History

International Business Machine was incorporated in 1911, started as a Computing -Tabulating- Recording company. In 1914 a man named Thomas Watson who became the general manager  of IBM. He oversaw the company's growth into an international force for 40 years. Fast forward to today, IBM is one of the leading manufacturers and markets of computer hardware, middleware and software.

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Why IBM ?

What is Business Analysis?

Business analysis is a research of identifying the needs and dictate solutions to business problems. For IBM as part of our Business Analysis team, you will be involved working with multiple departments. Such as, financial and integration engineers as well as offering managers to research and design support our products.

Who is a Business Analyst?

According to Babok a Business Analysts are responsible for discovering and analyzing information from a variety of sources within an enterprise including documentations, tools and stakeholders moreover, they play role of a business architect, system analyst, data analyst, management consultant, product manager, product owner etc. However, under IBM a business analyst act as a decision manager and a bridge between the technical and business team for implementing management solutions for decision making.

Rights of a business analyst under IBM:

• Planning business strategies
• Providing resolutions to technical issues
• Defining business policies
• Performing testing activities
• Creating and maintaining reports
• Ensuring the security and compliance of the applications
• Building gathered knowledge into team knowledge

Business Analysis key concepts

The Business Analysis Core Concept Model

There are six core concept models in the business analysis core concept model:
Change: The act of transformation.

Need:A opportunity to be addressed.

Solution:Specific way of satisfying needs.

Stakeholder: A group of individuals with a relationship to the change.

Value:The worth of something.

Context:The circumstances that influence and provide understanding of the change

Requirements Classification Scheme

Business Requirements 

Are the critical activities of an organization that must be performed to meet the enterprise(s) objectives. As for IBM the mission is "Leadership in creating, developing and manufacturing the most advanced information technologies, World wide network that translates advanced technologies into business value for customers, Professional solutions, services and consulting business world wide."

Stakeholder Requirements

Describing the needs of stakeholders views of those at the business or enterprise operations level. Requirements are collected from stakeholders such as customers, business units, end users and investors.IBM's vision statement indicates that "At IBM, we strive to lead in the invention, development and manufacture of the industry’s most advanced information technologies, including computer systems, software, storage systems and microelectronics. We translate these advanced technologies into value for our customers through our professional solutions, services and consulting businesses worldwide." 

Solution Requirements

Specify the conditions and capabilities a solution has to have in order to meet the need or solve the problems. The requirements must be met or support the driving business objectives, In addition to meeting stakeholders objectives. IBM's values states "Dedication to every clients success, Innovation that matters - for our company and for the world, Trust and personal responsibility in all relationships.".

Underlying Competencies

Analytical Thinking and Problem Solving:

Required for a business analyst in the company to analyze problems and opportunities effectively. Thinking analytical will identify the best way to present information to stakeholders. 

Behavioral Characteristics:

Ethics as one of the behavioral characteristics would gain the respect of stakeholders as a business analyst and ensuring and having consideration of fairness in activities and relationships. Adaptability is another important characteristic aiming to adapt to different environments and different stakeholders by changing one's techniques, style, methods, and approach.

Business Knowledge:

Knowledge in the business would help a business analyst perform his tasks efficiently and effectively in the organization. It will enable the understanding of a business analyst to value a specific situation relating to a change or a need.

Business Analysis Planning and Monitoring

Plan Business Analysis Approach

As a business analyst, you must work with stakeholders in order to determine how to complete your work if the standards of the organization do not exist. There are various approaches to complete the work but one important is select techniques and tools that have worked well in the past. 

Plan Stakeholder Engagement

The stakeholder engagement is a planning an approach to maintain and establish a good effective relationship with the business analyst and the stakeholder. It is important to maintain the relationship as a business analyst in order to grow that particular relationship from a few stakeholders into dozens, hundreds or even thousands. 

Plan Business Analysis Governance

This plan is to determine how decisions are made for requirements, design, change control and prioritization. The plan is put in place for a business analyst to clarify any changes and approaches that may seem vague for customers or employees to ensure consistency. 

Plan Business Analysis Information Management

To ensure the information in the organization is organized, useful and accessible, information management must develop ways on how the information will be stored and accessed. Information management must determine how information should be organized in a functional and useful model. Also how the information must be accessed and store to maintain consistency in the organization.

Identify Business Analysis Performance Improvements

Improvements are done by assessing a business analyst work and improve processes and performance. Improvements can be done by the report on the results of the analysis, and identify any necessary preventive, corrective, or developmental actions.

Requirements Life Cycle Management

The Core Concept Model in Requirements Life Cycle
Management
• Trace Requirements: analyzes and maintains the relationships between requirements, designs, solution components, and other work products for impact analysis, coverage, and allocation.

Description:
Trace-ability is used to help ensure that the solution conforms to requirements and to assist in scope, change, risk, time, cost, and communication management. It is also used to detect missing functionality. For IBM traceability enables:
-Fast work
-discover gaps
-assessment of requirements
-the complexity of a change
     
Traceability process:-

Elements required for Traceability:-
-Inputs
-Elements
-Guidelines and tools
-Techniques
-Stakeholders
-Outputs

• Maintain Requirements: ensures that requirements and designs are
accurate and current throughout the life cycle and facilitates reuse where
appropriate. In order to maximize the benefits of maintaining and reusing requirements the requirements should be: consistently represented, approved for maintenance, easily accessible, understandable, standardized process.
IBM Storage maintenance services are:

• Direct access to our level 3 engineers.
• Technical support calls to CDS Operation
• Guaranteed spares for all IBM Storage system delivered to your data center in less than 2 hours
• Proactive monitoring and preventative maintenance to ensure arrays drives and auto-loaders continue to function optimally preventing downtime and data loss.

Few techniques for maintenance:-
-Business rules analysis
-Data flow diagrams
-Data modeling
-Document analysis
-Functional decomposition
-Process modeling
-User stories

• Prioritize Requirements: assesses the value, urgency, and risks associated with particular requirements and designs to ensure that analysis and/or delivery work is done on the most important ones at any given time. The main purpose of IBM for Prioritizing requirements is to rank requirements in order of their importance. There are three elements for prioritizing:-

• Basis for prioritizing:-Typical factors that influence prioritization include- the advantages that accrues as a result of requirements, the consequences that result from not implementing a given requirement in order to meet the policies imposed on the organization, the cost effort, and resources needed to implement the requirement, Risk of being technically unfeasible, dependencies may also occur which means when one requirement is cannot be fulfilled unless the other requirement is fulfilled, requirements that must be implemented in order to meet regulatory or policy demands imposed on the organization, which may take precedence over other stakeholder interest.

• Challenges of prioritizing:- Prioritization is an assessment of relative value. Each stakeholder may value something different. When this occurs, there may be conflict among stakeholders. Stakeholders may also have difficulty characterizing any requirement as a lower priority, and this may impact the ability to make necessary trade-offs

• Continual prioritizing:- Priorities may shift as the context evolves and as more information becomes available. Initially, prioritization is done at a higher level of abstraction. As the requirements are further refined, prioritization is done at a more granular level and will incorporate additional bases for prioritization as they become appropriate.

• Assess Requirements Changes: evaluates new and changing stakeholder requirements to determine if they need to be acted on within the scope of a change. The purpose of Assess Requirements Changes is to evaluate the implications of proposed changes to requirements and designs.

Proposed Change: can be identified at any time and impact any aspect of business analysis work or deliverable completed to date. There are many triggers for a proposed change including business strategy changes, stakeholders, legal requirements, or regulatory changes.
Designs: may need to be assessed to identify the impact of a proposed modification.
Requirements: may need to be assessed to identify the impact of a proposed modification.

• Approve Requirements: works with stakeholders involved in the governance process to reach approval and agreement on requirements and designs.The purpose of Approve Requirements is to obtain agreement on and approval of requirements and designs for business analysis work to continue and/or solution construction to proceed.

Communication

A Business Analyst is constantly communicating with the clients. Being the bridge of communication between the organization and stakeholders. So, how can a Business Analyst ensure that the bridge never collapses? By ensuring our communication skills is not only strong but flexible. In the BABOK has a section dedicated to communication. Let's look at these more closely

Verbal Communication 

Is to convey ideas, concepts, facts and opinions to a variety of stakeholders. effective verbal communication is imperative in the organization. As a Business Analyst, we facilitate interviews, meetings workshops require verbal communication. You want people talking to us. We are constantly digesting feedback, business requirements and perspectives.

Non-verbal Communication

Are communication skills that enable the effective sending of messages. Such as body movement, posture, facial expressions, gestures, and eye contact. Non-verbal communication skills can present a trustworthy, confident and capable demeanor. As a Busine Analyst being aware of non-verbal cues. Thus provides the opportunity to address the feelings of others that are not verbally spoken.

Written Communication

As a Business Analyst, you write requirements, business needs, and emails daily. Written communication is also the same as verbal communication. Conveying ideas, concepts, facts, and opinions to your stakeholder. Communication should be written so your audience can understand the topic. Therefore a properly written document can be used to give a clear idea or understanding of a topic.

Listening

Effective listening allows the business analyst to accurately understand information that is communicated verbally. Interpretation is critical in accurately understanding the information being conveyed. In order to achieve this, we use active listening techniques. If this is not done then it is possible that a misinterpretation can happen.

Elicitation and Collaboration key concepts

Business Analyst plays a key role in designing and implementing solution by understanding the needs of Stakeholders. The Key to design effective solution is eliciting useful information from Stakeholders by fostering good relationship and establishing strong collaboration

Elicitation and Collaboration

• identify tasks involved in elicitation and collaboration
• identify roles of the business analyst during the elicitation and collaboration process
• demonstrate your understanding of the tasks and roles involved in BA elicitation and collaboration

Prepare for Elicitation

• recognize considerations when preparing for elicitation
• recognize guidelines and techniques used to prepare for elicitation
• distinguish between the roles of stakeholders involved in preparing for elicitation

Conduct Elicitation

• recognize inputs and elements used to conduct elicitation
• recognize guidelines and techniques used to conduct elicitation
• demonstrate your understanding of the tasks, techniques, and roles involved in conducting elicitation

Confirm Elicitation Results

• recognize inputs and elements used to confirm elicitation results
• recognize guidelines and techniques used to confirm elicitation results
• identify the key stakeholder in confirming elicitation results

Communicate Business Analysis Information

• recognize considerations for communicating business analysis information
• demonstrate your understanding of the tasks, techniques, and roles involved in communicating BA information

Manage Stakeholder Collaboration

• identify inputs and elements used in managing stakeholder collaboration
• recognize the guidelines and techniques used in managing stakeholder collaboration
• identify qualities of strong stakeholder collaboration

Role of IT Project Manager in a team environment

An IT project manager is a professional responsible for overseeing the process of planning, execution and delegation around an organization's information technology pursuits and goals.

An IT Project Manager oversees several tasks within an organisation. I have listed some of the specific tasks of IT Project Manager

• As an IT Project Manager they provide technology strategic planning
• They are responsible for integrating information technologies onto the company for optimal effectiveness.
• Understanding current and future business goals and IT issues are the key tasks of an IT Project Manager
• They actively participate in recruitment, orientation and training for new IT staff.

An IT Project Manager is  informed of business directives associated with specific initiatives . As project participants are often spread across different offices and teams, the role of the IT project manager is to ensure that projects are delivered smoothly on-time and on-budget with minimal unexpected barriers in work.

In addition to assigning IT project managers, some organizations establish IT project management offices  to guide the completion of large-scale initiatives