Cont: - Business Analyst's Toolkit

Definition Phase:
Projects usually begin with a vague idea about the business problem that exists and how to solve the problem. The objective of definition phase is to understand existing business processes by asking business clients and stakeholders why the system is necessary and what the system requires in order to support the business

Tasks performed by the Functional Consultant:
1. Understand and document the current business processes.
2. Determine the high level business requirements.
a. Please do not confuse them with high level system functionalities.
b. Requirement must be focused towards, how user is going to ‘use’ the proposed application and not on the desired features in the application.
3. Define the system boundary to get clarity on the in-scope and out-of-scope of the project.
4. Identifying the business actors that will benefit from the proposed system
5. Identify the high level essential business use cases.
6. For each relevant use case, identify the essential activities performed by the User. Capture that information into activity diagram. This can be called as High Level To-Be business process diagram.
7.Prepare and share the “understanding” document with the client on a fortnightly or monthly basis; which highlights the current level of understanding on the proposed application and any challenge foreseen by the analyst team