As a Business Analyst, the first thing that you need to understand is the current business environment.
The second thing that you need to understand is what the requirements of your business stakeholders are. You will communicate these onwards to the authority responsible for designing the solution.
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In management literature, gap analysis involves the comparison of actual performance with potential or desired performance[.If an organization does not make the best use of current resources, or forgoes investment in capital or technology, it may produce or perform below an idealized potential. This concept is similar to an economy's production being below the production possibilities frontier.
Gap analysis identifies gaps between the optimized allocation and integration of the inputs (resources), and the current allocation-level. This may reveal areas that can be improved. Gap analysis involves determining, documenting, and improving the difference between business requirements and current capabilities. Gap analysis naturally flows from bench marking and from other assessments. Once the general expectation of performance in an industry is understood, it is possible to compare that expectation with the company's current level of performance. This comparison becomes the gap analysis. Such analysis can be performed at the strategic or at the operational level of an organization.
A gap analysis is performed twice in the project life-cycle gap analysis is used to compare the list of requirements that the business has with the characteristics present in the current as-is configuration. Anything that is not present in the current solution is a new requirement that needs to be delivered by the project.
The second gap analysis is performed after the design is complete. This time you will compare your list of requirements against the to-be configuration. Anything that is missing from design should be considered to be a defect. Anything in the design that is surplus to the requirements should also be scrutinized because this implies that either a requirement was missed, or that the project may be wasting resources on delivering unnecessary features.
How important is it?
It is essential. Without performing a gap analysis, you have no idea whether the project has successfully delivered the benefit that it was created to deliver. Maybe you succeeded, maybe you didn't. You will never know. As a BA, this is a really bad position to be in
The second thing that you need to understand is what the requirements of your business stakeholders are. You will communicate these onwards to the authority responsible for designing the solution.
.
In management literature, gap analysis involves the comparison of actual performance with potential or desired performance[.If an organization does not make the best use of current resources, or forgoes investment in capital or technology, it may produce or perform below an idealized potential. This concept is similar to an economy's production being below the production possibilities frontier.
Gap analysis identifies gaps between the optimized allocation and integration of the inputs (resources), and the current allocation-level. This may reveal areas that can be improved. Gap analysis involves determining, documenting, and improving the difference between business requirements and current capabilities. Gap analysis naturally flows from bench marking and from other assessments. Once the general expectation of performance in an industry is understood, it is possible to compare that expectation with the company's current level of performance. This comparison becomes the gap analysis. Such analysis can be performed at the strategic or at the operational level of an organization.
A gap analysis is performed twice in the project life-cycle gap analysis is used to compare the list of requirements that the business has with the characteristics present in the current as-is configuration. Anything that is not present in the current solution is a new requirement that needs to be delivered by the project.
The second gap analysis is performed after the design is complete. This time you will compare your list of requirements against the to-be configuration. Anything that is missing from design should be considered to be a defect. Anything in the design that is surplus to the requirements should also be scrutinized because this implies that either a requirement was missed, or that the project may be wasting resources on delivering unnecessary features.
How important is it?
It is essential. Without performing a gap analysis, you have no idea whether the project has successfully delivered the benefit that it was created to deliver. Maybe you succeeded, maybe you didn't. You will never know. As a BA, this is a really bad position to be in
