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As a business Analyst, your primary responsibility is to collect the business requirement, by understanding the client business process flow. 

Beyond that, critical thing is to categorize the requirement as Functional, Technical, Regulatory and Interface. 

If requirement is Functional - Ask business justification

If requirement is Regulatory - Ask regulatory evidence

If requirement is Technical - Ask details with expected business volumes

If requirement is Interface - Ask details about both the system (A and B - where both integrates)

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Tuckman Ladder developed by Tuckman describes five stages of team progression

 

• Forming. Team members meet and learn about the project. Individuality is high
• Storming. Team members start working. Conflicts arise due to I am right mentality
• Norming. Team members adjust their behaviour to work together. Trust develops
• Performing. The team works as well organised unit. Interdependency is high
• Adjourning. Team members complete project work and start leaving the project

There is no guarantee that Project Teams will progress smoothly through these five stages.  Teams could get stuck in a particular stage or go back to a previous stage.

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It describes how risk management activities will be structured and performed

Risk Management Plan includes the following : 

• Risk Strategy. Approach to manage risk in Project
• Methodology. Data sources and tools that would be utilized for risk management
• Roles and responsibilities. Mapping of risk management activity to team member
• Funding. How contingency and management reserves would be used
• Timing. Defines timing of various risk management activities
• Risk Appetite. Qualitative assessment of risk withstanding ability of stakeholder
• Risk Tolerance / Risk Threshold. Quantitative assessment of risk withstanding ability
• Reporting Format. What would be the format of Risk Register, Risk Report ?
• Tracking. How risk management activities would be audited ?

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To keep a trace of the requirements captured till they are implemented

 

Traceability helps in the following : 

• Keeping track of requirements as they move through various project phases
• Identifying requirements which got missed in implementation
• Tracking dependencies between requirements
• Helps in understanding impact of proposed change requests
• Ensuring requirements captured are relevant to the business needs of the project

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Stakeholders for a project are people or groups of people who impact it or be impacted by it
The ability of Project Manager to correctly identify and engage stakeholders could become the difference between a successful project and a failed project
Process of Stakeholder Management should start early as at the time of project charter creation

Stakeholder Management includes

• Regular Communication with stakeholders
• Issue Tracking and Management
• Managing conflicting interests
• The activities under stakeholder management are iterative and need to be repeated throughout the project

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SPSS is a Windows-based program that can be used to perform data entry and analysis and to create tables and graphs. SPSS is capable of handling large amounts of data and can perform all of the analyses covered in the text and much more.

SPSS is a widely used program for statistical analysis in social science. It is also used by market researchers, health researchers, survey companies, government, education researchers, marketing organizations, data miners, and others.

The Uses of SPSS Software. SPSS, which stands for a statistical package for the social sciences, is an application that can aid in quantitative data handling. Before SPSS, researchers had to run statistical tests on data sets by hand. However, SPSS automates this process.

i. Data Collection and Organization:

SPSS is often used as a data collection tool by researchers. The data entry screen in SPSS looks much like any other spreadsheet software. You can enter variables and quantitative data and save the file as a data file. Furthermore, you can organize your data in SPSS by assigning properties to different variables. For example, you can designate a variable as a nominal variable, and that information is stored in SPSS. The next time you access the data file, which could be weeks, months or even years, you'll be able to see exactly how your data is organized.

ii. Data Output:

Once data is collected and entered into the data sheet in SPSS, you can create an output file from the data. For example, you can create frequency distributions of your data to determine whether your data set is normally distributed. The frequency distribution is displayed in an output file. You can export items from the output file and place them into a research article you're writing. Therefore, instead of recreating a table or graph, you can take the table or graph directly from the data output file from SPSS.

iii. Statistical Tests:

The most obvious use for SPSS is to use the software to run statistical tests. SPSS has all of the most widely used statistical tests built-in to the software. Therefore, you won't have to do any mathematical equations by hand. Once you run a statistical test, all associated outputs are displayed in the data output file. You can also transform your data by performing advanced statistical transformations. This is especially useful for data that is not normally distributed.

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The focus of this session is to bring to your notice case solving skills so that you can incorporate them from the very start of your preparation.

The following are the skills which would be explained further:

1. Asking Preliminary Questions.

2. Having and Conveying an Overall Strategy & Sub-Strategies.

3. Problem Isolation Tools:

• Segmentation.

• Company Specific or Industry wide issue.

• Hypothesis driven approach.

4. Improving Drill Speed (If there are 4 possible causes to a problem, knowing how to assign priority to the investigation process to reach the solution faster).

• Using the 80/20 rule.

• Benchmarking with competition.

• Using Business insights.

1. Asking Preliminary Questions: You’re given a problem statement like “Client ABC which is part of the X industry has lost 20%  profits, please suggest recommendations to turnaround the problem”. The next thing to do is ask some preliminary questions. This is the most underestimated part of the case interview. Its importance cannot be stressed enough.

Preliminary questions help you to scope out the problem, setting the boundary walls in which analysis needs to be done. It also enables you to get a ‘look and feel’ of your client’s company. At the same time it communicates to the interviewer that you're thinking of the different angles to the problems and are checking what needs to be done. Here are different types of preliminary  questions to ask:

i) Clarifying the objectives: In standard profitability cases, usually, there is little ambiguity like "Our client is an electronics manufacturing company. You are hired to find out why our profits in the mobile division have decreased by 20% in the last year". However there are ambiguous questions also for example, "Our client is an electronics manufacturing company with a sales stagnation issue in its mobile division. Find out what is happening". There are several ambiguities here. Sales could mean revenues or #units sold. You don’t know what  are the different divisions of the company and if the mobile division’s sales can be treated and  analysed independently. You’re not sure of why stagnation of profits is even a problem, because at  the end of the day the company is still profitable. These can be good questions to ask:

• What are the different divisions of the company?

• Do I have to look at stagnation in the mobile division only?

• How much were our sales growing by earlier, since when has there been stagnation?

• Why is stagnation of sales even a problem?(Did the company expect them to keep growing, why didit have this expectation.)

• By sales do you mean revenue or #units sold?

A typical market entry case statement looks like this, "Our client is X company and they are wondering if they should enter the Y market? This is a very ambiguous question. The problem here is that the decision to enter Y market can be based on different reasons such as:

• Client’s ability to capture a market share target in the first year.

• Client’s ability to achieve a profit target in the first two years.

• Strategic reasons (long term profit); Example- Amazon entered the e-reading market through Kindle even though it was a zero profit venture. The price of Kindle was so low that they were just breaking even. The strategic reason for entering the e-reading market was so that they can push sales of their digital books.

A good clarifying question to ask to find out what an interesting market means according to the client is:

a) “What metric should we use to decide if we should enter the market or not?”

b) “Is there any reason why the company is considering market Y in particular?”

ii) Understanding Client’s company:

1. Product

2. Geography

3. Value chain

This is a simple value chain:
Production --> Distribution --> Retailing
It is useful to know upfront which part of the value chain the company operates in as it better helps you figure out what the company can control and what it can’t. Together-product, geography and value chain-give you a good ‘look and feel’ of the company, makes it easy for you to visualize the company and puts you in a comfortable spot to analyze the rest of the case.

2. Having and conveying overall strategies: After asking the requisite preliminary questions to understand the problem statement and the  Client’s company, you must proceed by laying out the Overall Strategy to solve the case. Typically, it is simply a breakdown of the case into simpler parts, the analysis of which will help you  give direction to the subsequent parts you are tackling and eventually to the final recommendations.

Example : Let’s say there is a market entry case about introducing a luxury car in the Indian market. After asking the requisite preliminary questions, you can state your overall strategy as follows: “First, I will estimate the potential profits that can be made in the Indian market for the Car. After establishing that this will be a sufficiently profitable venture for Company, I will find out the feasibility of setting up the entire value chain. Finally, we can discuss the potential challenges after which I will give my final recommendation to the client.”

3. Problem Isolation tools:

i) Segmentation: Segmentation is breaking a problem into smaller, simpler parts.
Example: Narrowing down the broad problem of “Revenues guitar sales is down by 10%” to a  specific problem of “sales having declined of the electric guitar segment due to a production issue”. Segmentation can be done in different MECE (Mutually Exclusive & Comprehensively Exhaustive) ways:

• Geography.

• Value chain.

• Product parameter: (Color, Price, Size).

• Distribution channels.

Segmentation should be such that:

a) Segmentation is Simple: We will explain this through an example. Let’s say for a particular case, we want to segment the  fuel transportation cost of trucks. This is the complicated way of segmenting all at once.

Transport Cost= (#Trucks) x (#Trips per Truck) x (Distance travelled per trip)/ (Avg. mileage) x (Cost of fuel)

While the above segmentation is correct, here is a simpler way of doing the same segmentation,

Transport Cost= (#Trucks) x (Cost per Truck)

= (#Trucks) x (#Trips per Truck) x (Cost per Trip)
= (#Trucks) x (#Trips per Truck) x (Fuel per Trip) x (Cost of fuel)
= (#Trucks) x (#Trips per Truck) x (Distance travelled per trip)/ (Avg. mileage) x (Cost of fuel)

b) Segmentation is Reasonable: When segmenting why Guitar Sales are down, unless there is sound  logic it would not be reasonable to segment guitar sales by gender of customers.

c) Information of component parts is easily obtainable It’s better to break down monthly revenue of a coffee shop as,

Monthly revenue= (#Transactions in a month) x (Spend per transaction); instead of

Monthly revenue= (#Unique Customers per month) x (#Transaction per customer) x (Spend per Transaction)

Since it’s difficult to keep track of #Unique Customers but easier to keep track of #Transactions and Spend per transaction. Unless knowing #Unique Customers is crucial to your analysis avoid segmenting that way. Also notice that the former segmentation is ‘Simpler’ than the latter. How to use Segmentation? Ask “What has changed” within the segments.

Candidates when segmenting often lose track of why they are segmenting. Suppose if profits have changed (reduced), then something somewhere has gone wrong or changed to cause the change in profits. By segmenting we are trying to get at what specifically has "changed". So it’s important to  not only segment but also ask "What has changed?".

For example: Let’s say profit margins (Profit margin = Profit/Revenue) for guitar sales has gone down and we know there are two channels for distribution, Company owned stores and third-party stores. Since overall profit margin will depend on profit margins of each channel as well as the revenue split across both channels.

Think about this, it’s not enough to know the current profit margin and split in revenues of each segment. You need to ask if the profit margin for each segment has "changed" or if the revenue split has "changed" to identify what is causing the problem.

ii) Company Specific or Industry Wide issue:

4. Improving Drill Speed:

i) Using the 80/20 rule: The 80/20 rule here signifies analyzing the branch responsible for 80% of the problem first and then analyzing the branch responsible for 20% of the problem.

In short, analyze the more important things first. You need to know the weights of sub-parts to a
problem and choose which sub part to analyze first. Let’s say costs are up by 50%. You need to find out why. You know that 60% of the cost is Raw-Materials and 40% is Manufacturing cost. If both costs have gone up by 50%, you should begin by analyzing why raw material cost has gone up rather than manufacturing cost since that is the bigger chunk of the problem.

ii) Competitor benchmarking: Benchmarking different metrics with respect to competitors better helps distinguish where we are lagging behind industry. Let’s say the reason why we are losing market share to competitors is because of a higher price of our product which in turn is because of a higher cost of our product.

Let’s say cost comprises of manufacturing, distribution and marketing related costs. Now it’s useful to benchmark each of these costs with respect to competitors to get a sense of where we are lagging behind industry. If our distribution cost is twice as much as industry but production and marketing costs are almost the same, then distribution cost should be analyzed further even if on an absolute scale our production & marketing costs are greater than distribution costs.

iii) Business Insights: Sometimes business insights can help you gauge which branch to drill first. This should be used carefully since your assumptions of the business may lead you to assign a wrong priority of drilling. It’s important to use this in conjunction with the previous two ways of drilling effectively. There could be several parameters which could be compared with competition for this:

Customer Characteristics:

i. Customer segments (age group, gender, income, geography, type of requirement) targeted.

ii. Product Characteristics:

• Laptop price

• Specifications-battery life, hard disk, RAM, graphics, monitor size, etc.

• After sales services, complimentary products

iii. Brand image.

iv. Sales and Marketing:

• No. of Retail outlets, location of outlets, visibility in stores, sales representatives.

• Discounts & offers.

• Online marketing.

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BA is the practice of enabling change in an enterprise by defining needs and recommending solutions that value to the stakeholders.Business analysis enables an enterorise to articulate needs and the rationale for change and to design and describe solutions that can deliver value.

BA is performed on a variety of intiatives within an enterprise. Intiatives may be strategic ,tactical or operational.BA may be performed within the boundaries of a project or throughout enterprise evolution and continuous improvement.It can be used to understand the current state to define the future state and to determine the activities required to move from the current to the future state.

 

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Hi Kumar, Its not about how much you should pay for the course. The important point to note is the quality of the course delivery. Price may differ from one place to other. So be careful and assess the course quality. Attend demo classes in different institutes and then compare the quality and price. Regards, Introtallent Pvt Ltd (86185 69998) read less