Business Analysis for Practitioners: A Practice Guide

Recent research has shown that organizations continue to experience project issues associated with the poor performance of requirements-related activities—a core task for the practice of business analysis. In fact, poor requirements practices are often cited as a leading cause of project failure in PMI’s Pulse of the Profession^™ surveys.

Business Analysis for Practitioners: A Practice Guide provides practical resources to tackle the project-related issues associated with requirements and business analysis—and addresses a critical need in the industry for more guidance in this area.

The practice guide begins by describing the work of business analysis. It identifies the tasks that are performed, in addition to the essential knowledge and skills needed to effectively perform business analysis on programs and projects.

It breaks these tasks into five domains: needs assessment; planning; analysis; traceability and monitoring; and evaluation. Within each of these domains, there are a series of supporting tasks which are defined and explored.

These concepts and skills are applicable to all programs and projects, whether they are focused on products or services or process improvement. They are implementation-independent and can be used to develop manual or automated solutions, using any type of project life cycle.

Due to the unique nature of organizations, there are many different roles that perform business analysis in their work. Regardless of your job title or industry, if you perform business analysis and requirements-related work, this guide will provide practical guidance you can use to drive your projects and programs to more successful outcomes.