Effective Business Requirements Analysis Tools That Everyone Can Use

By Author: thomas galvin
Total Articles: 612
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You may have been exposed to and tried a number of techniques to perform your business requirements analysis such as your typical interviews, observation, data gathering and workshops but what business analysis tools do you use to make that process as effective as possible? And I am not talking about complex systems.

There are things you have the ability to create or can easily use that are readily available that make the process more effective and even fun.

Let’s start with things you can create

Rich Picture – creating a rich picture is a great diagrammatic way of showing how things will fit together. Use this in workshops or when talking to people so they can get the same understanding, or add or change it as needed.


Relationship diagrams – creating relationship diagrams of things, rules or data is a great way to ensure everyone has the same view.


Excel spreadsheets – most people have basic Excel skills, but it is a vast and wonderful tool. There is loads of free training on the internet and YouTube, so why not spend a little time learning something ...
... new in Excel.

Now for some of the things you can use

Colored sticky notes, butchers paper, colored pens, scissors, sticker dots… the stationary cupboard is full of great tools.

Make your sessions interactive. For example, if you’re mapping a process put some butchers paper up on the wall and ask the people in the workshop to put the sticky notes on the process where they belong and use markers to join them up. Butchers paper and sticky notes are also great business analysis tools for when you need to group things together maybe in new groupings or new organizational structures.

When people get more involved and move around, they relax more, they open up and the information will flow more freely. Just be careful to keep things under control by setting some ground rules and signals. Sometimes it can get a bit noisy with everyone talking so at the start explain how you will use a signal such as putting your hand in the air and if everyone can see or hear you they stop what they are doing and do the same. Sounds like a classroom technique and it is, but it works just as well on adults.

Be creative and use your imagination. I no longer want to see any of you in a business requirements analysis workshop with nothing but a whiteboard and a marker.

Find Business Analysis Tools and Business Requirements Analysis related information at Projectcommunityonline.com