I was asked to describe all the business analysis techniques. Challenge Accepted

10.26 Item Tracking is really just following or monitoring something until completion. It could be requests, issues, or any work you are doing. It usually helps keep you or the team focused and if shared it creates transparency. A user story moving from creation through completion is an example of item tracking.

10.27 Lessons Learned is basically something you do after the completion of a project or program to talk about everything that basically sucked about the project or program. Things that could have been done better. This is analogous to the retrospective in agile scrum

10.28 Metrics and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are basically what you keep track of to ensure something is performing well. As a BA part of your job is making sure the right things get measured. For example, many people who begin exercising to achieve a smaller waist will measure how much they weigh instead of the change in circumference of their waist, which is a poor indicator if you are increasing muscle as you decrease fat.

10.29 Mind Mapping is a form of concept modeling that basically shows parent-child relationships of ideas or concepts. It’s helpful in getting organized especially at the beginning of an initiative and its one of the easier style of models to create live with a group of people to keep them focused

10.30 Non-Functional Requirements Analysis is basically about making sure the functionality or systems meet requirements that are kind of outside what something does and more concerned with the how. It usually has to do with future-proofing, quality, and compliance. Examples might be scalable, portable, maintainable, usable, have good performance, compliant, etc. 

10.31 Observation is pretty straight forward. It basically means to watch a process happen live to understand it. This can be valuable because people who have been a part of a process for so long can overlook parts that they just take for granted and not mention whereas you’d see it for yourself if you were observing.

10.32 Organizational Modelling is basically like creating a family tree of your organization. There are a few different versions and styles depending on what you want to get out of it and are typically created to help gain and facilitate understanding of how things are aligned in your business. Also, knowing who people report to will also help you understand their priorities and communicate better with them.

10.33 Prioritization is exactly what it sounds like but from a BAs perspective, its finding and providing the right information so that decision-makers can make good decisions in prioritizing things. It can sometimes include negotiating with stakeholders and the importance of things and the more information you have the better you can lead the discussion.

10.34 Process Analysis is looking at a process and determining how to make it more efficient. There are a few techniques to do this and process analysis is kinda the whole shebang with lean and six sigma. If you are interested in process analysis, certifications in those spaces might be a good choice

10.35 Process Modelling is a specific technique to visually model a process for process analysis. Process models can be created in many ways, but if you want to benefit from tools that simulate your process to find efficiencies, it would be valuable to learn BPMN standard notation.

10.36 Prototyping is creating a light version of something to essentially test out something. A prototype can be as light as a sketch on a piece of paper or a fully functioning application that just isn’t connected to real data. Prototyping is one of the most valuable and reliable ways to save time and effort on rework and should be something more BAs should explore.

10.37 Reviews are a pretty basic technique, but it’s basically asking someone else to look at something to give an opinion or confirm that it what they expect. It could be a requirement, user story, prototype, etc. Reviews can be informal like hey does this look right, or very formal with a documented process and method for approval common in the water development lifecycle. 

10.38 Risk Analysis and Management involves documenting major things that can make the project go wrong a basically how screwed you’d be if they did. Basically if things change or don’t change when you need them to, if something is late or doesn’t get done, if people aren’t available, etc how it will impact the project. Usually, this is communicated up to the powers that be to try to reduce the chances of impacts of those risks.

10.39 Roles and Permissions Matrix is basically a way to document features or activities in an application and which user roles can see or use those features. Valuable for comprehensive testing later on

10.40 Root Cause Analysis is just like it sounds, it’s to figures out why something might be happening. This is another big part of process analysis and leans six sigma. You should expect to do a lot of root cause analysis in your detective work as a business analyst

10.41 Scope Modelling is a way to keep people focused on a project. It basically says these are the areas we are willing to change or in scope, vs areas we can’t or won’t change aka out of scope. A simple real-life example is if the project was to make someone look better. Exercise, diet and a haircut might be in-scope, but plastic surgery might be out of scope

10.42 Sequence Diagrams is a form of a diagram that basically depicts several things that have to happen in conjunction and the timing of those things can be important. Think if something starts happening, halfway through triggers another thing, but is still happening. Process models don’t do a great job of depicting such timings visually.

10.43 Stakeholder List, Map, or Personas are a few more ways to document the people impacted by your project. Stakeholder lists and maps typically include all players involved so they can have a good communication plan. Personas tend to be end-user of the system you are designing.

10.44 State Modelling is a technique used to understand the states of particular entities within a system. The purpose is to understand all the different states a thing can exist and the rules and how or why it might change. For example, something might go from open, to pending, to closed. What determines how it shifts between those states? 

10.45 Survey or Questionnaire are pretty familiar concepts for most of us. As a BA you might use one if you need to get information from lots of people once. It’s great for quantifiable data. The only caveat is that you need to be 100% sure your questions are super clear otherwise your data could be off because people misunderstood the question.

10.46 SWOT Analysis is basically an ungraded or robust version of a pros and cons list. SWOT stands for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. This is another activity that typically happens early on to help determine the strategy and direction for an initiative.

10.47 Use Cases and Scenarios are to model interactions with a system and are very valuable to developers and testers if a BA takes the time to write these well. Each use case or scenario should center around one task and layout the back and forth between the user and system to complete the tasks. It should also include what happens if there is a failure, like an invalid credit card number, not old enough, or etc.

10.48 User Stories are basically the format of agile requirements. They require the writer to document who the requirement is for, what they want to happen, and why they want it to happen. Traditional requirements often just have the what, which doesn’t always help you design the best solution if you don’t know who is using it and why they need it. 

10.49 Vendor Assessments as a business analysis usually involve documenting what the business needs and then evaluating different solutions from vendors on how well they meet them. This would use evaluation criteria which were in the first technique of this video series. Usually, the organization will have a defined process for this, but you will be likely responsible for creating the evaluation criteria.

10.50 Workshops are another mechanism to get a group of people together to reach a specific goal. Often times is the many stakeholders coming together to agree on a future state of a process that likely impacts all of them in some way. Being able to facilitate something like this is an extremely valuable skill and something you should practice whenever possible. They even have certifications for meeting facilitation