BCS Business Analysis Foundation course

Full curriculum details

What is business analysis?

• The business change lifecycle and where business analysis fits
• Core principles of business analysis in today’s organisationsStatistics
• Variants of the business analyst role across projects and products

The competencies of a business analyst

• The T-shaped professional concept
• Personal qualities, business knowledge, and professional techniquesStatistics
• Developing capability as a practising business analyst

The strategic context for business analysis

• Using PESTLE to analyse the external environment
• Applying VMOST to understand vision, mission, objectives, strategy, and tactics
• Using CSFs, KPIs, POPIT™ and the business model canvas in strategy execution

The business analysis service framework (BASF)

• Key BA service activities from investigation to deployment
• How the framework adapts to different organisational contextsThe technical storage or access that is used exclusively for statistical purposes.
• The BA role across the end-to-end change lifecycle

Investigating the business situationThe technical storage or access that is used exclusively for anonymous statistical purposes. Without a subpoena, voluntary compliance on the part of your Internet Service Provider, or additional records from a third party, information stored or retrieved for this purpose alone cannot usually be used to identify you.

• Workshops, observation, interviews, scenarios, and prototyping
• Quantitative techniques such as surveys and document analysis
• User role analysis, personas, rich pictures, and mind maps

Analysing and managing stakeholders

• Identifying stakeholders using the stakeholder wheel
• Power/interest grid and stakeholder management strategiesMarketing
• Defining responsibilities with RACI charts

Improving business services and processes

• The business process hierarchy: enterprise, event-response, and actor-task levels
• Enterprise-level models: SIPOC, value chain analysis, and value propositionsMarketing
• As-is and to-be process modelling and improvement strategies

Defining the solution

• Gap analysis between current and target states using POPIT™
• Developing solution options and assessing feasibility
• The principles and stages of design thinking

Making the business case

• The lifecycle of a business case from idea to deployment
• Assessing business, technical, and financial feasibilityThe technical storage or access is required to create user profiles to send advertising, or to track the user on a website or across several websites for similar marketing purposes.
• Business case structure, CARDI logs, and investment appraisal techniques

Establishing the requirementsManage options

• The requirements engineering framework and key activitiesManage services
• Actors in requirements engineering and types of requirementsManage {vendor_count} vendors
• Requirements hierarchy, elicitation techniques, and analysis filtersRead more about these purposes

Documenting and modelling requirements

• Text-based and diagrammatic documentation stylesAccept
• Requirements catalogues, user stories, and product backlogs
• Use case diagrams and class models for data and functional viewsDeny

Validating and managing requirements

• Formal and Agile approaches to requirements validationView preferences
• Horizontal and vertical traceability of requirements
• Change control and maintaining a clear audit trailSave preferences

Delivering the requirements

• Waterfall, V-model, incremental, and iterative (Agile) lifecyclesView preferences
• When to use each lifecycle and their pros and cons{title}
• Implications for requirements definition and management{title}

Delivering the business solution{title}

• The BA role during design, development, testing, and implementationManage consent
• Readiness assessment, transition and migration optionsManage consent
• Benefits planning and managing realisation through the change lifecycle