Business Analysis Services: Meaning and Importance

Each organization operates on a unique set of structures and policies that become a solid ground for future undertakings. It also involves different stakeholders who have their vision of the desired outcomes from business and technical perspectives.

And when a new idea or the need for change arrives, a thorough understanding of this context is required to choose the most appropriate solution to achieve the goals. Without it, it is impossible to derive business requirements and interpret them into detailed specifications used later by the engineering team.

The whole process would resemble how a football team operates without a coach that sets the right direction for the players. What’s the point if the players don’t know how to use their strengths or act as a cohesive whole? In this way, a business analyst acts as a good football coach who operates in a broader context and sees gaps while sitting on the bench.

What is Business Analysis?

The solutions allow for getting real business value to all the stakeholders and organizational units. 

This practice helps identify gaps in the current state of things and suggest certain changes to meet those gaps. This may involve the modernization or substitution of specific software components, improving organizational processes, or addressing other pressing points.

Likewise, business analysis services aim to liaise between the tech and business layers. These parts don’t speak the same language in software development, as discovered business requirements need interpretation by the tech team. Alternatively, functional specifications implemented by the engineering workforce aren’t understandable without explicit explanation.

So the need for a mediator between the parties evolves, making the development process tick like a clock. But their exact position in the workflow would depend on the chosen approach and methodology of project management.

Waterfall methodology

In a traditional flow (Waterfall methodology), business analysts follow step-by-step development stages:

Planning → initiation → analysis→ development→ testing → implementation → maintenance.

With this model, it is necessary to have a complete list of requirements based on thorough research and months of planning. This ensures that no errors or discrepancies step in once the development stage begins. It is important to avoid ambiguity and inconsistency since business analysts cannot revert to a previous stage.

What happens if the requirements are incomplete or change over time? That may lead to hours of rework for the development team because later project stages rely on the initial requirements and are based on the sequence of actions prior to that. 

Consequently, a traditional BA has limited capabilities when it comes to adapting initial requirements to new demands. If the client is okay with that, then the business analysis input will be valuable enough at the planning and analysis stages. 

Agile methodology

Within the Agile flow, business analysis produces the same core outputs as with the Waterfall model. But the focus is shifted from clearly documented requirements to ongoing discussions of the changes to the project. Unlike a traditional BA approach, its Agile counterpart aims to adjust the requirements to meet current business needs.

The work becomes iterative, which produces simple versions of the future solution instead of designing the entire design upfront. A BA expects early feedback in every consecutive sprint, which makes it easier to continuously improve and change the product.

An Agile BA becomes an integral part of the development team, which tends to negotiate solutions instead of dictating them. In this role, we can truly talk about a great communicator and problem solver with a team focus and understanding of the big picture.

What is the goal of Business Analysis?

A primary goal of business analysis is to have an overview of the risks and roadblocks associated with the project. That also includes a search for things to be optimized since you can’t find room for improvement if you don’t know the gaps in the current offering. 

As IT projects become more complex and challenging, businesses need constant direction to deliver on time and on budget. Besides, it is necessary to present a satisfactory result that would add value for clients and stakeholders. Relying on business analysis, they can reach their goals and go through digital transformation faster than competitors.

Business analysis services encompass all development stages. Based on the materials, systems, and other resources currently in use, a BA can help estimate a budget and establish a timeframe for the project’s completion. Next, a business analyst communicates with stakeholders, product and marketing specialists to identify business requirements and suggest the most reasonable solution that drives value. 

They collaborate with a tech team through an assigned project manager to communicate development tasks as well. A BA oversees the development process to ensure that a delivered software product aligns with the projected business value. And by doing so, they focus on deadlines and costs, and ensure that the solution is implemented as intended.

Business Analyst Role

Key benefits of Business Analysis

• Cost reduction.
  Business analysis cuts costs associated with impaired software quality and downtime. As we stated above, a BA specialist helps produce well-written documentation at the very start of the project and minimizes risks of failure. This reduces the number of project alterations at later stages of the software development process. 
  Besides, business analysis helps to save stakeholders' time and offer more cost-efficient solutions that don’t lie on the surface. The idea is that BAs develop operational and organizational changes that would otherwise not be possible without this external look.
• Faster development.
  Business analysis consulting enables development teams to reduce the number of iterations, avoid redundant functionality, and work with a carefully prioritized list of requirements. As a result of fewer redevelopments, especially in the later stages of the development process, achieving more within shorter timeframes is possible. Besides, it saves resources, which can allocate their efforts to other tasks.
• Improved cooperation.
  Business analysts create a communication bridge between all the parties involved in project implementation and remove siloed boundaries of communication. By collecting all the required data from the client and stakeholders, they wrap it up into an understandable form for all sides. 
  This helps to avoid misunderstandings and reduces the chance of a product being inconsistent with the client’s idea. Also, conducting efficient business analysis makes it easier to eliminate communication failures, which may eventually lead to missing features or impair business relations.
• Improved quality.
  Without business analysis consulting services, the risks of meeting technology roadblocks, legal liabilities, or compliance issues become high. A BA thoroughly investigates requirements and documents them as a product backlog and tech specifications. 
  But another important part of that service is that it aims to review features and functionality in production. It also ensures that the developed solution meets all the requirements and responds to pre-defined quality standards.
• More loyal customers.
  When done right, business analysis can become the key to improving conversions and boosting sales. It enables stakeholders to develop competitive products with end-users in mind. When users know their needs are noticed and realized in a great product, they will be more likely to purchase and stick to it.
• Strategy fine-tuning.
  It is hardly possible to improve some part of the business without knowing what’s wrong. An expert business analysis services company pinpoints the gaps in the service by comparing results with forecasts. Based on detailed specifications.

Stages of Business Analysis

BA needs to follow a certain work structure that can resemble a software development lifecycle to add value. This process is usually divided into logical stages or steps, which need to involve specific tasks and produce specific deliverables. Let’s find out more about them below.

1. Initiation and Planning.
   The first step involves sourcing clear project objectives and product vision from the project’s stakeholders. It also aims to assess risks at this stage before getting started with other tasks. With business plan analysis services, it is possible to set up a comprehensive step-by-step roadmap for a particular organization.
2. Requirements and Analysis.
   This step is needed to capture the project’s business objectives and translate them into clear and consistent requirements. A BA elicits the smallest details and structures them as engineering tasks based on the raw data. As part of the analysis, a BA specifies:
   - a clear state of scope;
   - a prioritized list of user stories;
   - an initial definition of an MVP.
3. Design.
   During the technical design, a business analyst participates in solution prototyping and aspects of UI/UX. The business analyst ensures that business objectives are met through ongoing updating or repackaging requirements for the solution design. Besides, it resolves any arising issues with changing requirements and ensures that appropriate stakeholders are involved in all decisions concerning change.
4. Development.
   In this stage, a business analysis services company focuses on maintaining efficient communication with the development team through every sprint. A BA works on all activities dedicated to requirements management during the project. This includes ongoing backlog actualization and prioritization and making all the changes explicit to every team player.
5. Testing and implementation support.
   A well-thought business analysis process doesn’t end with a software product release. Rather, it proceeds to maintain and improve a solution based on the analysis of the project’s output, possible defects, and feedback. Business analysts contribute to an efficient testing strategy and help the QA and maintenance teams to understand business priorities.
   

We provide business analysts as a part of our core extended team service. Our experienced business analysts will investigate your current operations, requirements, and business domain to ensure your goals are achieved with the best-of-breed solutions.

Services to be included in Business Analysis

• Project discovery. 
  It is hard to deny the importance of business analysis to organize project-related data and present it in a meaningful way. A BA becomes a part of the discovery team that helps to assess the future project from tech and business perspectives.
  Together, they decide on tech aspects and research market conditions, user expectations, budget, or services provided by competitors. It is the right way to ensure that the solution is delivered according to the initial idea. It is based on the correct interpretation of the client’s vision. Likewise, we can depict all possible challenges of the project and state if the product idea is viable or not.
  We are an experienced business analysis services company that understands the development process and knows how to comply with the client’s ideas. We know how to analyze initial data and bring the raw ideas to life.
• Requirements management and audit.
  We implement techniques for successful management and audit of the business and functional requirements. Our team knows how to prioritize the product backlog, document changes, assess their impact and request future changes from stakeholders. We ensure that the development team deals with the approved requirements and has access to one source of truth.
• Enterprise business process analysis.
  When it is hard to understand if the given business process delivers value and is efficient at the level of a large Enterprise, business analysis can come to the rescue. Together with the subject matter expert, we can identify the process that has areas for improvement, collect all the related data, and identify all the dependencies with other systems or processes.
  Our business analysts can prepare a scenario for business process modifications based on the collected data. Once implemented, an improved business process contributes to Enterprise growth, faster execution of company-wide goals, and informed decision-making.
• IT product ownership.
  IT product ownership serves as a link between stakeholders, developers, and end-users and takes full responsibility for the project’s outcomes. In this role, a business analyst remains in the problem domain, so that they can respond to ongoing queries from the development and management teams. 
  On the other hand, they dig into the needs and wants of customers to discover the true value of the solution. Based on that value, a BA uses vast tech and business expertise to implement product functionality, prioritize the backlog, and adjust to changes throughout the project lifecycle.

Industries we serve

Our business analysis services company assists clients in launching their digital products across a variety of industries. We enable your organization to achieve its niche-specific goals and make informed decisions along the way. 

Our experienced business analysts can lay the foundation of your project in the following industries:

• eCommerce
• Healthcare
• Linear and OTT TV
• EdTech
• AdTech
• MarTech

Why Business Analysis services at Geomotiv

Guided by the best practices of business analysis, we are fully aware of the value we can bring to your company. Geomotiv provides competent business analysts well-versed in modern technologies and software development methodologies.

With Geomotiv, you can:

• Access vast areas of excellence. With more than 10 years in the IT market, we’ve accumulated rich business analysis expertise and skills necessary to complete projects of any complexity and scale.
• Find talents not available locally. We tailor our proven recruitment processes to the unique needs of our clients so that we can match their specific requirements with utmost precision.
• Embrace change more easily. We use the best practices of modern Agile methodologies to meet changing demands and address real end-users problems.