The Business Analysis Assessment Framework

Evaluating an Organization's Business Analysis Capabilities

Assessment Points for Communication

  • Status Communication

    • The most basic communication for any initiative is the communication of status. Status has many aspects and should include traditional cost and schedule elements. Additional measures such as those describing the quality of deliverables quality provide enhanced visibility into potential future schedule and cost changes.

  • Risk Communication

    • Basic risk communication entails communicating the current risks associated with an initiative as well as approaches to mitigating these risks. By characterizing the way that risks interact with the initiatives’ deliverables and with each other it is possible to improve the visibility into the potential impacts of the risks associated with the initiative.

  • Incremental Demonstration

    • Larger initiatives have a higher risk of failure. This risk derived from the lack of visibility into the progress of an initiative. Simple status may be inadequate in these cases. Incremental checkpoints which deliverable some level of demonstrable outcome are a key way of helping to bring visibility to potentially hidden risks.

  • Change Impact Feedback

    • Change occurs frequently during the course of an initiative but the way that this change impacts the initiative is often not well understood. Developing standard techniques for capturing the tradeoffs involved in change requests can help avoid the tendency to underestimate the impact of changes.