Carmen David, Senior BA Business Analysis Carmen David, Senior BA Business Analysis Foundation in Business Analysis Session 5 MODELLING BUSINESS SYSTEMS

Carmen David, Senior BA Business AnalysisCarmen David, Senior BA Business Analysis

Foundation in Business Analysis

Session 5• MODELLING BUSINESS SYSTEMS • MODELLING BUSINESS PROCESSES

Carmen David, Senior BA Business Analysis

• Understand the current situation – using Rich Pictures• Identify and model various business perspectives – using Root

Definitions and CATWOE• Model the essential activities necessary to support each individual

CATWOE – using Business Activity Modelling• Fuse the various resulting BAMs into a consensus BAM – using

synthesis of BAMs• Identify the differences between the activities on the consensus

BAM and the current real situation – using gap analysis

Soft Systems Methodology


Checkland’s soft systems methodology


CATWOE technique is a helpful approach to analyze and define the different elements of a business perspective

• Customer: the beneficiary or victim of the system• Actor: the person or organization that undertakes one or more of the

organization’s activities• Transformation: The core business activities that are carried out to

transform an input into an output of some values to the customer• World View: an encapsulation of the beliefs and values of a given

stakeholder in relation to the business system and why it exists• Owners:• Environment: The constraints or givens against which the business

system operates

Analyzing stakeholders’ perspectives


A BAM is essentially a ‘conceptual model’ (the term used by Checkland) that shows the business activities we would expect to see

in place, given the business perspective from which it has been developed, in order to achieve the transformation successfully.

• Developing a BAM therefore requires the analyst to use both analytical ability and creative thought.

Business Activity Model


• There will be one BAM for each business perspective.• A separate BAM is needed to describe each perspective. These will

subsequently be overlaid to form a consensus model, possibly covering all relevant perspectives.

• The BAM helps in the analysis of the business situation and the identification of improvements.

• The model is not concerned with who carries out the activities or where they are carried out.

BAM approach


All business systems can be described in terms of five types of business activity and the dependencies between them.

– planning activities;– enabling activities;– doing activities;– monitoring activities;– control activities.

BAM’s types of activities


BAM example


Develop CATWOE

Identify Doing activities

Define other activities

Build consensus model

Process for building a BAM


• Create a tentative consensus model, by combining all individual BAM activities, events and dependencies;

• Derive a new, consensus business perspective for the area of study; • Test the tentative model against the new business perspective,

adding, removing or modifying activities as necessary, in order to satisfy the consensus view;

• Finally, check the consensus model to ensure that it fully satisfies the new business perspective and the objectives of the area of study and the change project.

Producing a consensus model


• Business Events happen in the real world.

• For example, customers place orders, suppliers send in invoices and employees resign. All of these events trigger the business system to do something – typically an activity or a series of activities – in order to respond to the event.

• For the activities identified in the BAM, there will be Business Rules governing their performance

Business Events AND Business Rules


• External: these events originate from outside the boundary of the business system.

• Internal decision points: these events are usually internal decisions made by business managers.

• Scheduled points in time: these are the events that occur regularly.

Types of events


• Constraints: these restrict how an activity is performed. They may include laws and regulations and – if these cannot be challenged – business policies.

• Operational guidance: these describe the procedural rules that dictate how activities should be performed. An example for a travel organisation would be the guidance on how to calculate discounts on holidays where there is a group booking.

Types of Rules


• CSFs (CRITICAL SUCCESS FACTORS) are those things that must be in place, or that organization must do well, in order to succeed

• KPIs (KEY PERFORMANCE INDICATORS) are those things an organization measures to see if it is on course.

CSF AND KPI


When we compare the BAM with the current reality in the organization, we will find the following:

• Some activities are in place and are quite satisfactory • Some activities are in place but are not satisfactory• Some activities are not in place at all

Use of BAM in GAP analysis

Carmen David, Senior BA Business AnalysisCarmen David, Senior BA Business Analysis

Foundation in Business Analysis

Session 2• MODELLING BUSINESS SYSTEMS• MODELLING BUSINESS PROCESSES


Organizational context


Alternative view of an organization


The organizational view of business processes


• Michael Porter’s value chain helps us to structure our thinking and possibly identify areas of process that we may have missed.

Porter’s value chain


Example value-chain activities for a manufacturing organisation


Developing the business process model


• AS IS process model

• TO BE process model

Types of process models


An alternative approach to process improvement is embodied in the Six Sigma approach, developed by Motorola in the 1980s and based on ideas from statistical process control.• Define the problem. What is going wrong? Is it one problem or

many? What is the visible evidence? Where is it and where does it come from? How serious is it?

• Measure the data. This means identifying the symptoms. Do they occur all the time or from time to time?

• Analyse the results so far. Be creative and prepare theories about the causes of the problems. Document the theories and test them..

• Improve the process. Assess alternative improvement methods. Design and test the chosen method. Implement the chosen method.

• Control the new process and monitor its effectiveness.

SIX SIGMA


Thanks you!

References:

Business Analysis 2nd edition by Debra Paul (Editor), Donald Yeates (Editor), James Cadle

Documents

Carmen David, Senior BA Business Analysis Carmen David, Senior BA Business Analysis Foundation in Business Analysis Session 5 MODELLING BUSINESS SYSTEMS