How to ensure quality in your business requirements.

1. Quality: the 3rd Dimension in the
Business Analysis Compass
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2. The Business Analysis CompassTM
• The Business Analysis Compass is a descriptive framework (or
model) that presents the main processes performed during
Business Analysis
• In its first instantiation, the Business Analysis Compass is a
two dimensional model that depicts:
– 4 main Processes applied to Business Requirements:
• Managing (North)
• Documenting (and Communicating) (South)
• Gathering ( East)
• Analyzing(West)
– 4 Sub-processes derived from the intersection of the 4 Main
Processes:
• Managing Requirements Gathering( North-East)
• Documenting Requirements Gathering( South-East)
• Managing Requirements Analysis(North-West)
• Documenting Requirements Analysis(South-West).
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4. Quality in Business Analysis
• Quality in Business Analysis is captured by various
attributes of Business Requirements such as:
completeness, clarity, compliance (see Business
Requirements Gathering - An Overview by Anne Marie
Smith Ph.D. for examples of those quality characteristics)
• No matter what quality characteristic of Business
Requirement you consider they all respond to
two fundamental questions:
– Did we do the Right Things?
– Did we do Things Right?
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5. The 3rd Dimension
• “Did we do the Right Things” is often refer to as
Validation
• “Did we do Things Right”, is similar to Verification
• We have augmented The Business Analysis
Compass with a third dimension: the Validation-
Verification Axis.
• The Validation and Verification processes are
each applied to the Business Requirements
Gathering and Analysis processes.
• These processes are not the same as System
Verification and Validation
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6. The 3rd Dimension and Gathering
• When you Validate Requirements-Gathering you want
to ensure that you are looking at all the right types of
information. It is a process that assesses the relevance
or pertinence of your information sources and how
encompassing they are.
• When you Verify Requirements-Gathering you want to
ensure that you have properly gathered all the
information you chose to gather. It is a process that
assesses how well you have used the technics,
methods and tools that you selected to perform
Requirements Gathering.
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7. The 3rd Dimension and Analysis
• When you Validate Requirements-Analysis you want
to ensure that you have analyzed all the information
collected during Requirements Gathering. It is a
process that assesses the traceability of Gathered
Information to all outputs of Requirements Analysis.
• When you Verify Requirements-Analysis you want to
ensure that you have properly created all outputs of
Requirements Analysis. It is a process that assesses
how well you have used the technics, methods and
tools that you selected to perform Requirements
Analysis.
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The 3rd Dimension of the BUSINESS ANALYSIS COMPASS TM
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The 3rd Dimension of the BUSINESS ANALYSIS COMPASS TM

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