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Seven Steps to Mastering Busin - Barbara A. Car...docx
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Case in Point

The CFO of a large retail company requested a very specific financial report and wanted it within the week. The results of the report were to be used in the board of directors meeting to make strategic decisions about future plans. This project immediately was recognized as having a high business impact because of the level of the stakeholders. In this case, none of the other factors driving business impact could make this a medium- or low-impact project.

Geographic location of stakeholders: The larger the number of geographic locations of the stakeholders, the greater the business impact. Also, the greater the time zone differences of the stakeholders, the greater the business impact. This is because of the obvious communication challenges that come with physical distance. Even a short distance between locations can increase business impact (e.g., stakeholders are in the same city, but travel between offices takes at least an hour because of traffic).

Business complexity: Increased complexity means higher business impact. More complex businesses require more time for BAs to understand and document the requirements, more coding time for the developers, and more testing time. Complex business areas typically have many business rules (i.e., insurance, government regulatory agencies) and/ or involve processes that require high levels of knowledge and experience on the part of their stakeholders (e.g., financial securities trading, legal systems, chemical/pharmaceuticals). The requirements must be clearly and carefully documented so that the complexity will be handled appropriately.

Solution complexity: Increased complexity means higher business impact. More complex software, networks, and even manual procedures that require highly skilled workers increase the amount of analysis time that will be needed to design and develop functional requirements. Complex solutions must be carefully planned and studied for feasibility. The requirements must be clearly communicated to the development team and the quality assurance team so that the accuracy of the solution can be verified and validated.

Business risk: As business risk increases, so does business impact. Business risk is defined as the potential for significant business success or failure as a result of a project. For example, when a project involves the management of a large amount of money (e.g., cash management, large investments), the risk is very high. If the project solution/software contains an error, a large amount of money could be lost in a short period of time. Business risk is also measured in missed opportunities. If an organization wants to launch a new product but is delayed because the order processing system is not ready, customers may go to a competitor and be lost. The larger the potential for loss, the higher the risk and the larger the business impact. Managing risk is also the responsibility of the project manager. Once risks are identified, the BA and project manager should work together to manage them (see the discussion on project initiation earlier in this chapter).

Quality requirements/expectations: The higher or more rigorous the quality requirements, the higher the business impact. Quality or non-functional requirements include performance, reliability, security, etc. (see Chapter 6). Non-functional requirements increase business impact because they impose more constraints on the solution. If a particular user input screen must respond within 0.5 seconds, the technology team must create an architecture that can support that level of performance. This may mean a particular database management strategy (to speed data access), a particular networking structure, specific types of hardware, etc. The importance of these types of requirements to the solution design also points out that they should be elicited early in the project. Sometimes BAs let these non-functional requirements wait until all of the business requirements are complete, but that may be a mistake. Ask initial questions about quality requirements early—during project initiation—to help you decide if there are going to be some tough technological constraints. This is a good example of the importance of business analysis planning and assessing business impact. You may not know all of the details up front, but you get enough information so that you know which areas are going to require the most work and focus.

Firm due date: When there is an absolute firm due date for a project, business impact is probably greater. The due date may be driven by an outside (external agent) organization (e.g., government mandate). Make sure that you understand why the due date was set and what the ramifications of a delay would be. Often, IT people don’t meet deadlines because they really don’t understand the negative ramifications on the business. It is the responsibility of the project manager and BA to understand and articulate this time “requirement” to the team members to keep them focused on the goal. Projects with unmovable due dates must use “timeboxing” techniques (see the discussion earlier in this chapter) to get work done. Project managers and BAs may use their planning estimates to negotiate a smaller project scope.

Length of project: Long projects increase business impact. Long projects are less successful than short ones. Business requirements change frequently, so a long project may implement a requirement that is no longer valid. Project teams become less focused over a longer period of time—that’s just human nature. Business stakeholders are impatient for solutions that are needed today but will not be delivered for a year or more. All of these problems are driving the move to more agile software development approaches with shorter, smaller deliverables (see Chapter 5). On the other hand, if a project with a large scope is scheduled for a short period of time, risk and potential negative impact increase.

Project budget relative to company size: The size of the project budget (number of employees, outside consultants, equipment, software, etc.) as a percentage of corporate revenue indicates the importance of a project to an organization. If the project budget is $1 million in a company with annual revenue of $10 million, the project is very important to the organization. The sponsor expects that the investment in the project will reap significant cost savings or revenue increases. The more money to be saved or made from the project results, the higher the business impact of the project.

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