Question (1) What is Business Analysis and Business Process Management?

Business

The term business refers to an organization or enterprising entity engaged in commercial,

industrial, or professional activities. The purpose of a business is to organize some sort of
economic production of goods or services. Businesses can be for-profit entities or non-
profit organizations fulfilling a charitable mission or furthering a social cause. Businesses range
in scale and scope from sole proprietorships to large, international corporations. The term
business also refers to the efforts and activities undertaken by individuals to produce and sell
goods and services for profit.

Some businesses run as small operations in a single industry while others are large operations
that spread across many industries around the world.

Apple and Walmart are two examples of well-known, successful businesses.

Business Analysis

Business analysis is the process of conducting research and gathering information needed to
help organizations determine ways to solve problems and improve operations.

Business analysis is the practice of enabling change in an organizational context, by defining

needs and recommending solutions that deliver value to stakeholders

Business analysis can involve a variety of tasks and techniques, such as data analysis, financial
modeling, enterprise architecture, forecasting, budgeting, and more

The value of business analysis is in realization of benefits, avoidance of cost, and identification
of new opportunities, understanding of required capabilities and modeling the organization.
Through the effective use of business analysis, we can ensure an organization realizes these
benefits, ultimately improving the way they do business.

The basic idea of business analysis is the practice of identifying and clarifying a problem or issue
within a company, then working with the various stakeholders to define and implement an
acceptable solution. Solutions may include a software-systems development component, process
improvements, or organizational changes, and may involve extensive analysis, strategic planning
and policy development.
Steps to Perform a Business Analysis
Starting Point: The first step in the process is to identify a problem, an issue, or some other
business need. Let's say that you are the owner of a small motorcycle dealership. In addition to
selling bikes, your store does repairs and maintenance, sells riding gear, and custom orders parts
for your customers. You have received numerous complaints from the staff and customers about
the accuracy of your inventory system. The usual problem is for the system to show parts and
merchandise as being in stock, when none are actually available. This often means that a repair
job is not finished on schedule, which really irritates your customers.
Designate Business Analysis Team: The next step is to assign an individual or a team to
perform the business analysis. Usually the business analysis team is the go-between and provides
organization, strategic guidance, documentation, clarification, and assistance with political
issues. The objective of the business analysis is to efficiently resolve the problem or issue to the
satisfaction of all parties. Perhaps the most important factor in this process is full and open
communication between all parties. For our example, you assign the task of solving the inventory
system problems to your business manager and her assistant.
Identify Current Business Process: business process and the people currently responsible for
the area containing the problem. In our example, the business process would be the inventory
system and the people would be the shop manager, the sales manager, and the accountant.
Identify Stakeholders: stakeholders can include customers, suppliers, regulatory officials,
financial reporting experts, and external auditors. In our example, the owner and the customers
are certainly stakeholders. The sales personnel are also stakeholders because they have to deal
with angry customers.
Identify Requirements: Initially, it is crucial that the stakeholder requirements are clearly
identified and defined. If we don't do this, it will be impossible to successfully resolve the
problem. Examples of techniques that can be used to help define what the stakeholders need
include:

 Spontaneous group discussions, or brainstorming

 Review and analysis of pertinent documentation
 Small discussion groups of key individuals, or focus groups
 Individual interviews
 Surveys and questionnaires
 System analysis, including flow charts, narratives, diagrams, wireframes
 Observation and research

Business analysis as a discipline includes requirements analysis, sometimes also called

requirements engineering. It focuses on ensuring the changes made to an organization are aligned
with its strategic goals. These changes include changes to strategies, structures, policies, business
rules, processes, and information systems
Business process management (BPM)
What is Business Process Management (BPM)?

BPM refers to an organizational discipline and practice where an organization steps back to
evaluate and analyze its processes one after the other to determine its viability. Business process
management, or BPM, is the practice of analyzing and improving business processes. A business
process is a sequence of tasks or activities your business performs to achieve a specific
organizational goal. The goal here is to identify the underperforming areas and introduce changes
or improvements to optimal results.

Business process management focuses on the end-to-end business process. Instead of homing in
on a specific workflow, BPM aims to improve efficiency and effectiveness across your
organization. Business process management is a way to evaluate your entire process,
model the ideal process, and then improve your work based on that process model.
BPM helps you establish and align processes at the business level. When you
implement business process management, you’re looking at your entire organization’s
business processes and improving them.

BPM helps you analyze those processes and optimize them through tried-and-true process
improvement practices. Oftentimes, this includes business process improvements like reducing
bottlenecks, automating manual work, optimizing and streamlining inefficient processes, or re-
orienting project goals around specific business outcomes.

Critically, business process management doesn’t just help create a more efficient or effective
business—it does both, at the same time.

BPM:

• Maps and improves your processes

• Automates processes where possible

• Reduces waste

• Eliminates bottlenecks

• Cuts down on errors

• Improves efficiency and effectiveness

• Generates better services and products

• Leads to better customer satisfaction

• Streamlines inefficiencies

Ensures your business processes are clearly contributing to business outcomes

What Are the Types of BPM?

There are multiple forms of BPM, some of which allow for complete automation of some
processes. But a typical organization would need all the types of BPM that are going to highlight
below.

1. Document-Centric BPM

Here, a particular document is the core of a specified process. The working mechanism here is
that the document is sent to several approvers who approve it before it’s put into use. One of the
benefits is that it reduces the amount of time spent on sending documents back and forth.

A budget approval process makes an excellent example of a document-centric BPM. There’s a

form that the initiator has to fill to make the requisition by sending it to another higher authority
in the workflow.

2. Integration-Centric BPM

In this kind of process, the emphasis is placed on creating seamless and smooth data transitions
within the network software tools. The center of attention is on the numerous software systems
and applications you must integrate to run smoothly. In most cases, that would call for an
automated set of tools that eliminate the need for much human involvement or manual
adjustments.

A good example here is the integrated set of tools used mainly by the sales and marketing
departments. Typically, the marketing process is initiated as a marketing tool while the leads are
tracked using an analytics tool. These two are stored in a CRM, reflecting the lead’s entire
journey to where you made the sale or the lead dropped out in the sales funnel.

3. Human-Centric BPM

Humans are the ones entrusted with doing most of the demanding tasks. That means, after every
stage or step, some people are required to decide as per what should happen next. In this BPM,
automation plays a minimal role in the day-to-day running of processes. Such a system is often
designed to be user-friendly to both the employees and the staff.

An excellent example of Human-centric BPM would be the hiring process. The process is
initiated when the concerned departmental head realizes the need for an additional employee and
puts forward the manager’s request.
Question (2).Read different literatures and discuss Business management life cycle

Business process management (BPM) is a systematic approach companies use to design, model,
execute, monitor, and optimize standard business processes. BPM is different from project
management which focuses on one-time and unique processes, and also task management which
focuses on individual tasks in every process.
5 Steps in a Business Process Management Life cycle

BPM Life cycle Steps

1. Design

When you start out, you have fewer stakeholders and processes. You will find it easy to lay out
your business processes and execute them every day. But when you expand, your processes
begin to fall into predictable patterns. Your teams can no longer manage the processes that are
now all over the place, waiting to crash any minute now. Focusing manpower on such expansive
and monotonous processes can lead to errors.

Business process management lets you break down a process into smaller individual tasks, and
assigns each task to the respective stakeholder. The capability to collect data at each stage and
expand it across the process lifecycle makes BPM an all-in-one solution to manage your
processes. It helps you run processes flawlessly while complying with business rules.

Business process management software also irons out any disruptions caused when you make
process changes or add new processes. An organization has ever-changing business processes.
New employees get added, new tools are bought, the need for AI-led process enhancements
increases, and certain old processes become obsolete. Business process designing helps you
identify and model these processes to fit into your current business framework seamlessly.

2. Model
You need to represent the process in a digital format for teams to visualize the workflow
sequences and for the workflow engine to understand your instructions. You need to digitize it in
order to flow it through the system and execute or automate it.

BPM modeling or process modeling can also be defined as the graphical illustration that depicts
the steps in a process. To make the process framework more efficient, you need to have a
comparative understanding of how things are right now and how you want them to be. BPM
modeling helps you do this with deeper visibility into your process pipeline.

3. Execute

Once you have mapped and illustrated your processes for easy consumption, you need to execute
them. You need to set predefined business rules for the tool to follow. The tool executes all the
rules happening before, during, and after the process completion.

Document approvals, onboarding, asset management, expense reports, purchase orders, are all
common processes an organization has to execute. Most actions involved in these processes
don’t require human intervention at all, like transferring an approval task from one stakeholder to
the other. Nevertheless, your teams have to do it, and you are risking process compliance if you
don’t have an effective system to align the actions to the overarching business outcome. A BPM
software does that for you, in addition to providing effective workflow automation opportunities
for optimizing your processes further.

4. Monitor

For sustained process compliance, you need to monitor processes at all times. Business process
monitoring is a vital step in the BPM lifecycle as its benefits are more than successful problem
prevention. BPM monitoring ensures that your entire process framework is aware of what’s
happening day to day and minute by minute and translates it accurately into end business
processes.
BPM solutions essentially scan through your documents, and tasks to measure their effectiveness
against vital KPI metrics. You can’t improve what you can’t measure. Business process
monitoring helps you derive tangible insights to substantiate your processes quantitatively and
qualitatively.

5. Optimize

With a proper monitoring system in place, you can drive operations towards optimization and
process improvement. Business process optimization refers to the use of vital metrics and
measurements to revisit and optimize the existing processes. When you successfully optimize
your processes, you minimize wasted efforts, enhance output quality, meet process compliance,
reduce execution time, and eliminate any frictions in the process.
BPM optimization helps you strengthen the alignment of individual processes to your
overarching business objectives with constant improvement efforts. A process is essentially a set
of activities sequenced together to produce an outcome

The optimization is typically done with the help of a number of business process automation and
process management tools.

Question(3).What is the similarity and differences between business analysis and

enterprises analysis?

Business Analysis

Business analysis is the process of examining and evaluating business demands and identifying
solutions to potential challenges. Essentially, companies use this process to help them better
understand how to meet their short-term and long-term business goals. This may include
connecting company operations to measurable results that demonstrate how the organization is
meeting its goals effectively. Having this can also help companies provide their stakeholders
with detailed information about what they're doing, where they want the business to be and how
they plan to get there. Business analysis is a research process but happens after EA in the
initiated project. It involves interacting with stakeholders to elicit, analyze and manage
requirements and then developing and defining a solution to tackle an immediate business
problem. The solution could be in the form of a product, system, process, or piece of software.
Additionally, business analysis may also involve testing and documenting the proposed solution.

Using practical business analysis can:

 Increase ROI ,Reduce cost

 Increase sales ,Manage team collaboration
 Anticipate business problems ,Improve processes and workflow

Enterprise Analysis

Enterprise analysis (also known as strategic enterprise analysis or company analysis) is defined
as focusing ―on understanding the needs of the business as a whole, its strategic direction, and
identifying initiatives that will allow a business to meet those strategic goals.‖ Enterprise
analysis involves a thorough examination of not only the business problem (need) and its
proposed business solution (if one already exists), but also an in-depth look into whether the
proposed solution is truly the best solution, a detailed analysis of what the solution entails, its
risks, and its feasibility in the existing organizational climate. Because so much research and
examination are involved in the process of enterprise analysis work, they are routinely done at a
project’s inception. (Or, for agile projects, they are done throughout the project.)
A thorough enterprise analysis endeavor will include:
 An examination of currently proposed business initiatives for both viability and effectiveness
 An identification of the true, core business need(s) at hand, regardless of what has been
proposed thus far
 A description of the ideal solution to the need
 An evaluation of strategic risks and returns associated with any proposed business solution
 The scope of the business analyst’s proposed solution(s) to the business need, meaning what
tools and processes are involved in getting to the solution
 The creation of business requirements defining the business need and proposed solution,
complete with visuals and a sound business case
Implementing business analysis can:
o Elicit project requirements
o Bridge the communication gap between stakeholders
o Assist in project implementation and testing
o Help in strategy and decision making
o Identify the market status of the business
o Identify project characteristics
To conclude their differences , Schulich School of Business wrote, ―Business analysis is
also a research process but happens after (enterprise analysis) in the initiated project –
interacting with stakeholders to elicit, analyze and manage requirements, and then
developing and defining a solution to an immediate business problem.‖
The differences in scope and time horizons between the two functions.

Similarities

Understanding enterprise analysis is helpful to those who practice business analysis. While
enterprise analysis differs from business analysis, it is related to it.

Like business analysis, enterprise analysis is a process. That process is made up of five steps,
according to the BABOK® Guide. The article ―An Overview of Enterprise Analysis‖ listed the
steps:

• Define the business need

• Assess the capability gaps

• Determine the solution approach

• Define the solution scope

• Define the business case

Modern Analyst defines enterprise analysis as a knowledge area that describes business analysis
activities that take place for an enterprise for the purpose of:

• Identifying business opportunities

• Building a business architecture

• Determining the optimal project investment path for the enterprise

• Implementing new business and technical solutions

Enterprise analysis looks like a business analyst completing each of these steps and participating
in the development of goals and objectives. Alternatively, a business analyst practicing enterprise
analysis could conduct business goals and objectives development sessions. The article The Lay
of the Land: Enterprise Analysis explained, ―With the goals and objectives set, the three core
areas of focus are Elicitation, Analysis and Assessment.‖ During assessment, the business
analyst would facilitate several considerations and activities. Examples include peer reviews,
structured walkthroughs, and user acceptance testing, the source stressed. ―All of these activities
play an instrumental role not only in defining the potential solution at the Enterprise level, but in
nurturing its growth through to solution development,‖

Question (4).Read different literatures and find and discuss different fundamentals of
business analysts

Business analysts work across all levels of an organization and may be involved in everything
from defining strategy, to creating the enterprise architecture, to taking a leadership role by
defining the goals and requirements for programs and projects or supporting continuous
improvement in its technology and processes. Also use data to form business insights and
support data-driven decisions. They often work closely with others throughout the business
hierarchy to communicate their findings and help implement changes

• Identifying business needs turning them into opportunities for growth

• Market analysis for untapped opportunities

• Data modeling

• Budgeting and forecasting

• Providing insight into IT strategy, communications, HR and training, supply chain,

process management, and more

Although the demands of a specific business analysis role will vary depending on their industry,
seniority, and specific job role, most Business Analysts spend their time conducting research,
analyzing data, gathering information to understand business requirements, developing clear and
actionable strategies, and ultimately communicating those strategies to stakeholders.
 Fundamental skills for a business analyst career include:

• Analysis: Business analysts must parse large bodies of complex data and use what they learn
from that data to recommend fixes.

• Data analysis: Business analysts must be able to collect, organize, and analyze data to identify
trends and patterns.

• Business case development: Business analysts must be able to develop a business case that
outlines the benefits and costs of a proposed solution.

• Project management: Business analysts must be able to manage projects from start to finish,
including budgeting and project prioritization.

• Communication

Business analysts must be able to communicate effectively with stakeholders, including technical
and non-technical team members. Also, must deliver complex information clearly in verbal and
written form. Listening skills are also crucial for absorbing input from the management and IT
departments to recognize problems and suggest remedies.

• Interpersonal

Interpersonal skills may depend more on experience than training. Business analysts must know
how to function as part of a team. They need the flexibility to collaborate with multiple levels of
their client organizations, from management to junior-level staff.

• Problem-Solving

A creative mindset is necessary for solving clients’ problems—because while some aspects of
those problems may be similar across businesses, each organization likely poses unique
challenges for the analyst to solve.

• Time Management

Because the business analyst’s role is to maximize organizational efficiency, they should
demonstrate time management to meet deadlines. Business analysts use data to form business
insights and recommend changes in businesses and other organizations. Business analysts can
identify issues in virtually any part of an organization, including IT processes, organizational
structures, or staff development.

Typically, you will find all of the following tasks included in a Business Analyst job description:

• Leading ongoing reviews of business processes and the business model and leading the
development of optimization strategies

• Evaluating and improving business processes, anticipating requirements and business

problems, unearthing areas for improvement, and leading the development and implementation
of solutions

• Staying up-to-date on the latest process and IT advancements to modernize systems

• Performing requirement analysis

• Effectively communicating insights and plans to cross-functional team members and

management

• Gathering, documenting, and sharing important information from meetings and

producing useful reports

• Allocating resources and maintaining cost efficiency

• Ensuring solutions meet business requirements and needs

• Leading project management initiatives, developing project plans, and monitoring project
performance

• Updating, implementing, and maintaining procedures

• Prioritizing initiatives based on business needs and requirements

• Monitoring deliverables and ensuring projects are completed on time

 Question (5). Clearly discuss the similarity and difference between waterfall and agile
method of business analysis

Project Management Methodologies

Methodologies provide frameworks to help you to organize your project’s initiating, planning,
executing, monitoring, and closing processes. From this aspect, there are lots of methodologies
still in use in the world of project management. Some of them provide traditional solutions, some
others provide more innovative frameworks. Waterfall, Agile, Lean, Extreme Programming, Six
Sigma are some of the most common ones. Although they have the same goal: carrying out the
project to successful completion, their principles are various.

What is the Agile Methodology?

Agile is a project management methodology that aims at continuous improvement and iteration
at every stage. Continuous collaboration and iteration are key for agile implementation.
Scrum, Kanban Methodology, Extreme Programming (XP), and Adaptive Project Framework
(APF) are the agile frameworks.

Agile methodology focuses on continuous interaction of development and testing during the
SDLC. In this model, the whole project is broken into small incremental builds. These small
incremental builds are performed in iterations. Each iteration takes one to three weeks.

It is obvious that all the projects and organizations are not suited to agile. Considering the
requirements of various projects, agile is not the best way to run all the projects.

Advantages of Agile Methodology

 Since the agile projects are client-focused, agile makes sure that the client is involved in
every stage continuously.
 The team members demonstrate better performance. Because coordination and
collaboration among team members are key for the success in agile projects.
 The agile project management methodology ensures that the quality of the product is
maintained.
 Risks are minimized because the process is based on incremental progress.
 It is applicable to large and complex projects.

Limitations of Agile Methodology

 It can’t be effective in smaller projects.

 If the client is not clear about the final product, the project can easily go off track.
 The Agile methodology requires a senior programmer to take important decisions during
the meeting.
 It is costly considering other methodologies.
What is the Waterfall Methodology?

The waterfall is a linear sequential model in which the project work is completed sequentially in
each phase. This means the predecessor phase ends and the successor phase starts just after. The
waterfall is a straightforward methodology for project management that helps to perform
progress measurement easily. The testing phase takes place at the end of the development. The
client or stakeholders are not too much involved compared with the agile methodology.

In the waterfall model, the whole software development process is broken into various phases of
SDLC where the outcome of one phase will be the input of the following phase. Everything is
subsequent and non-overlapping.

Advantages of Waterfall Methodology

 Each sequential phase has specific needs and deliverables. This makes it easy to plan and
manage.
 It suits best for projects with well-defined scope and requirements.
 It suits best for smaller projects.
 It speeds up the deliveries of the project
 Everything is well documented

Limitations of Waterfall Methodology

 It is suited to smaller projects rather than large and complex ones.

 If the project requirements are not defined well at the beginning, it will be less effective.
 It will be difficult to turn back to the previous phases and apply changes as the project
progresses.
 Testing takes place just after the end of the development process. For this reason, it is
expensive and time-consuming to turn back and fix the errors.

Similarities Between Agile and Waterfall

 They have similar goals, which are to produce high-quality software applications and make
clients happy and content.
 They perform the same activities, which include collecting requirements, designing,
developing, testing, and deploying.
 The foundation of a project involves planning, bringing the project to life, and monitoring the
project’s progress in the two methodologies.
 They value individuals and interactions, working software, customer collaboration, and
responding to change.
 Help project teams to evaluate potential issues that they might face with.
 They involve planning, executing, and monitoring the project’s progress.
 Organize your project’s initiating, planning, executing, monitoring, and closing processes.
 Carrying out the project to successful completion, their principles are various.
Differences between Agile Vs Waterfall

Agile vs Waterfall Comparison Table

Agile Methodology Waterfall Methodology

 Divides the project development lifecycle into  Divides the software development
sprints. process into distinct phases.

 Follows an incremental approach  Follows a linear sequential approach

 It s a flexible methodology  It is a rigid structural methodology

 Agile can be considered as a collection of

 It will be done as one single project.
various projects

 It is easy to make changes because of its

 It is difficult to make changes
flexibility
  The test plan is discussed after the completion  The test plan is reviewed during the
of each sprint testing phase

 The waterfall is suitable for projects

 Project requirements are subject to change with definite requirements. Changes
are not easy. Agile vs Waterfall

 Agile is a customer-focused methodology.

 Waterfall methodology relies on
Changes on the product are as per the
definite project requirements
customer’s requirements

 Since all the requirements and the

 A fixed project budget is not suitable for the
project scope is defined well, the
implementation of agile methodology. There
project budget does not change too
may be some flexibility.
much.

 Low communication and

 High communication and collaboration among
collaboration among the team
the team members
members

 The product owner and the project team  All the requirements are defined
collect the requirements every day. before starting the project.

 Follows an iterative development approach so  Phases are linear and sequential.

that planning, development, and testing Once a phase is completed, the next
phases may appear more than once. phase starts.

 Testing is performed in conjunction with  The testing phase comes once the
software development. build phase is completed.

Conclusion

Agile vs Waterfall is an interesting topic. Agile and Waterfall are two different methodologies
used for project management. The waterfall is suitable for projects with well-defined
requirements and scope. Changes are difficult and costly. Therefore it is more applicable to
smaller projects. On the other hand, Agile is more applicable to large and complex projects with
various requirements. It is a flexible methodology that allows making changes in any phase of
the project. Both methodologies have pros and cons. Therefore the best methodology is the one
that best suits your projects and customer’s requirements.