BS cheat sheet

Business analysis is the practice of enabling change in an enterprise by defining needs and recommending solutions that deliver value to stakeholders.

Four requirement levels exist: business requirements, stakeholder requirements, solution requirements (functional and non-functional) and transition requirements.

Project = temporary effort producing a unique output; program = related projects managed together for shared benefits; portfolio = programs and projects aligned to strategy.

The business analyst addresses what and why (needs, requirements, value); the project manager addresses how and when (schedule, budget, resources, delivery).

Six core concepts underpin the discipline: change, need, solution, stakeholder, value and context.

Solution scope defines the boundary of what will change; enterprise or context scope frames the environment in which the solution sits.

Decision rule: when the problem itself is unclear, analysis work precedes planning; when the solution is known and stable, planning and execution dominate.

A stakeholder is any individual or group with an interest in, or influence over, the change or its outcome.

A requirement is a usable representation of a need; a need is a problem or opportunity that must be addressed.

A scope statement lists in-scope items, explicit exclusions, acceptance criteria and assumptions; unrecorded exclusions are a leading source of disputes.

Scope creep is uncontrolled addition of features without change control; gold plating is team-initiated addition of features beyond agreed requirements.

An assumption is believed true but unconfirmed and must be validated; a constraint is a limiting factor such as fixed budget, deadline, regulation or platform.

A deliverable is a tangible output produced by work; a milestone is a zero-duration checkpoint marking a significant point in time.

A baseline is an approved, version-controlled reference for scope, schedule or cost, used to measure change and performance.

Dependency types are finish-to-start, start-to-start, finish-to-finish and start-to-finish, and may be mandatory or discretionary.

Functional requirements describe behaviour; non-functional requirements describe quality attributes such as performance, security and usability.

Definition of Done is a shared quality checklist applied to all work items; acceptance criteria are item-specific conditions that must be met for one item.

Agile Manifesto values: individuals and interactions, working software, customer collaboration and responding to change, over their right-hand-side counterparts.

Scrum has three roles (Product Owner, Scrum Master, Developers), five events (Sprint, Planning, Daily Scrum, Review, Retrospective) and three artifacts (Product Backlog, Sprint Backlog, Increment).

Kanban practices: visualise the workflow, limit work in progress, manage flow, make policies explicit, implement feedback loops, improve collaboratively.

Lean sequence: identify value, map the value stream, create flow, establish pull, pursue perfection; seven wastes are summarised as TIMWOOD.

Six Sigma DMAIC: Define, Measure, Analyse, Improve, Control, targeting no more than 3.4 defects per million opportunities.

Predictive lifecycles suit stable, well-understood scope and heavy verification needs; adaptive lifecycles suit high uncertainty and frequent change.

Decision rule: add ceremony and documentation where regulatory or integration risk is high; shorten feedback loops where learning speed drives value.

The Deming PDCA cycle (Plan, Do, Check, Act) underlies most continuous-improvement and quality frameworks.

PERT expected duration = (Optimistic + 4 x Most Likely + Pessimistic) / 6; approximate standard deviation = (Pessimistic - Optimistic) / 6.

Critical path is the longest duration path through the network; total float = LS - ES = LF - EF, and zero float identifies critical activities.

A WBS is deliverable-oriented and hierarchical; the 100 percent rule requires child elements to sum exactly to the parent scope.

Estimation families: analogous (top-down, historical), parametric (unit rates), bottom-up (most accurate, most costly) and three-point.

MoSCoW priority: Must, Should, Could, Won't this time; the Must set is the minimum usable subset and typically consumes at most 60 percent of effort in a timebox.

Gap analysis compares current state to desired state, identifies missing capability, process or data, then converts each gap into an action or requirement.

Root cause techniques: 5 Whys, Ishikawa fishbone diagram and Pareto analysis (the 80/20 rule).

SWOT classifies internal Strengths and Weaknesses against external Opportunities and Threats.

BPMN is the standard notation for process models; model at the level of detail the audience will act on.

RACI: each activity has exactly one Accountable owner; Responsible performs the work, Consulted gives two-way input, Informed receives one-way updates.

Cost variance CV = EV - AC and schedule variance SV = EV - PV; CPI = EV / AC and SPI = EV / PV; values above 1 are favourable.

EAC = BAC / CPI when current cost efficiency is expected to continue; ETC = EAC - AC.

Change control sequence: request, log, impact analysis on scope, schedule, cost, risk and quality, decision, implementation, verification.

Quality assurance is process-focused and preventive; quality control is product-focused and relies on inspection and testing.

Tuckman stages: Forming, Storming, Norming, Performing, Adjourning.

A deliverable is accepted only after verification against its acceptance criteria; the Definition of Done governs when work may be called complete.

Decision rule: escalate any change that breaches agreed baselines or tolerance thresholds to the designated change authority.

A risk is an uncertain event that if it occurs affects objectives positively or negatively; an issue has already occurred and needs resolution now.

Risk score = probability x impact; scores above the agreed threshold require an owner, a documented response and escalation.

Threat responses: avoid, transfer, mitigate, accept (and escalate); opportunity responses: exploit, share, enhance, accept.

A risk register typically records ID, cause, event, effect, probability, impact, score, owner, response, residual and secondary risk.

Residual risk remains after the response is applied; a secondary risk is a new risk created by the response itself.

Compliance obligations arise from law, regulation, contract and internal policy; a compliance register maps obligation to control, owner and evidence.

Ethical practice requires disclosing conflicts of interest, protecting confidential information, avoiding misrepresentation and respecting intellectual property.

Decision rule: where a legal, safety or ethical obligation conflicts with schedule or cost, the obligation prevails and the decision is escalated and documented.

User story form: As a role, I want a capability, so that a benefit; well-formed stories satisfy INVEST (Independent, Negotiable, Valuable, Estimable, Small, Testable).

Elicitation fit: interviews for depth, workshops for consensus, observation for tacit process work, surveys for breadth, document analysis for existing rules, prototyping for unclear interfaces.

A traceability matrix links requirement to source, design, test and acceptance, enabling coverage checks and impact analysis.

Common data quality dimensions: accuracy, completeness, consistency, timeliness, validity and uniqueness, each with a defined threshold and owner.

Sampling options: random for unbiased selection, stratified by subgroup, convenience for speed at the cost of bias; larger samples narrow confidence intervals.

Weighted decision matrix score = sum of (option score x criterion weight), with weights summing to 1.0.

On a control chart, points beyond the 3-sigma limits or seven consecutive points on one side signal a non-random (special) cause.

Communication channels = n x (n - 1) / 2 for n participants; each added participant adds n channels, so coordination complexity grows faster than team size.

Power-interest grid: high power and high interest are managed closely; high power and low interest kept satisfied; low power and high interest kept informed; low-low monitored.

The salience model ranks stakeholders by power, legitimacy and urgency; the more attributes present, the higher the priority.

A communication plan specifies who receives what, why, when, in what format and channel, the owner, the escalation path and the feedback mechanism.

Thomas-Kilmann conflict modes: competing, collaborating, compromising, avoiding, accommodating; collaborating suits important issues needing long-term buy-in.

Active listening behaviours: paraphrase, reflect, question and summarise, confirming understanding before responding.

Decision rule: match message content, detail and channel to the audience's decision authority and technical literacy.

A KPI is a metric explicitly tied to a strategic objective and a decision; metrics that never trigger a decision are not KPIs.

SMART objectives are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time-bound.

PDCA: Plan sets targets, Do executes, Check compares results with targets, Act standardises success or corrects deviation.

Variance = actual minus planned; report by exception, focusing management attention on tolerance breaches.

Distinguish common-cause variation (process capability) from special-cause variation (a specific event) before changing the process.

A retrospective asks what went well, what did not, and what to try next; the output is owned, dated actions rather than discussion notes.

A lessons learned register is maintained continuously, not only at closure, so later work in the same programme can reuse the knowledge.

Maturity models such as CMMI levels 1 to 5 (initial, managed, defined, quantitatively managed, optimising) sequence improvement effort.

Decision rule: each improvement action needs an owner, a measure and a review date, or it will not be implemented.