The knowledge area chapters in the BABOK® v3.0 Guide are considered the core content of business analysis, and cover specific areas of expertise within the business analysis domain.
The six knowledge areas include the following:
- Business analysis planning and monitoring
- Elicitation and collaboration
- Requirements life cycle management
- Strategy analysis
- Requirements analysis and design definition
- Solution evaluation
Each knowledge area is related to one or more of the other knowledge areas in the BABOK® v3.0 Guide and should always be considered within that context. None of the knowledge areas can stand completely in isolation.
Knowledge areas are divided into tasks. A task is described as a discrete piece of work that may be performed formally or informally as part of business analysis. The BABOK® v3.0 Guide defines a list of business analysis tasks for each knowledge area. A business analyst may perform other tasks in conjunction with the defined business analysis tasks, but those may not be considered part of business analysis.
In the BABOK® v3.0 Guide, each knowledge area consists of a set of specific tasks. Each task in the BABOK®® v3.0 Guide is defined according to the following key attributes:
- Purpose
- Description
- Inputs
- Elements
- Guidelines or tools
- Techniques
- Stakeholders
- Outputs
It is important that you consider each task individually and understand the key attributes as they are defined in the BABOK® v3.0 Guide. We will cover each aspect of the knowledge areas in this study guide.