All business analysis deliverables or results should be defined in the business analysis approach. Predictive planning approaches are typically quite formal and produce very detailed document sets requiring formal approval, whereas adaptive planning approaches can be quite informal and often limit the documentation to the minimum until more detail is required. When an adaptive approach is used, business analysis work is typically approved informally through team interaction and feedback.

An example could be when a business analyst is working on a large enterprise-wide system implementation in the public sector using a waterfall methodology (hence, using a predictive approach). Typically, there would be a lot of detailed documentation required to facilitate the progression of the project through its phases.

Often in these scenarios, detailed documentation is the vehicle used to obtain approvals from the steering committee for budget release at pre-defined intervals or phases of the initiative. In this scenario, a lot of the analysis and documentation efforts are done in the early part of the initiative.

Another example where less formality and detail might be required would be in a change-driven or adaptive environment. This might be a web development project where documentation is developed on an as-needed basis and only to the level of detail that is required to achieve a functioning piece of software. This scenario is often misunderstood as minimal documentation whenever an adaptive approach is followed because people make a blanket assumption that there is very little documentation required. This is incorrect. The difference between predictive and adaptive documentation detail needs is simply that predictive approaches will document every aspect of the solution to the lowest-agreed level of detail whereas, in an adaptive environment, the specific story (or requirement) being developed will dictate the required level of documentation. This can still be a low level of detailed documentation if the story or the feature being developed warrants that. Every story in an adaptive approach still needs enough detail to be successfully tested, even if the development aspect doesn’t need that must detail to be developed.