Business Analysis Core Concepts and Competencies
This domain covers the concepts and personal competencies underpinning every other knowledge area. The exam tests precise definitions - particularly the six core concepts and the four requirement classifications - and whether you can recognise which competency a situation demands.
The Business Analysis Core Concept Model
- Need - a problem or opportunity to be addressed.
- Change - the act of transformation in response to a need.
- Solution - a specific way of satisfying one or more needs in a context.
- Stakeholder - a group or individual with a relationship to the change, need or solution.
- Value - worth, importance or usefulness to a stakeholder in a context.
- Context - the circumstances influencing, and influenced by, the change.
The model works as a diagnostic checklist: any initiative can be interrogated through all six concepts, and a weak answer in any one exposes a gap.
Requirements classification
- Business requirements - why the change is happening; enterprise goals and objectives.
- Stakeholder requirements - what a stakeholder needs to do to achieve business requirements.
- Solution requirements - functional behaviour plus non-functional quality attributes such as performance, security and usability.
- Transition requirements - needed only to move from current to future state (data migration, parallel running, training), then removed.
Competencies that get tested
Analytical thinking and problem solving (creative thinking, decision making, systems thinking, learning); behavioural characteristics (adaptability, ethics, personal organisation, trustworthiness); business knowledge (industry, organisation, subject matter, methodologies); communication (verbal, written, listening, non-verbal); interaction (facilitation, negotiation, leadership, teamwork); tools and technology.
Worked example
A sponsor asks for “a new reporting tool” but cannot say which decision it supports. Walking the model: Need is undefined; Value is unstated; Stakeholders beyond the sponsor are unidentified; Context includes an existing data warehouse that nobody uses. The insight is that a tool is a Solution with no validated Need - so the next step is elicitation and strategy analysis, not procurement. Systems thinking also suggests checking whether the unused warehouse is an enterprise limitation rather than evidence that a new tool is required.
Traps that cost marks
- Labelling a migration or training requirement as a solution requirement.
- Treating non-functional requirements as optional detail.
- Memorising the core concepts as a diagram instead of using them to diagnose.
- Dismissing competencies as filler - scenario questions regularly hinge on ethics, facilitation or systems thinking.