Topic: Cluttered Aisles in Dollar General causing safety issues for customers and employees
Link to survey monkey
Objective
The basics of business analyses can be taught through reading and discussion, but to really understand the process, you need to be able to apply business analysis concepts and use business analysis tools to develop your ideas into actionable plans to support business decisions.
The project is an opportunity to do just that—apply business analyst techniques to a business challenge of your own choosing.
Summary
Over the duration of this course, you will be working on the five parts of the Course Project.
- Part 1: Selection of Company and Problem: Use Microsoft Project to outline milestones to completion (due in Week 1). See the Week 1 Assignment page for more details.
- Part 2: Elicitation Exercise: Using Survey Monkey, conduct a survey of stakeholders addressing the problem identified in Part 1. This will be a paper that you submit (due in Week 3). See the Week 2 Assignment page for more details.
- Part 3: Network and Flow Chart Diagramming: Using Microsoft Visio, diagram the current situation and two proposed solutions. This will be a paper that you submit (due in Week 5). See the Week 4 Assignment page for more details.
- Part 4: Final Report to Management: Report must be 8–10 pages in length (due in Week 7).
- Follow APA format for title page, reference page, appendix, citations, and so forth.
- At least six authoritative, outside references are required (anonymous authors or web pages are not acceptable).
- Part 5: Presentation to Management: Submit a narrated PowerPoint presentation or video, 7–10 minutes in length (due in Week 8).
Guidelines
Topic Selection
- Select a Fortune 500 company of interest to you and identify a problem at the firm. Your choice must be below the top 100. Choose a company 101–500 in the rankings at https://www.zyxware.com/articles/4344/list-of-fortune-500-companies-and-their-websites#rank-101-400 (copy and paste this URL to visit the page).
This problem should be related to the business’ success. Example: Company selected is Walmart. Problem: Shelves are not being stocked properly. - You are a business analyst asked to assess the situation. An executive management member has requested a thorough analysis and a recommended course of action to resolve the organizational problem. Your goal is to develop two potential solutions and ultimately make a recommendation that will make a positive difference to the performance of the organization.
Research Sources
- Your final report to management in Week 7 must have a minimum of nine scholarly sources cited within the text of the paper and full references identified at the end of the paper.
- For more information on how to access and use EBSCOhost, contact the Library at 800.293.3044 or library.devry.eduLinks to an external site. and click Ask A Librarian.
Paper Format
- All papers should follow APA, be double-spaced, and use a 12-point font. The length of the final Week 7 paper is to be between 12 and 15 pages, not counting the cover page, table of contents, nor appendices.
- The APA title page should include the title of the work, student name, course number and title, date, and professor name.
- The second page should be a table of contents. It should, at a minimum, reflect the items listed in the Grading Rubric.
- Follow APA style for general format and citations (see the APA Guidelines Tutorial in the Syllabus).
- The language should be clear, concise, and professional. Grammar and syntax (sentence structure) must be correct and free of misspellings and typos.
Quotations and Citations
- No quotations are allowed in the paper; however, all ideas and justification of content must be cited. Backing up opinions and sharing sources with the reader are crucial components of a research paper and must be present.
- Failure to properly cite research sources and borrowed ideas is plagiarism. Play it safe, cite your sources.
- Refer to the APA style guide for assistance with properly citing quoted or borrowed materials and ideas.
- Turnitin is used on all reports and projects. A report can be obtained for your review prior to submitting your final work. Use the Turnitin tool to ensure your work is written all in your own words and paraphrased. Use your DeVry University resources to ensure your work is properly cited.
Course Project Milestones
| Week | Action Required |
| 1 | Part I: Project Selection and Planning Select company and problem. Develop a general course of action using Chapter 1: Introduction of your BABOK® Guide and PADIO on how you will go about developing a solution to the problem you have identified. |
| 3 | Part II: Elicitation Exercise Based on the problem identified in Part 1 of the project, design your survey to elicit data from the problem owner(s) and stakeholders. These may be employees, customers, suppliers/vendors, and so forth. Design appropriate questions that will elicit data needed to begin to develop information about the problem and for designing alternative solutions for problem solution. At Survey Monkey found at www.surveymonkey.comLinks to an external site., Create a free 10-question survey from the questions you created in Step 2 at www.surveymonkey.com. Links to an external site.Send the link to your instructor and at least nine people. You may place the link in the classroom discussion to elicit feedback and meet the number requirement. Survey Monkey will create a data report. Using the data report, evaluate the data elicited from your stakeholders. Think critically about the data and write a 500-word analysis of your Survey Monkey data. Explore what the elicitation from surveying your stakeholders told you about the problem and begin to design and develop alternative solutions. Back up your opinions with three sources and cite both in-text and at work’s end the APA way. One source will be your BABOK® Guide, one will be your company, and one will be a scholarly source from the DeVry Online Library. In an appendix AFTER your reference page, place a screenshot of your Survey Monkey data report for comparison to your written analysis. |
| 5 | Part III: Visio Diagrams For this assignment, create three diagrams of your company using Visio software. Save a screenshot of each image to include in your analysis paper. Diagram 1: This will be a status quo of the company’s problem as seen in Week 1. Include the problem owner(s) and stakeholders in your diagram. Diagram 2: Include one solution alternative and how it will interact the problem owner(s) and stakeholders. Diagram 3: Include a second solution alternative and how it will interact with the problem owner(s) and stakeholders. In Microsoft Word, write a 750-word paper where you briefly introduce your company and its current problem. The body of your paper will discuss alternative solutions to solve the problem, including decision-making criteria and weights used during the decision-making process. Your paper will conclude with a thoughtful analysis of decision alternatives, choosing the best to solve the company’s problem, justifying your opinion. Your paper will be supported by a minimum of three sources cited both in-text and at work’s end including the BABOK® Guide, the company, and at least one scholarly source from the DeVry Online Library. You will include screenshot images of each of your three Microsoft Visio diagrams in an appendix in your paper. The appendix will be placed after the reference page. |
| 7 | Part IV: Submit Final Report to Management The final report on the Course Project will support the chapter learning from your BABOK® Guide, live class lessons, and in-class asynchronous lessons. Incorporate all of the work from previous parts of your project into this final part. There will be several new sections to be written. This is your opportunity to let your critical thinking, analysis, and problem-solving observations shine. Your final paper will be a fully developed solution moving through the problem-solving tasks of planning, elicitation, analysis, requirements designing/developing, solution alternatives evaluation, implementation of the best solutions, and the operational stage of training, maintenance, and evaluation. Assignment Instructions Must be 8–10 pages in length. Follow APA format for title page, citations, reference page, and appendix. APA headings should be used to delineate the required sections: Executive Summary and Business Problem Review. At least nine authoritative outside references are required. These nine must include the company’s 10k annual report, BABOK® Guide, the company, and at least six scholar authoritative sources from the DeVry Online Library. No charts, art, graphics, and diagrams will be included in the body of the paper, but instead be in an appendix following the reference page. The appendix must include a Microsoft Project schedule of tasks, three Microsoft Visio diagrams of problem and problem solutions, decision tree of the problem to be solved, chart of KPIs, and SWOT of company prior to problem solution. Any questions about this paper are welcomed in email, the weekly course Q & A Discussion topic, office hours, or live classes. |
| 8 | Part V: Submit Presentation to Management This presentation will consist of nine slides that correspond to the sections of the final paper Course Project Part IV (not including the cover and reference slides). The nine slides will be Executive Summary, Enterprise Business and Industry Analysis, Business Problem Review, Business Analysis Planning and Monitoring, Elicitation and Collaboration, Solution Alternatives Evaluation, Implementation, Operational, and Conclusion. Each slide will include your narrated voice. To add narration or commentary to the slide show, make sure your microphone is set up and working. To start recording, select the Slide Show tab, select the slide where you want the recording to begin, and then select Record. |
Chapter 1
1
Introduction
A Guide to the Business Analysis Body of Knowledge® (BABOK® Guide) is the globally recognized standard for the practice of business analysis. The BABOK® Guide describes business analysis knowledge areas, tasks, underlying competencies, techniques and perspectives on how to approach business analysis.
1.1 Purpose of the BABOK® Guide
The primary purpose of the BABOK® Guide is to define the profession of business analysis and provide a set of commonly accepted practices. It helps practitioners discuss and define the skills necessary to effectively perform business analysis work. The BABOK® Guide also helps people who work with and employ business analysts to understand the skills and knowledge they should expect from a skilled practitioner.
Business analysis is a broad profession in which business analysts might perform work for many different types of initiatives across an enterprise. Practitioners may employ different competencies, knowledge, skills, terminology, and attitudes that they use when performing business analysis tasks. The BABOK® Guide is a common framework for all perspectives, describing business analysis tasks that are performed to properly analyze a change or evaluate the necessity for a change. Tasks may vary in form, order, or importance for individual business analysts or for various initiatives.
The six knowledge areas of the BABOK® Guide (Business Analysis Planning and Monitoring, Elicitation and Collaboration, Requirements Life Cycle Management, Strategy Analysis, Requirements Analysis and Design Definition (RADD), and Solution Evaluation) describe the practice of business analysis as it is applied within the boundaries of a project or throughout enterprise evolution and continuous improvement. The following image shows how three of the knowledge areas support the delivery of business value before, during, and after the life cycle of a project.
Figure 1.1.1: Business Analysis Beyond Projects
1.2 What is Business Analysis?
Business analysis is the practice of enabling change in an enterprise by defining needs and recommending solutions that deliver value to stakeholders. Business analysis enables an enterprise to articulate needs and the rationale for change, and to design and describe solutions that can deliver value.
Business analysis is performed on a variety of initiatives within an enterprise. Initiatives may be strategic, tactical, or operational. Business analysis may be performed within the boundaries of a project or throughout enterprise evolution and continuous improvement. It can be used to understand the current state, to define the future state, and to determine the activities required to move from the current to the future state.
Business analysis can be performed from a diverse array of perspectives. The BABOK® Guide describes several of these perspectives: agile, business intelligence, information technology, business architecture, and business process management. A perspective can be thought of as a lens through which the business analysis practitioner views their work activities based on the current context. One or many perspectives may apply to an initiative, and the perspectives outlined in the BABOK® Guide do not represent all the contexts for business analysis or the complete set of business analysis disciplines.
1.3 Who is a Business Analyst?
A business analyst is any person who performs business analysis tasks described in the BABOK® Guide, no matter their job title or organizational role. Business analysts are responsible for discovering, synthesizing, and analyzing information from a variety of sources within an enterprise, including tools, processes, documentation, and stakeholders. The business analyst is responsible for eliciting the actual needs of stakeholders—which frequently involves investigating and clarifying their expressed desires—in order to determine underlying issues and causes.
Business analysts play a role in aligning the designed and delivered solutions with the needs of stakeholders. The activities that business analysts perform include:
• understanding enterprise problems and goals,
• analyzing needs and solutions,
• devising strategies,
• driving change, and
• facilitating stakeholder collaboration.
Other common job titles for people who perform business analysis include:
• business architect,
• business systems analyst,
• data analyst,
• enterprise analyst,
• management consultant,
• process analyst,
• product manager,
• product owner,
• requirements engineer, and
• systems analyst.
1.4 Structure of the BABOK® Guide
The core content of the BABOK® Guide is composed of business analysis tasks organized into knowledge areas. Knowledge areas are a collection of logically (but not sequentially) related tasks. These tasks describe specific activities that accomplish the purpose of their associated knowledge area.
The Business Analysis Key Concepts, Underlying Competencies, Techniques, and Perspectives sections form the extended content in the BABOK® Guide that helps guide business analysts to better perform business analysis tasks.
• Business Analysis Key Concepts: define the key terms needed to understand all other content, concepts, and ideas within the BABOK® Guide.
• Underlying Competencies: provide a description of the behaviours, characteristics, knowledge, and personal qualities that support the effective practice of business analysis.
• Techniques: provide a means to perform business analysis tasks. The techniques described in the BABOK® Guide are intended to cover the most common and widespread techniques practiced within the business analysis community.
• Perspectives: describe various views of business analysis. Perspectives help business analysts working from various points of view to better perform business analysis tasks, given the context of the initiative.
1.4.1 Key Concepts
The Business Analysis Key Concepts chapter provides a basic understanding of the central ideas necessary for understanding the BABOK® Guide.
This chapter consists of:
• Business Analysis Core Concept Model™ (BACCM™)
• Key Terms
• Requirements Classification Schema
• Stakeholders
• Requirements and Design
1.4.2 Knowledge Areas
Knowledge areas represent areas of specific business analysis expertise that encompass several tasks.
The six knowledge areas are:
Each knowledge area includes a visual representation of its inputs and outputs.
• Business Analysis Planning and Monitoring: describes the tasks that business analysts perform to organize and coordinate the efforts of business analysts and stakeholders. These tasks produce outputs that are used as key inputs and guidelines for the other tasks throughout the BABOK® Guide.
• Elicitation and Collaboration: describes the tasks that business analysts perform to prepare for and conduct elicitation activities and confirm the results obtained. It also describes the communication with stakeholders once the business analysis information is assembled and the ongoing collaboration with them throughout the business analysis activities.
• Requirements Life Cycle Management: describes the tasks that business analysts perform in order to manage and maintain requirements and design information from inception to retirement. These tasks describe establishing meaningful relationships between related requirements and designs, and assessing, analyzing and gaining consensus on proposed changes to requirements and designs.
• Strategy Analysis: describes the business analysis work that must be performed to collaborate with stakeholders in order to identify a need of strategic or tactical importance (the business need), enable the enterprise to address that need, and align the resulting strategy for the change with higher- and lower-level strategies.
• Requirements Analysis and Design Definition: describes the tasks that business analysts perform to structure and organize requirements discovered during elicitation activities, specify and model requirements and designs, validate and verify information, identify solution options that meet business needs, and estimate the potential value that could be realized for each solution option. This knowledge area covers the incremental and iterative activities ranging from the initial concept and exploration of the need through the transformation of those needs into a particular recommended solution.
• Solution Evaluation: describes the tasks that business analysts perform to assess the performance of and value delivered by a solution in use by the enterprise, and to recommend removal of barriers or constraints that prevent the full realization of the value.
The following diagram shows a general relationship between the knowledge areas.
Figure 1.4.1: Relationships Between Knowledge Areas
1.4.3 Tasks
A task is a discrete piece of work that may be performed formally or informally as part of business analysis. The BABOK® Guide defines a list of business analysis tasks. The definition of a given task is universally applicable to business analysis efforts, independent of the initiative type. A business analyst may perform other activities as assigned by their organization, but these additional activities are not considered to be part of the business analysis profession.
Tasks are grouped into knowledge areas. Business analysts perform tasks from all knowledge areas sequentially, iteratively, or simultaneously. The BABOK® Guide does not prescribe a process or an order in which tasks are performed. Tasks may be performed in any order, as long as the necessary inputs to a task are present. A business analysis initiative may start with any task, although likely candidates are Analyze Current State or Measure Solution Performance.
Each task in the BABOK® Guide is presented in the following format:
• Purpose
• Description
• Inputs
• Elements
• Guidelines/Tools
• Techniques
• Stakeholders
• Outputs
.1 Purpose
The Purpose section provides a short description of the reason for a business analyst to perform the task, and the value created through performing the task.
.2 Description
The Description section explains in greater detail what the task is, why it is performed, and what it should accomplish.
.3 Inputs
The Inputs section lists the inputs for the task. Inputs are information consumed or transformed to produce an output, and represent the information necessary for a task to begin. They may be explicitly generated outside the scope of business analysis or generated by a business analysis task. Inputs that are generated outside of the business analysis efforts are identified with the qualifier ‘(external)’ in the input list.
There is no assumption that the presence of an input means that the associated deliverable is complete or in its final state. The input only needs to be sufficiently complete to allow successive work to begin. Any number of instances of an input may exist during the life cycle of an initiative.
The Inputs section includes a visual representation of the inputs and outputs, the other tasks that use the outputs, as well as the guidelines and tools listed in the task.
.4 Elements
The Elements section describes the key concepts that are needed to understand how to perform the task. Elements are not mandatory as part of performing a task, and their usage might depend upon the business analysis approach.
.5 Guidelines and Tools
The Guidelines and Tools section lists resources that are required to transform the input into an output. A guideline provides instructions or descriptions on why or how to undertake a task. A tool is something used to undertake a task.
Guidelines and tools can include outputs of other tasks.
.6 Techniques
The Techniques section lists the techniques that can be used to perform the business analysis task.
.7 Stakeholders
The Stakeholders section is composed of a generic list of stakeholders who are likely to participate in performing that task or who will be affected by it. The BABOK® Guide does not mandate that these roles be filled for any given initiative.
.8 Outputs
The Outputs section describes the results produced by performing the task. Outputs are created, transformed, or changed in state as a result of the successful completion of a task. An output may be a deliverable or be a part of a larger deliverable. The form of an output is dependent on the type of initiative underway, standards adopted by the organization, and best judgment of the business analyst as to an appropriate way to address the information needs of key stakeholders.
As with inputs, an instance of a task may be completed without an output being in its final state. Tasks that use a specific output do not necessarily have to wait for its completion for work within the task to begin.
1.4.4 Underlying Competencies
Underlying competencies reflect knowledge, skills, behaviours, characteristics, and personal qualities that help one successfully perform the role of the business analyst. These underlying competencies are not unique to the business analysis profession. However, successful execution of tasks and techniques is often dependent on proficiency in one or more underlying competencies.
Underlying competencies have the following structure:
• Purpose
• Definition
• Effectiveness Measures
.1 Purpose
The Purpose section describes why it is beneficial for business analysts to have this underlying competency.
.2 Definition
The Definition section describes the skills and expertise involved in the application of this competency.
.3 Effectiveness Measures
The Effectiveness Measures section describes how to determine whether a person is demonstrating skills in this underlying competency.
1.4.5 Techniques
Techniques provide additional information on ways that a task may be performed.
The list of techniques included in the BABOK® Guide is not exhaustive. There are multiple techniques that may be applied alternatively or in conjunction with other techniques to accomplish a task. Business analysts are encouraged to modify existing techniques or engineer new ones to best suit their situation and the goals of the tasks they perform.
Techniques have the following structure:
• Purpose
• Description
• Elements
• Usage Considerations
.1 Purpose
The Purpose section describes what the technique is used for and the circumstances under which it is most likely to be applicable.
.2 Description
The Description section describes what the technique is and how it is used.
.3 Elements
The Elements section describes key concepts that are needed to understand how to use the technique.
.4 Usage Considerations
The Usage Considerations section describes the conditions under which the technique may be more or less effective.
1.4.6 Perspectives
Perspectives are used within business analysis work to provide focus to tasks and techniques specific to the context of the initiative. Most initiatives are likely to engage one or more perspectives. The perspectives included in the BABOK® Guide are:
• Agile
• Business Intelligence
• Information Technology
• Business Architecture
• Business Process Management
These perspectives do not presume to represent all the possible perspectives from which business analysis is practiced. The perspectives discussed in the BABOK® Guide represent some of the more common views of business analysis at the time of writing.
Perspectives are not mutually exclusive, in that a given initiative might employ more than one perspective.
Perspectives have the following structure:
• Change Scope
• Business Analysis Scope
• Methodologies, Approaches, and Techniques
• Underlying Competencies
• Impact on Knowledge Areas
.1 Change Scope
The Change Scope section describes what parts of the enterprise the change encompasses when viewed from this perspective and to what extent it impacts both the objectives and operations of the enterprise. The change scope also identifies the type of problems solved, the nature of the solutions being sought, and the approach to delivering these solutions and measuring their value.
.2 Business Analysis Scope
The Business Analysis Scope section describes the key stakeholders, including a profile of the likely types of sponsors, the target stakeholders, and the business analyst’s role within an initiative. It also defines likely outcomes that would be expected from business analysis work in this perspective.
.3 Methodologies, Approaches, and Techniques
The composition of this section is unique to each perspective. In each case it describes the methodologies, approaches, or techniques that are common and specific to the application of business analysis in the perspective. Methodologies and approaches are specialized ways of undertaking the business analysis work. The techniques included in this section are techniques that are not included in the Techniques chapter of the BABOK® Guide but are especially relevant to the perspective.
In the Business Architecture perspective, reference models are listed instead of methodologies or approaches. In the Business Process Management perspective, frameworks are listed instead of approaches.
.4 Underlying Competencies
The Underlying Competencies section describes the competencies that are most prevalent in the perspective.
.5 Impact on Knowledge Areas
The Impact on Knowledge Areas section describes how knowledge areas are applied or modified. It also explains how specific activities within a perspective are mapped to tasks in the BABOK® Guide.