Review: Business Analysis
Iain Laskey finds this title to be hard work but ultimately, worth it
| Product | Business Analysis |
|---|---|
| Company | British Computer Society |
| Web | www.bcs.org |
| Price | £30.95 |
| We like | Great content, wide range of topics based on real world experience |
| We don't like | Hard work to read |
| Rating | 8/10 |
| Requirements |
Business Analysis, edited by Debra Paul and Donald Yeates is produced by the British Computer Society to assist people working towards the ISEB Business Analysis Diploma. It consists of a number of essays by different authors and attempts to be an authoritative guide to the discipline of business analysis.
The thirteen chapters cover such areas as investigation techniques, process modeling, stakeholder analysis and putting together the business and financial case for a project.
The chapters contain a lot of useful information and manage to be both wide ranging in scope as well as reasonably detailed. However, we did find the writing style incredibly dry making the whole book quite hard work to read. Many chapters needed repeated readings for the content to sink in. If you're an absolute beginner, we think you're going to struggle with this book without a little real world experience. If, on the other hand, you're already training to be a BA, the book will help enormously to formalise your learning and make you more aware of the scope and methodologies of the role. We also felt that the information was sometimes either too densely packed or in some cases, got repeated in slightly different ways just to pad things out.
Business Analysis is strong on the various techniques such as swim lane diagrams and process maps that can be used to help describe the different business processes. There are lots of illustrations which help the reader to appreciate what each can offer.
The book has sufficient detail to go a long way towards being a useful reference guide for those who need the occasional reminder on areas they seldom use. Even experienced business analysts can gain a lot from it in this respect. Each chapter also concludes with a useful section of further reading and sometimes, web site URLs if you need to go deeper.
As the book comes from the BCS, it is biased towards business analysis in an IT context although much of the content will apply to any situation.
Conclusion
Normally, when reviewing books it's pretty easy to form an overall conclusion but in this case it's a little more difficult. The content gives an excellent overview of the business analyst's role and the various methods and techniques they can use to understand and document business processes. The downside is that it's a hard read that we often struggled with. The authors could have tried to make it more captivating and enjoyable to read. On balance though, we'd say that if you can overlook this aspect, it's a good book that will get you well on your way to competency as a business analyst.
