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How to Start Business Analysis for a New Project
With strategic analysis and business architecture
When does business analysis start?
Does it start when the project scope is approved? When the next available analyst gets assigned to the project and is given the project scope to develop into requirements? When they get a list of business stakeholders to interview?
While this more prescriptive approach gives the project manager more control over the scope of analysis, it can be too simplistic and lead to inferior outcomes. The viability of this approach depends on the high-level analysis undertaken to define the required change and its scope.
Let’s explore two alternative scenarios for the project initiation.
Scenario A. Preliminary analysis was limited to capturing the project sponsor’s view of the business problem.
The objective of the initiative is to fix the stakeholder issue and make them happy. The sponsor outlines their preferred solution, and the project is initiated to execute their vision. The expectation for a business analyst will be to capture what could be best described as “stakeholder specs”.
