The BABOK: Business Analysis Planning & Monitoring

This is the second post in the Beachcamp series. This post is about the Business Analysis Planning and Monitoring section of the BABOK.

The Business Analysis Planning and Monitoring knowledge area needs to be considered as two complementary components.

The BA Planning part focuses on preparing for effective execution of business analysis. A good understanding of project nature, business needs and objectives, as well as the required scale of changes to the existing state within an organisation helps to select an approach which allows performing business analysis in an effective manner, and then develop a solution for the identified needs.

The BA Planning component gets input from Enterprise Analysis as it provides information about the current business landscape and long-term business objectives. The BA Planning component includes analysis of stakeholders, their roles and responsibilities in the project, their needs for information about BA activities, the required level of detail and frequency of communication of the specified information.

All the agreed terms are then reflected in the BA Plan – a document outlining the agreed BA deliverables, schedule of the planned BA activities, approach and techniques to be used, and reporting on BA progress.

The defined BA Plan determines the approach to requirements management and the means of maintaining their traceability. The Requirements Management Plan defines how the BAs’ performance will be measured during the project.

Each iteration of business analysis activities facilitates improvement of the initial planning as more information becomes available.

The BA Monitoring component focuses on ensuring that the planned activities are performed well and the agreed deliverables are produced in line with the agreed schedule. Performance of BA activities is regularly measured against the approved BA Plan and Requirements Management Plan. Where a deviation from the planned results has been identified, a corrective action (re-planning of activities) is taken to restore performance to the agreed level and probably correct the planned activities.

Organisational standards play an important role in planning, establishing performance metrics and reporting on the results.

Below you’ll find a chart which summarises the business analysis planning and monitoring section of the BABOK^®.