We conducted a survey of over 1,100 business analysts (68% with over 5 years experience) which gave some interesting results as to what business analysis techniques are the most popular.

Methodologies

When it comes to software development methodologies, 68% said they had experience with waterfall development, 46% said iterative whilst object-oriented (44%) and agile (34%) also rated highly.

Assuming that many of these analysts would be working for large organisations – with mainframe systems – it’s not surprising to see waterfall so widely represented. We can also conclude that analysts need to work on a variety of different applications – iterative, OO and agile being very common on web services and client/server projects.

Interestingly, disciplines like ITIL and Six Sigma, which have received lots of press recently, only rated 20% and 17% respectively.

Modelling

Whilst the most regularly used diagramming technique was flowcharting (63%), when it comes to formal diagramming techniques, use case led the way (55%) followed by data flow diagrams (42%), activity diagrams (38%) and context diagrams (34%). Entity relationship diagrams were still widely used (30%) and “new kid on the block” BPMN came in at 13%.

Note that Business Process Management (BPM) scored highly in the methodologies section (52%) but didn’t show a correspondingly high result for BPMN usage. Perhaps this indicated that BPM was interpreted as a generic term covering methodology, software products and general process improvement?

Elicitation

For requirements gathering, 67% said interviewing was the most frequently used method. Requirements workshops came in at 45% and JAD sessions 34%.

The survey showed there were a bewildering range of tools, techniques and methodologies in widespread use. Probably too many for the poor analyst to master. As always, it comes down to the old saying – it’s not what you know it’s how you use it!

Download our free Requirements Specification Template

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It’s easy to concentrate on the technical features of any project and lose sight of the reason for its existence. Every project exists to solve a problem. Either what you have doesn’t work well enough and needs improving, or you need to invent something totally new. After all, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”

Too often the pressures of deadlines and budgets lead us to bypass the important process of analysing business needs, and we leap straight into the technology. But how often do we find that the system doesn’t do exactly what’s required. Users are obliged to use workarounds, reducing some of the benefits we were supposed to provide which also affects our credibility. How often do we need to invest extra time and expense in providing Version 2 (and 3 and 4 and …), when some careful work might have exposed the real needs earlier?

Read full paper: Separating Analysis from Design

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