necessary data – to conduct interviews, analyse existing documents, processes, and procedures, administer a risk assessment and confirm or refute the correctness of the adopted course. The goal being to create a prototype of a business process or business process automation.

Administering a thorough business analysis helps us to understand the structure, and how current processes are arranged in order to identify weaknesses or vulnerabilities and consider changes to make that would improve the organization’s performance.

You can also conduct a business analysis to get a general idea of ​​the current state of the company or use it to determine the current needs of the business, form growth points to optimize costs, and speed up work.

How can business analysis be useful for IT projects? 

Let’s look at an example:

Mark is an entrepreneur. He wants to develop a cool app. He wrote down his idea, but… got stuck in the development phase: 

Cross-platform, hybrid, or native? Which programming language to choose, and what to leave in the functionality? And more. Time, like nerves, is wasted, and the process will not budge. Mark decides to contact a specialist and orders a business analysis (BA). The specialist conducts  all phases of research and analysis sequentially, which allowed them to:

• define priority business goals
• designate areas of application
• formulate and prescribe detailed requirements for the project
• validate Requirements
• find effective solutions
• develop a maintenance plan
• develop a prototype/outline of the application.

As a result, based on the outcomes of the business analysis, Mark received a clearly described idea and defined goals, a technical task for developers, a technical implementation plan, exact deadlines and cost, and the necessary cash flow. Having all this data, he can safely address investors and present his idea without any problems, since the technical solution plan is already in his hands.

Most often, while working on a project, a business analyst takes on the following tasks:

• Requirements management: their identification, preparation, and specification, separation of requests into requirements and some “not very important Wishlist”, setting of tasks for developers.
• Strategic analysis: in many companies, the BA works with top management on the development strategy of the company and the project, because he or she knows the product best.
• Designing solutions: preparing documentation and, at times, prototyping. Presentation of everything they have come up with to convey to the team how solutions will be developed and implemented.
• Product Management: communication with designers, engineers, stakeholders, and business product owners.

What will we get as an outcome of business analysis?

1. Wireframes – a schematic representation of the programming interface
2. A prototype – a dynamic representation of a programming interface for testing UX
3. A software requirements specification which is a document that describes what the software will do and how it will work. It includes:

• User stories – short, simple descriptions of features, told from the point of view of a user or client of the system.
• Acceptance criteria – the conditions that a software product must meet in order to be accepted by a user, client, or another system.
• Data flow diagrams, entity-relationship diagrams, etc.

       4. Accurate quotation and project plan.

The Itera Research team offers its clients a full BA service, which is able to help at any stage of project development. Why should you use such a service?

1. BA services are cheaper than making changes to the product code
2. Providing solutions that can cut costs with unique project-specific tools
3. Accurate time and budget estimates are made
4. Reduced time and effort for testing
5. Optimization of management and distribution of tasks, to decrease time and reduce costs of development. 

As a result, the client receives all the necessary materials for the successful implementation of the project. So think about it, does your idea need business analysis?