Business Systems Analysis

Course Overview

Business analysis is about understanding business requirements so that information systems developed will meet business needs. Many IT development projects fail to deliver because not enough effort is spent on analysing and prioritising business requirements. This course equips developers with the skills and knowledge to do this. The central theme is that system development should be business driven rather than led by technology. It also encompasses the view that information systems include business processes as well as information technology. This course covers both the traditional structured approach to analysis and Rapid Applications Development.

Skills Gained

After the course participants will be able to:

• Identify and model business processes
• Model business data
• Plan and conduct a fact finding interview
• Identify and analyse business requirements
• Analyse required system functions
• Plan and deliver a structured walkthrough
• This will enable them to ensure that business requirements are met on all projects.

Business analysis is about understanding business requirements so that information systems developed will meet business needs. Many IT development projects fail to deliver because not enough effort is spent on analysing and prioritising business requirements. This course equips developers with the skills and knowledge to do this. The central theme is that system development should be business driven rather than led by technology. It also encompasses the view that information systems include business processes as well as information technology. This course covers both the traditional structured approach to analysis and Rapid Applications Development.

Prerequisites

This course is ideal for Developers who will be analysing business requirements, Business users who will be doing requirements analysis, Team leaders and project managers as well as Business and systems analysts.

The course is applicable to both first time business systems analysts as well as those IT Systems analysts with some practical experience who need training in formal business analysis methods.

Course Outline

• System Development
• Concepts
• Waterfall Lifecycle
• Rapid Application Development
• Modelling Business Activities
• Context Diagrams
• Document Flow Diagrams
• Functional Modelling
• Data Flow Diagrams
• Levelling
• Elementary Processes
• Structured Walkthroughs
• Approach
• Planning & Preparation
• Conducting the walkthrough
• Principles
• Data Analysis
• Entity Identification
• Simple and Complex relationships
• Entity relationship modelling
• Requirements Analysis
• Defining Requirements
• Functional vs. non-functional requirements
• Prioritising requirements
• Required System models
• Functional Analysis
• Function Identification
• Function Specification
• Interviewing skills
• Planning and preparation
• Conducting the Interview
• Recording the facts
• Analysing the facts