Have you ever been so overwhelmed by a subject that you didn’t know where to start? Yeah, me too.
I have recently begun studying to be a full-fledged business analyst, and if I’m being honest, it’s a lot. Still, what I’ve learned so far has made one thing very clear to me: there are aspects of business analysis in everything we do.
Business analysis seems like a very specific discipline to those who don’t practice it. I am new to the field, and am still learning the different techniques and methods that go into making a business change, but one thing I’ve noticed is that business analysis is not a niche subject. Every company and organization can benefit from learning at least the basics of business analysis. More than that, I have learned things that can be used in my daily life. Take, for instance, my upcoming wedding.
Planning a wedding may not be a business venture, but it does have some things in common with business activities. A few skills that overlap between these two very different circumstances include:
Working within a budget
Staying on schedule
Keeping track of details
Fostering good communication
So let’s view the process of planning a wedding through the lens of business analysis – for this post, we will focus on the Discovery Phase.
One of the main purposes of Discovery is determining why you are even making a change in the first place. The “why” of planning a wedding is typically pretty obvious: you love this person and want to spend the rest of your life with them. In wedding planning, you don’t typically schedule a meeting to develop the justification for marriage, but there are things most people consider when deciding to take the leap: life insurance, taxes, kids, etc. For the sake of the analogy, this counts as providing the business justification.
Another aspect of the Discovery Phase is known as alternatives analysis, which is also a useful tool in wedding planning. While this could mean you reevaluate all your life choices and decide to marry Joe instead of Peter, it could also just mean evaluating whether you want to have an actual wedding ceremony or simply take a trip to Vegas. Most people practice this without realizing it, but analyzing other solutions can be essential in business analysis as well. It helps to ensure that the organization doesn’t waste time and money on a solution when it turns out there was a better option the entire time. The same can be said for weddings. I have had to consider many different alternatives myself. For instance, if I were to elope instead of having a ceremony, I could save money, but I would lose the chance to have my entire family present. In both wedding planning and business-centered alternatives analysis, the “right” choice simply comes from prioritizing requirements, which starts with a conversation.
As you can see, there are a lot of parallels between business analysis and everyday life. It’s interesting to think that something that seems so specific can be so applicable to everything in our lives, and I hope I helped to illustrate that.