Business Analysis: Best Practices for Success 1st Edition

This book is a must-read for anyone who needs to understand the role of the business analyst in shaping organizational change. Steve Blais describes a business analyst as a blend of a number of roles, and who has the requisite knowledge and skills to craft a vision, identify a problem, perform a gap analysis, champion the need for change, and work successfully with customers, managers, technicians and executives.Blais takes the reader through the business analyst's activities in organization change sequentially, starting with the vision, going through all phases of the change process, and ending with change management communication. Each chapter deals with a particular phase of the change process. Included in each chapter are the inputs and constraints for the phase, the business analyst's responsibilities, tools and techniques, and description of outputs. People who are familiar with the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK) will find this approach familiar, and will appreciate Blais' ability to make the material significantly more interesting and entertaining than the PMBOK.Of particular importance is how Blais differentiates the responsibilities of the business analyst from that of the project manager, with the former being responsible for product scope, and the latter being responsible for project schedule and budget.In sum, Steve Blais makes an excellent case for the importance of the business analyst in shaping organizational objectives, practices and governance. And it makes a good book to read during Happy Hour. You;'ll understand this when you read it.

This book is a absolute must for all business analysis. The author does a great job of defining the roles and responsibilities of the business analysis. He then gives you real world examples of the roles and responsibilities and how they play out in the real world from actual business analysis. The author also does a great job of providing quotes from business professionals that relates to the subject being covered. The reading is easy, enjoyable and educational.

Info doesn't appear on those prep books, go for this one! A good reference book for PBA candidates or BA.

Really appreciate the practical tips! Spot on for a real -day IT business analyst. Being doing BA work for 6+ years and wish I had read this years ago!

I am new to the field of Business Analysis and this book was recommended as optional for my course at UC Irvine. Glad I took the recommendation and purchased this book - without it I would be lost with just reading the BABOK Guide!

This book is highly recommendable to everybody, who wants to get a both broad and deep (from a business understanding point of view) knowledge about most of the important issues in Business Analysis. Clearly Steven is a highly experienced business analyst and I share most of his views and recognize the experiences behind themTake for instance the paragraph about "Colloboration by Documentation", where he recommends to forget the methodologically correct documents for a while in order to produce what the actual participants really need. Quite often you can remove a lot of superfluous, idling documentation, according to my experiences.I am also thankful for the reference to the Oxford English Dictionary defining analysis as "the process of breaking a concept down into more simple parts, so that its logical structure is displayed." To the point.Business Analysis is a meta-level activity and it aims to produce valid solutions to business problems. Steven does a wonderful job of dealing with the necessary translation from "arcane requests to geek speak":I will not hesitate any moment to recommend this book to everybody with a need for profound, valid thinking about the nature of Business Analysis - best practice in deed.

Blais' book was very easy to read. I like the fact that it wasn't your traditional boring text book.It reads like if you are in a very dynamic seminar setting with the writer who's bringing his wealth of experience to the audience.Nothing like being taught by a true and tested practitioner rather than by a theorist who simply regurgitates.This is a must-read for all practicing and budding business analysts, MBA, MIS and project management grad students.Highly recommended.

The book came in perfect condition