The Business Analysis Assessment Framework

Evaluating an Organization's Business Analysis Capabilities

Assessment Points for Stakeholder Alignment

  • Responsibility identification

    • Locating all the parties with interests in an effort is essential in order for an initiative to be certain that it has identified all parties that might potentially be impacted by any work done as part of the initiative. A structured approach to responsibility gathering can help reduce the likelihood of unanticipated impacts from poorly understood networks of involvement.

  • Benefits definition

    • Establishing metrics for project benefits and then insisting that the gathering of these metrics be part of the deliverable is an essential approach to providing an accountability cross check for any automation initiative. An approach that defines metrics and links these to the outcomes that these are expected to drive provides a framework for helping validate the success of an initiative and provide an opportunity for tuning of the solution.

  • Investment identification

    • The identification of capabilities is an important way that organizations can help provide increased visibility into investment decisions. Identifying the benefits supported by individual deliverables within an initiative and either mapping these to the processes where these will be realized or identifying them as capabilities whose value will be derived by a later initiative can help make clear how an initiative is satisfying multiple demands.

  • Scope definition

    • Controlling the scope of an initiative is critical to make sure that identified benefits can be achieved within the limitations proscribed by the scope. An approach that integrates process-based scope definition combined with benefit mapping can help ensure that scope is sufficient to achieve the benefits as well as helping identify potentially extraneous scope.