Need Assessment for Business Analysis

In BA the needs Assessments is a critical initial step to identify and understand the requirements, challenges, and opportunities associated with a particular project. It's Conducted to Analyze a current Business problem or opportunity. Used to assess the current internal & External Environments and current capabilities in order to determine the viable solution options that will help Organization to address or meet the desired future state.

Here are the key steps involved in conducting a needs assessment: -

1. Identify Problem & Opportunities:

• Identify Stakeholders
• Investigate the problem or opportunity:
• Gather Relevant Data to evaluate the situation.
• Draft the situation Statement.
• Obtain Stakeholders Approval for situation Statement.

2. Asses The current State of Enterprise.

• Assess Enterprise or Organization Goals & Objectives, you need to consider several key aspects, Tools & Techniques like the Goal should be SMART, SWOT Analysis is strategic planning tool that will help organizations to their Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats and to perform Root Cause Analysis on the situation and you can use the 5 Whys Technique, Process Flows, perform Root Cause Analysis also known as a Fishbone Diagram or Ishikawa Diagram, is a visual tool used for organizing and categorizing potential causes of a specific problem or effect.

3. Determine required capabilities to address the situation.

• You need to gather information about the context and challenges involved, Identify the gap between your current capabilities and the capabilities required to address the situation. you can use this like this tools, Capability table, Affinity Diagram and Benchmarking

4.Identify GAPs in Organization Capabilities by GAP Analysis.

5. Recommend Action plan to address business needs.

• Once GAPS between the current and needs capabilities are defined a recommendation can be made by including high level approach for adding capabilities.
• Provide an alternative solutions or option to satisfy business need.
• Identify Constraints, Assumption and risk for each option.
• Assess Feasibility (Operational, Technology, Cost Effectiveness, time Feasibility)
• Recommend the most viable options then do the weighted ranking Matrix.
• Conduct the Cost Benefit Analysis for the recommend option (Payback Period, Return to Investment, Internal Rate of return & Net Present Value).

6. Assemble the Business Case, should minimally include the following, Problem & Opportunity, Analysis the situation, Recommendation & Evaluation.

7. Building Project Charter, (Project Purpose, Measurable Project objectives, high level requirement, overall project risk, Summary millstone schedule, preapproval financial resources, stakeholder list Assigned project Manager, responsibility and authority level)