Business Analysis Planning Skill

Purpose

Define how the BA work will be performed. Before jumping into requirements, a Senior BA must plan their approach to ensure efficiency and alignment.

Core Planning Areas

1. Plan Business Analysis Approach

Predictive (Waterfall) vs. Adaptive (Agile)

• Waterfall: Heavy planning upfront, formal docs, formal sign-off.
• Agile: Iterative planning, lightweight docs, continuous feedback.
• Hybrid: Strategic definitions upfront, execution in sprints.

Deliverables:

• Which artifacts will be produced? (BRD? User Stories? Prototypes?)
• When are they due?

2. Plan Stakeholder Engagement

• Who needs to be involved? (Refer to Stakeholder Analysis).
• How will we engage? (Interviews, Workshops, Surveys).
• Frequency: Daily standups? Weekly reviews?
• Authority: Who has the final sign-off?

3. Plan BA Governance

• Change Control: How do we handle changes to requirements?
  • Process: Submit Request -> Impact Analysis -> CCB Approval.
• Prioritization: Who decides priority? (PO, Sponsor).
• Approval Workflow: Who approves BRD? FRS? UAT?

4. Plan Information Management

• Tools: Where do we store requirements? (Jira, Confluence, Server).
• Traceability: What level of tracing is needed?
• Reuse: Can we reuse existing requirements?

BA Plan Template (One-Pager)

Project: CRM Migration BA Lead: [Name]

1. Approach: Hybrid using Agile Sprints for Dev, formal BRD for Data Migration.

2. Key Activities:

• Wk 1-2: Discovery Workshops (Sales, Marketing).
• Wk 3: BRD Draft for Migration.
• Wk 4: Sign-off.
• Wk 5+: Sprint Support / User Stories.

3. Deliverables:

• Stakeholder Map
• Current State Process Flows
• Use Cases (Migration)
• User Stories (New Features)
• UAT Plan

4. Communication:

• Weekly BA Status Report to PM.
• Bi-weekly demo to stakeholders.

5. Tools:

• Docs: Lark Docs.
• Tracking: Jira.
• Modeling: Figma.

Assessing Project Complexity (The cynefin framework)

• Simple: Best practices apply. Standard approach.
• Complicated: Good practices apply. Analysis required.
• Complex: Emergent practices. "Probe-Sense-Respond" (Agile ideal).
• Chaotic: Novel practices. Act to stabilize.

Estimating BA Effort

• Top-Down: X% of total project timeline (typically 10-15%).
• Bottom-Up: Estimate each activity (e.g., 5 workshops x 4h prep/conduct/doc = 20h).

Best Practices

• Align with PM: Ensure BA plan fits the overall Project Management Plan.
• Get Buy-in: Stakeholders must agree to the engagement plan (e.g., committing time for workshops).
• Be Flexible: Update the plan if the methodology isn't working.

References

• BABOK Knowledge Area: Business Analysis Planning and Monitoring.