This technique is used in a few different business analysis tasks in some knowledge areas in the BABOK® v3 guide. These tasks include the following:
Task |
The reason this technique is used |
Conduct elicitation |
To source business analysis information (such as process-, system-, product-, or service-related information) and to determine what customers want by looking at what competitors provide |
Analyze the current state |
To understand where the opportunities for improvement may be |
Define the future state |
To assist stakeholders in making decisions about future state business goals |
Define the change strategy |
To help decide which change strategy is the most appropriate for a particular situation |
Define the design options |
To find and analyze existing solutions in the market and to spot any trends that exist |
Measure solution performance |
To find out what the acceptable levels for the performance of a solution are |
Analyze the performance measures |
To review the results of similar solutions used by other organizations when assessing trends, risks, and any other variances |
Assess the solution limitations |
To try and find out what the challenges that other organizations experience are and how they address them |
Assess the enterprise limitations |
To find any existing solutions in the market that may provide insight into which external factors affect solution value realization |
Benchmarking and market analysis is becoming more important to businesses and plays a pivotal role in customer-centric analysis and design.
The next technique you need to include in your preparation is brainstorming.