business analysis plan template

Strategic Business Analysis Plan Template

What is a Strategic Business Analysis Plan?

A strategic business analysis plan outlines a systematic approach to thoroughly examine a business or organization's current state, assess the external environment to identify opportunities and threats, and set objectives to reach desired goals. The plan also outlines the strategies, tactics, and measurable targets that will help the business reach its goals.

What's included in this Strategic Business Analysis Plan template?

• 3 focus areas
• 6 objectives

Each focus area has its own objectives, projects, and KPIs to ensure that the strategy is comprehensive and effective.

Who is the Strategic Business Analysis Plan template for?

This strategic business analysis plan template is designed to help business analysts and teams outline a plan for conducting in-depth business analysis, gathering insights, and making informed strategic decisions. It can be used to ensure that all key stakeholders are on the same page and that all data-driven decisions are backed by data-driven insights.

1. Define clear examples of your focus areas

A focus area is a broad category or topic that is necessary to achieve the desired strategic goals. It is important to identify and define focus areas in order to set specific objectives and measurable targets that can help achieve the desired goals. Examples of strategic focus areas that could fall under a Strategic Business Analysis Plan could be: Comprehensive Data Collection and Analysis, Stakeholder Engagement and Collaboration, and Process Optimization and Efficiency.

2. Think about the objectives that could fall under that focus area

An objective is a goal that is specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART). Objectives should be created for each focus area in order to define a clear path forward and measure progress toward the desired outcomes. Examples of some objectives for the focus area of Comprehensive Data Collection and Analysis could be: Gather Relevant Data, and Perform Thorough Data Analysis.

3. Set measurable targets (KPIs) to tackle the objective

A key performance indicator (KPI) is a measurable target that defines the success of an objective. KPIs should be quantitative, measurable, and meaningful. The KPIs should be set to ensure that objectives are achieved and that progress is being made toward the desired outcomes. An example of a KPI for the focus area of Comprehensive Data Collection and Analysis could be: Achieve 95% Data Relevance in Analysis.

4. Implement related projects to achieve the KPIs

A project (action) is an approach or solution to achieve a KPI. Projects should be specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and timely (SMART). Projects should be identified for each KPI in order to ensure that progress is being made toward the desired outcomes. An example of a project related for Comprehensive Data Collection and Analysis could be: Utilize Advanced Analytical Tools.

5. Utilize Cascade Strategy Execution Platform to see faster results from your strategy

Cascade is the leading strategy execution platform for businesses of all sizes. Cascade helps teams align their goals and objectives, track progress, and measure success in order to achieve their desired outcomes faster. The platform provides an intuitive user experience and comprehensive analytics to help teams realize their vision and reach their goals.

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A Checklist for Business Analysis Planning

Written by Edmund Metera on February 18, 2021 . Posted in Articles .

Use the Universal Business Analysis Planning Checklist as You Plan Your Business Analysis Approach.

Every project is a unique, temporary endeavor.

The business process management, regulatory compliance and digital transformation projects that business analysts may play a role in all come with different goals, scopes, teams, timelines, budgets dependencies and risks.  Though many projects follow similar methodologies they are all tailored for project scope constraints and to take advantage of available resources, opportunities and lessons learned from prior work. 

Each business analyst also comes with a unique set of skills and experiences. Almost all business analysts have great communications skills and at least some experience-based business domain knowledge. That’s why they became business analysts in the first place. Every business analyst has uniquely acquired knowledge of business analysis techniques and business domains through personal study, practice and experience. Many have also been trained in elicitation, requirements management, modeling, measurement, analysis and documentation techniques. An ever-growing number have received professional certifications, such as the IIBA Certified Business Analysis Professional (CBAP) or the PMI Professional in Business Analysis (PMI-PBA).

What is Business Analysis Planning?

The most skilled business analysts are not only competent in many business analysis techniques but also consciously tailor their business analysis approach for each project that they engage in.  They have learned to consider key project dynamics along with their own competencies and to tailor their planned business activities and deliverables to suit each project’s unique dynamics. Regardless of your own level of business analysis experience, maturity, and whether you are formally trained, certified or not, you can still consciously assess each project’s dynamics and tailor your forthcoming business analysis work to get the most productivity and value out of your business analysis efforts in each project.

The most significant project dynamics include:

• The methodology, or sequence of stages or major milestones, and the business analysis products or outcomes that are expected by the end of each stage/milestone (and before starting the next).
• The budget and schedule, not only to meet them, but to take advantage of contingency or schedule slack opportunities, to increase the value, quality or to learn.
• The key project stakeholders and relationships that are new and changed and forming, to take a proactive role in fostering and building relationships with and among that team.
• The types and combinations of elicitation techniques that will be best suited for producing or validating business analysis deliverables. 
• The business domain knowledge and experiences of the diverse key project stakeholders, including your own unique set of business analysis competencies.

The Universal Business Analysis Planning Checklist

You can be more effective in planning your business analysis approach if you follow a consistent, clear agenda that considers the common project dynamics.

The Universal Business Analysis Approach Planning Checklist covers the most common project dynamics. You can use this as an agenda to elicit and discover a comprehensive view of a project’s key dynamics, its opportunities and use what you discover to adapt/tailor your business analysis approach.

As an exercise, think of a project that you have recently worked on, you are currently working on, or will soon be working on.  Answer questions in the following checklist for yourself.

Project Life Cycle

• What are the planned stages of this project?
• What stage are we currently in?
• What is the business analysis deliverable (or set of deliverables) that I am responsible for producing in this stage?
• What is the intended use of my business analysis deliverable(s) and who will use it?

Schedule and Effort Budget

• How much effort can I spend and by what target date am I expected to produce my business analysis deliverable(s)?
• Is that about what I also estimate it will take?
• Is either my effort or date estimate higher than the effort budget or target date? If so, how might I adapt my effort, scope, activities or configuration of my deliverable(s)?

Project Stakeholders and Relationships

• Does this project have an executive sponsor, project owner or product owner, project manager, specialists and business subject matter experts?
• What are the names and titles the persons in these project roles?
• Who’s new to each other on this team?
• Are there local and who’s remote team members?
• Who is responsible for producing, accepting or needs to be consulted or informed of each of the project’s key deliverables, particularly the business analysis deliverable(s)?

Elicitation Techniques

• Documentation Reviews – What documentation or prior work products are available to review?
• Interviews and Workshops – Who can I interview or include in a workshop, and what questions would I need to ask?
• Observations – Where and what kinds of observations may be needed and how could I arrange for them?
• System reviews – What system(s) are available to review and for what information?
• Surveys – Who could I engage in a survey and using what types of questions?
• Considering this project’s stakeholders and relationships, the elicitation techniques available to me, and my own core competencies, which elicitation techniques are best suited gather and validate my business analysis information?

Organizational Assets

• Collaboration tools, facilities, survey tools?
• Diagramming or modeling software?
• What prior business analysis work (e.g., documents, models) that I can draw from?
• Does my organization offer training in the subject business domain?

Competencies and Knowledge

• Who on the project team has what expert business domain knowledge?
• What is my own business domain knowledge?
• What are my strongest core business analysis competencies?
• Where can you take advantage the team’s diversity of knowledge and competencies?
• Who are the best stakeholders in this project to engage in elicitation of content or validation of business analysis deliverables and what is or are the best elicitation techniques to use?

On reflection, are you able to answer these questions for yourself? When you go into your project workplace, who will you include in this conversation?

Conclusion:

Business analysis planning is a recognized business analysis activity. The IIBA Body of Knowledge (BoK) includes the Plan Business Analysis Approach activity within its Business Analysis Planning and Management process. The BoK also lays out the scope of what should be covered by a Business Analysis Approach as “The set of processes, templates, and activities that will be used to perform business analysis in a specific context.”

The time and formality that you apply to business analysis planning is up to you. At the financial institution where I work as a project and program manager, our business analysts typically tailor and document a business analysis plan for each new project to which they are assigned. 

I think of business analysis planning as a form of insurance. Spend a little time upfront to assure that the bulk of the rest of your business analysis efforts will be as well spent and effective as possible. Expect the benefits of tailoring a business analysis plan for every project to be that:

• It will help you to align your own core business analysis competencies to each project, and
• You and the project will gain the most value from your business analysis efforts.

That’s a value-adding proposition. You are welcome to contribute comments about project dynamics that impact business analysis plans or about the checklist presented through the Contact Us page at www.ProcessModelingAdvisor.com.

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Project Plan Template for Business Analysis

• Great for beginners
• Ready-to-use, fully customizable Subcategory
• Get started in seconds

• Design a business analysis plan that meets your company's needs
• Identify risks and solutions proactively
• Track progress and adjust plans easily according to changing dynamics

Benefits of a Business Analysis Project Plan Template

• Ensure that your analysis is comprehensive and covers all aspects of your business
• Gain a clear understanding of your business, its products, and its customers
• Make sound decisions about which areas of your business to focus on
• Create effective documentation to support your findings

Main Elements of a Project Plan Template for Business Analysis

• Stakeholders

How to Use a Business Analysis Project Plan Template

1. assemble the team., 2. identify requirements., 3. set deadlines/milestones., 4. create work breakdown structure (wbs)., 5. assign resources & review risks., related project plan templates.

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How to Write a Business Analysis Report [Examples and Templates]

Table of contents

To see what Databox can do for you, including how it helps you track and visualize your performance data in real-time, check out our home page. Click here .

Business analysis reports are a lot like preparing a delicious meal.

Sometimes, the recipe is simple enough that you only need to use the basic ingredients. Other times, you will have to follow specific instructions to ensure those tasty delicacies turn out just right.

Want to make sure your business report never turns out like a chewy piece of meat? You’ve come to the right place.

Stay tuned until the end of this blog post, and we promise you won’t be hungry… for business knowledge!

What Is a Business Analysis Report?

Why is analytical reporting important, what should be included in a business analysis report, how do you write a business analysis report, business data analysis report examples and templates.

• Improve Business Reporting with Databox

A business analysis report provides information about the current situation of your company. This report is usually created by the management to help in the decision-making process and is usually used by other departments within a company.

Business analysis reports can either focus your research on the effectiveness of an existing business process or a proposed new process. Besides, an effective business analysis report should also assess the results to determine if the process changes had a positive or negative effect on the company’s goals. In fact, according to Databox’s State of business reporting , an overwhelming majority of companies said that reporting improved their performance.

Analytical reports are the bridge that connects your company to an effective, data-driven business intelligence strategy . By leveraging analytical reports , you can make informed decisions about your organization’s most critical issues. You will no longer need to rely on gut instinct or anecdotal evidence when assessing risks, threats, and opportunities. Instead, you will have access to a wealth of reliable data to inform your decisions.

Here are some essential benefits of analytical reporting:

• Improve communication and foster collaboration – The most obvious benefit of business analysis report writing is an improvement in communication between all stakeholders involved in the project. Also, analytical business reports can help you to generate more trust and foster better collaboration among your employees and colleagues. By using data analytics reporting tools , you will be able to monitor your employees’ performance on a day-to-day basis. This will allow you to hold them accountable for their actions and give them greater freedom within the business as they know that their superiors have faith in their decision-making capabilities.
• Increase productivity – Without this level of shared insight, businesses struggle to stay on top of their most important tasks and can become less efficient. An effective analytical business report provides the information needed for more efficient internal processes and helps you find more time for strategic activities such as improving your business strategy or working on long-term goals .
• Innovation – In today’s digital age, the pressure to innovate was never greater. When consumers basically have everything they want at their fingertips, stepping up to the plate with a new and improved product or service has never been more important. With an accessible dashboard in place, you will be able to create data-driven narratives for each of your business’ critical functions. For example, if you are a software company, you can use the insights gained from report analysis done with your dashboard software to tailor your product development efforts to the actual needs of your customers. By doing so, you will be able to develop products that are better tailored to specific customer groups. You can also use the same information for developing new marketing strategies and campaigns.
• Continuous business evolution – When it comes to digital businesses, data is everything. No model lasts forever, so having access to a business dashboard software that allows you to constantly keep tabs on your business’ performance will help you refine it as time goes on. If there are any glitches in your business model, or if something isn’t panning out as expected, the insight offered by a business analysis report can help you improve upon what works while scrapping what doesn’t.

A business analysis report has several components that need to be included to give a thorough description of the topic at hand. The structure and length of business analysis reports can vary depending on the needs of the project or task.

They can be broken down into different sections that include an:

• Executive summary
• Study introduction
• Methodology
• Review of statistics

Reports of this nature may also include case studies or examples in their discussion section.

A report can be written in a formal or informal tone, depending on the audience and purpose of the document. While a formal tone is best for executives , an informal tone is more appropriate for technical audiences . It is also a good idea to use something like an executive summary template to report on the results repeatedly with ease.

A good business analysis report is detailed and provides recommendations in the form of actionable steps. Here we have listed some simple steps that you need to follow to write a good business analysis report. Report writing is a major part of the business analysis process. In this section, you will learn how to write a report for your company:

Preparation

Presentation.

Obtain an overview of what you want to analyze in the business report . For example, if you are writing a business analysis report on how to improve customer service at an insurance company, you will want to look through all the customer service processes to determine where the problems lie. The more prepared you are when starting a project, the easier it will be to get results. Here is what your preparation should look like:

Set your goals

The first step in writing this document is to set your goals . What do you hope to accomplish with this paper? Do you need to assess the company’s finances? Are you looking for ways to make improvements? Or do you have outside investors who want to know if they should buy into the company? Once you know what your goal is, then you can begin setting up your project.

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Like most marketers and marketing managers, you want to know how well your efforts are translating into results each month. How much traffic and new contact conversions do you get? How many new contacts do you get from organic sessions? How are your email campaigns performing? How well are your landing pages converting? You might have to scramble to put all of this together in a single report, but now you can have it all at your fingertips in a single Databox dashboard.

Our Marketing Overview Dashboard includes data from Google Analytics 4 and HubSpot Marketing with key performance metrics like:

• Sessions . The number of sessions can tell you how many times people are returning to your website. Obviously, the higher the better.
• New Contacts from Sessions . How well is your campaign driving new contacts and customers?
• Marketing Performance KPIs . Tracking the number of MQLs, SQLs, New Contacts and similar will help you identify how your marketing efforts contribute to sales.
• Email Performance . Measure the success of your email campaigns from HubSpot. Keep an eye on your most important email marketing metrics such as number of sent emails, number of opened emails, open rate, email click-through rate, and more.
• Blog Posts and Landing Pages . How many people have viewed your blog recently? How well are your landing pages performing?

Now you can benefit from the experience of our Google Analytics and HubSpot Marketing experts, who have put together a plug-and-play Databox template that contains all the essential metrics for monitoring your leads. It’s simple to implement and start using as a standalone dashboard or in marketing reports, and best of all, it’s free!

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To set up the dashboard, follow these 3 simple steps:

Step 1: Get the template 

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Assess the Company’s Mission

It’s almost impossible to write a business analysis report without access to the company’s mission statement. Even if you don’t plan on using the mission statement as part of your business analysis summary, it can help you understand the company’s culture and goals. Mission statements are typically short and easy to read, but they may not include every area of focus that you want to include in your report.

Thus, it is important to use other sources when possible. For example, if you are writing a business analysis report for a small start-up company that is just beginning to market its product or service, review the company website or talk directly with management to learn what they believe will be most crucial in growing the company from the ground up.

Stakeholder Analysis

Who is your audience? Create the reader’s persona and tailor all information to their perspective. Create a stakeholder map that identifies all the groups, departments, functions, and individuals involved in this project (and any other projects related to this one). Your stakeholder map should include a description of each group’s role.

Review Financial Performance

Review the financing of the business and determine whether there are any potential threats to the company’s ability to meet its future financial obligations. This includes reviewing debt payments and ownership equity compared with other types of financing such as accounts receivable, cash reserves, and working capital. Determine whether there have been any changes in the funding over time, such as an increase in long-term debt or a decrease in owners’ equity.

Apart from reviewing your debt payments and ownership equity with other types of financing, wouldn’t it be great if you could compare your financial performance to companies that are exactly like yours? With Databox, this can be done in less than 3 minutes.

For example, by  joining this benchmark group , you can better understand your gross profit margin performance and see how metrics like income, gross profit, net income, net operating increase, etc compare against businesses like yours.

One piece of data that you would be able to discover is the average gross profit a month for B2B, B2C, SaaS and eCommerce. Knowing that you perform better than the median may help you evaluate your current business strategy and identify the neccessary steps towards improving it.

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When you join Benchmark Groups, you will:

• Get instant, up-to-date data on how your company stacks up against similar companies based on the metrics most important to you. Explore benchmarks for dozens of metrics, built on anonymized data from thousands of companies and get a full 360° view of your company’s KPIs across sales, marketing, finance, and more.
• Understand where your business excels and where you may be falling behind so you can shift to what will make the biggest impact. Leverage industry insights to set more effective, competitive business strategies. Explore where exactly you have room for growth within your business based on objective market data.
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The best part?

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When it comes to showing you how your performance compares to others, here is what it might look like for the metric Average Session Duration:

And here is an example of an open group you could join:

And this is just a fraction of what you’ll get. With Databox Benchmarks, you will need only one spot to see how all of your teams stack up — marketing, sales, customer service, product development, finance, and more. 

• Choose criteria so that the Benchmark is calculated using only companies like yours
• Narrow the benchmark sample using criteria that describe your company
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Sounds like something you want to try out? Join a Databox Benchmark Group today!

Examine the “Four P’s”

“Four P’s” — product , price , place, and promotion . Here’s how they work:

• Product — What is the product? How does it compare with those of competitors? Is it in a position to gain market share?
• Price — What is the price of the product? Is it what customers perceive as a good value?
• Place — Where will the product be sold? Will existing distribution channels suffice or should new channels be considered?
• Promotion — Are there marketing communications efforts already in place or needed to support the product launch or existing products?

Evaluate the Company Structure

A business analysis report examines the structure of a company, including its management, staff, departments, divisions, and supply chain. It also evaluates how well-managed the company is and how efficient its supply chain is. In order to develop a strong strategy, you need to be able to analyze your business structure.

When writing a business analysis report, it’s important to make sure you structure your work properly. You want to impress your readers with a clear and logical layout, so they will be able to see the strengths of your recommendations for improving certain areas of the business. A badly written report can completely ruin an impression, so follow these steps to ensure you get it right the first time.

A typical business analysis report is formatted as a cover page , an executive summary , information sections, and a summary .

• A cover page contains the title and author of the report, the date, a contact person, and reference numbers.
• The information section is backed up by data from the work you’ve done to support your findings, including charts and tables. Also, includes all the information that will help you make decisions about your project. Experience has shown that the use of reputable study materials, such as  StuDocu  and others, might serve you as a great assistant in your findings and project tasks.
• A summary is a short overview of the main points that you’ve made in the report. It should be written so someone who hasn’t read your entire document can understand exactly what you’re saying. Use it to highlight your main recommendations for how to change your project or organization in order to achieve its goals.
• The last section of a business analysis report is a short list of references that include any websites or documents that you used in your research. Be sure to note if you created or modified any of these documents — it’s important to give credit where credit is due.

The Process of Investigation

Explain the problem – Clearly identify the issue and determine who is affected by it. You should include a detailed description of the problem you are analyzing, as well as an in-depth analysis of its components and effects. If you’re analyzing a small issue on a local scale, make sure that your report reflects this scale. That way, if someone else reads your work who had no idea about its context or scope, they would still be able to understand it.

Explain research methods – There are two ways to do this. Firstly, you can list the methods you’ve used in the report to determine your actions’ success and failure. Secondly, you should add one or two new methods to try instead. Always tell readers how you came up with your answer or what data you used for your report. If you simply tell them that the company needs to improve customer service training then they won’t know what kind of data led you to that conclusion. Also, if there were several ways of addressing a problem, discuss each one and why it might not work or why it may not be appropriate for the company at this time.

Analyze data – Analyzing data is an integral part of any business decision, whether it’s related to the costs of manufacturing a product or predicting consumer behavior. Business analysis reports typically focus on one aspect of an organization and break down that aspect into several parts — all of which must be analyzed in order to come to a conclusion about the original topic.

The Outcome of Each Investigation Stage

The recommendations and actions will usually follow from the business objectives not being met. For example, if one of your goals was to decrease costs then your recommendations would include optimization strategies for cost reduction . If you have more than one suggestion you should make a list of the pros and cons of each one. You can make several recommendations in one report if they are related. In addition, make sure that every recommendation has supporting arguments to back them up.

Report Summary

Every business analysis report should start with a summary. It’s the first thing people see and it needs to capture their attention and interest. The report summary can be created in two ways, depending on the nature of the report:

• If the report is a brief one, that simply gives a summary of the findings, then it can be created as part of the executive summary.
• But if it’s a long report, it could be too wordy to summarise. In this case, you can create a more detailed overview that covers all the main aspects of the project from both an internal and external point of view.

Everything comes down to this section. A presentation is designed to inform, persuade and influence decision-makers to take the next action steps.

Sometimes a slide or two can make them change their mind or open new horizons. These days, digital dashboards are becoming increasingly popular when it comes to presenting data in business reports. Dashboards combine different visualizations into one place, allowing users to get an overview of the information they need at a glance rather than searching through a bunch of documents or spreadsheets trying.

Databox offers dynamic and accessible digital dashboards that will help you to convert raw data into a meaningful story. And the best part is that you can do it with a ‘blink of an eye’ even if you don’t have any coding or designs skills. There is also an option of individual report customization so that you can tailor any dashboard to your own needs.

Pre-made dashboard templates can be extremely useful when creating your own business analysis report. While examples serve as inspiration, templates allow you to create reports quickly and easily without having to spend time (and money) developing the underlying data models.

Databox dashboard templates come with some of the most common pre-built metrics and KPIs different types of businesses track across different departments. In order to create powerful business insights within minutes, all you need to do is download any of our free templates and connect your data source — the metrics will populate automatically.

Business Report Examples and Templates

Databox business dashboard examples are simple and powerful tools for tracking your business KPIs and performance. These dashboards can be used by executive teams and managers as well as by senior management, marketing, sales, customer support, IT, accounting, and other departments. If you are new to this kind of reporting, you may not know how to set up a dashboard or what metrics should be displayed on it. This is where a premade template for business dashboards comes in handy.

For example, this Google Ads Report Template is designed to give you a simple way to keep track of your campaigns’ performance over time, and it’s a great resource for anyone who uses Google’s advertising platform, regardless of whether they’re an SMB, an SME or an enterprise.

KPI Report Examples and Templates

KPIs are the foundation of any business analysis, and they can come in a multitude of forms. While we’ve defined KPIs as metrics or measurements that allow you to assess the effectiveness of a given process, department, or team, there are a number of ways to evaluate your KPIs. Through the use of color-coding, user-friendly graphs and charts, and an intuitive layout, your KPIs should be easy for anyone to understand. A good way to do this is by having a dedicated business analyst on your team who can take on the task of gathering data, analyzing it, and presenting it in a way that will drive actionable insights. However, if you don’t have a dedicated analyst or don’t want to spend money on one, you can still create KPI reporting dashboards using free KPI Databox templates and examples .

For example, this Sales Overview template is a great resource for managers who want to get an overview of their sales team’s performance and KPIs. It’s perfect for getting started with business analysis, as it is relatively easy to understand and put together.

Performance Report Examples and Templates

All businesses, regardless of size or industry, need to know how well they are performing in order to make the best decisions for their company and improve overall ROI. A performance dashboard is a strategic tool used to track key metrics across different departments and provide insight into the health of a business. Databox has a collection of 50+ Performance Dashboard Examples and Templates which are available for free download.

For example, if your business is investing a lot into customer support, we recommend tracking your customer service performance with this Helpscout Mailbox Dashboard which will give you insights into conversations, your team’s productivity, customer happiness score, and more.

Executive Report Examples and Templates

An executive dashboard is a visual representation of the current state of a business. The main purpose of an executive dashboard is to enable business leaders to quickly identify opportunities, identify areas for improvement, pinpoint issues, and make data-informed decisions for driving sales growth, new product launches, and overall business growth. When an executive dashboard is fully developed, as one of these 50+ Databox Free Executive Examples and Templates , it offers a single view of the most important metrics for a business at a glance.

For example, you probably have more than one set of financial data tracked using an executive dashboard software : invoices, revenue reports (for accounting), income statements, to mention a few. If you want to view all this data in one convenient place, or even create a custom report that gives you a better picture of your business’s financial health, this Stripe Dashboard Template is a perfect solution for you.

Metrics Report Examples and Templates

Choosing the right metrics for your business dashboard can be crucial to helping you meet your business objectives, evaluate your performance, and get insights into how your business is operating. Metrics dashboards are used by senior management to measure the performance of their company on a day-to-day basis. They are also used by mid-level managers to determine how their teams are performing against individual goals and objectives. Databox provides 50+ Free Metrics Dashboard Examples and Templates that you can use to create your company’s own dashboards. Each is unique and will depend on your business needs.

For example, if you are looking for ways to track the performance of your DevOps team, and get the latest updates on projects quickly – from commits, and repository status, to top contributors to your software development projects, this GitHub Overview Dashboard is for you.

Small Business Report Examples and Templates

A lot of small business owners don’t realize how important it is to have a proper dashboard in place until they actually use one. A dashboard can help you track and compare different metrics, benchmark your performance against industry averages, evaluate the effectiveness of your marketing and sales strategies, track financials, and much more. So if you’re looking for a tool to help you measure and manage your small business’ performance, try some of these 50+ Free Small Business Dashboard Examples and Templates .

For example, this Quickbooks Dashboard template can help you get a clear understanding of your business’s financial performance, ultimately allowing you to make better-informed decisions that will drive growth and profitability.

Agency Report Examples and Templates

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Introduction & Guidance To Business Analysis Planning and Monitoring

More often than not, the outcome of the business analysis project is directly dependent on proper planning.

The business analysis planning and monitoring activity lays out the groundwork necessary for the successful completion of the whole project.

Monitoring also plays a key role in evaluating the business analysis work during the project. Detailed planning and close monitoring are essential for delivering the desired outcomes.

Table of Contents

Introduction – business planning and monitoring.

They determine how changes are requested and analysed and determine the right approach that will satisfy the need of the organisation. 

Also, they evaluate how business analysis performance has contributed to the implementation of the solution . As for the stakeholders , the BA’s job is to analyse their needs and characteristics to ensure proper planning and monitoring. 

Furthermore, at this stage, they need to conduct performance analysis so the planned activities will deliver a satisfying value to the business. 

All of this would not be possible without ensuring a complete understanding of the organisational context and developing the right analysis approach.

The BABOK guide includes five tasks that BAs should perform as a part of the business analysis planning and monitoring knowledge area. 

These tasks focus on organising and coordinating analysts and stakeholders, planning the approach to specific parts of a project, and defining the roles. They should produce outputs that can serve as a foundation for tasks in other knowledge areas.  We’ll take a closer look at all five of these tasks.

Plan Business Analysis Approach

The plan business analysis approach task defines and creates methods that will be used while performing business analysis activities.

The outputs produced here are a groundwork for the tasks form all of the other knowledge areas. It determines the timeline of the projects, what and when will be performed, and which deliverables are expected.

Also, planning the business analysis approach identifies suitable techniques and tools which will be used over the course of the project.

Some organisations already have established and formalised procedures and approaches and the analyst will have to work within these standards.  Of course, this doesn’t necessarily mean that some of these approaches won’t have to be adjusted as the project progresses.

In organisations without set procedures, the BA will work with stakeholders to devise the most suitable approach.

The main inputs of planning a business analysis approach are the needs of a specific organisation – problems or opportunities that the organisation is facing.

The business analyst must have a full understanding of the organisational needs as he starts the planning and be aware that those needs may change during the project. 

The expected output of this task is to define the business analysis activities and approach necessary for achieving the desired goals, determine work timeline and sequencing, decide on techniques to be used, and determine expected deliverables.

Plan Stakeholder Engagement

Planning the stakeholder engagemen t includes establishing and maintaining a fruitful collaboration with stakeholders, understanding their roles and relevance, and identifying their needs. To communicate in the best possible way, the business analyst must perform a thorough analysis of all of the crucial stakeholders and their characteristics.

The more stakeholders are involved, the more complex the task becomes, the inclusion of every new stakeholder may require the use of a different technique or the adjustment to the existing approach.

Similar to the previous task the main input of planning the stakeholder engagement is the organisational need. If the analyst has an understanding of the needs, proper identification of key stakeholders will be much easier. Another significant input is the overall business analysis approach as it ensures better stakeholder analysis and communication.

Planning stakeholder engagement should provide a stakeholder engagement approach as an output, containing information on the number of stakeholders, their characteristics, roles, and assignments.

The main elements of the task of planning stakeholder engagement are:

• Performing stakeholders analysis – identifying roles, attitudes, decision-making authority, level of power or influence;
• Defining stakeholder collaboration;
• Stakeholder communication needs.

Guidelines and tools that a business analyst will lean on while planning stakeholder engagement are business analysis performance assessment, change strategy, and current state description.

The key stakeholders for this task are customers, domains subject matter expert, end-user, project manager, regulator, sponsor, and supplier.

Plan Business Analysis Governance

To plan business analysis governance is to define business analysis components that will serve as a support of governing function in an organisation. It’s defining how decisions are made on all aspects of the business, including designs, requirements, reviews, changes, and prioritisation.

For the organisation to function properly, the process of governance should be clear and unambiguous. All of the decision-makers and their competencies must be clearly identified. Also, the information needed to make the decision should be precisely defined.

The primary inputs in planning business analysis governance are business analysis approach which ensures consistency in planning and stakeholder engagement approach which provides information on stakeholders, their characteristics, needs, and roles.

When performed in the right way the planning of business analysis governance should provide an output of governance approach which contains information on decision making stakeholders and their authority and responsibility.

The business analysis governance planning includes the following key elements:

• Decision making;
• Change control process;
• Plan prioritisation approach;
• Plan for approvals.

Guidelines and tools that will come useful for planning business analysis governance are business analysis performance assessment, business policies, the current state description, and legal/regulatory information.

Stakeholders of significance for business analysis governance planning are domain subject matter expert, project manager, regulator, and sponsor.

Plan Business Analysis Information Management

The role of business analysis information management planning is to define the way information gathered during the business analysis process will be captured, stored, accessed, and integrated with other available information. This includes all information elicited, created, and compiled over the course of the business analysis process.

The amount of information obtained this way can be enormous and proper handling is essential for its future use. All of the information should be optimised and easily accessible for whatever period it is needed.

Business analysis information management planning uses all of the outputs from previous tasks as its input. This includes the business analysis approach, stakeholder engagement approach, and governance approach. The main expected output is the information management approach which defines the state of information upon the completion of the change.

The key elements of planning the business analysis information management task are:

• Organisation of business analysis information;
• Level of abstraction;
• Planning a traceability approach;
• Planning for requirement reuse;
• Storage and access;
• Requirements attributes.

Guidelines and tools used during this task are business analysis performance assessment, business policies, information management tools, and legal/regulatory information.

The main stakeholders with the role to play at this stage are domain subject matter expert, regulator, and sponsor.

Identify Business Analysis Performance Improvements

Identifying business analysis performance improvement s include monitoring and management of business analysis performance in order to ensure the realisation of improvements and securing continuous opportunities.

It’s the assessment of the work that the business analyst has done and serves as a guideline for implementing improvements where needed. This task consists of establishing performance measures, conduction analysis based on those measures, reporting, and identifying potential necessary actions.

The primary inputs are business analysis approach and performance objectives which are the external goals set by an organisation. The output of this task is the business analysis performance assessment. It details puts actual performance against the planned one, identifies potential issues, and proposes solutions.

Identifying business analysis improvements includes a few key elements:

• Performance analysis;
• Assessment measures;
• Analysing the results;
• Recommending actions for improvement,

The main tool used here is the organisation performance standard including performance metrics or organisational expectations.

For this business analysis planning and monitoring task, the main stakeholders are domain subject matter expert, project manager, and sponsor.

Business Analysis Approach Template

Having a set of business analysis planning and monitoring templates will help you provide the groundwork for the successful completion of your whole project.

Conclusion – Business Analysis Planning and Monitoring

In all business analysis projects whether waterfall or agile the business analyst will need to understand and review their business analysis planning and monitoring approach to suite the context of their project (and also when they arrived in the project).

This article has provided an introduction to the business analysis planning and monitoring activities necessary for the successful completion of the whole project.

Learn more about the other IIBA business analysis knowledge areas:

Jerry Nicholas

Jerry continues to maintain the site to help aspiring and junior business analysts and taps into the network of experienced professionals to accelerate the professional development of all business analysts. He is a Principal Business Analyst who has over twenty years experience gained in a range of client sizes and sectors including investment banking, retail banking, retail, telecoms and public sector. Jerry has mentored and coached business analyst throughout his career. He is a member of British Computer Society (MBCS), International Institute of Business Analysis (IIBA), Business Agility Institute, Project Management Institute (PMI), Disciplined Agile Consortium and Business Architecture Guild. He has contributed and is acknowledged in the book: Choose Your WoW - A Disciplined Agile Delivery Handbook for Optimising Your Way of Working (WoW).

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Business Analysis Plan - Template

Just like projects have a project management plan, business analysis should have a business analysis plan.  The attached template is intended to help BAs in developing and documenting their BA planning activities in this template depending on the needs of the project.

This is an Microsoft Word document template.

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Documents Prepared by the Business Analyst – The BA Template Toolkit

The importance of documents prepared by business analysts.

To understand what documentation you must produce, you need to understand the type of problem you’re solving.

I’m often asked about business analysis documents and how these  deliverables  tie in with an approach such as Agile or Waterfall.

As far as documentation is concerned the approach taken influences when, and in how much detail, a document is produced. The document may also have a different name but the goals of the business analyst are the same no matter the methodology used.

The goal of the business analyst is to identify business needs and determine solutions to business problems. The solution may come in many forms but typically involve:

• The implementation of a new system
• Enhancements to an existing system
• Business process improvement
• A new information strategy
• A new policy or strategic plan
• An organisational restructure
• A combination of any of the above

Most commonly, business analysts are involved in the first three.

Understanding the type of project, the problem you’re solving, or the solution you are delivering will inform the types of documentation to be produced.

If you’re procuring an off-the-shelf product, you wouldn’t write detailed descriptions of functions and features of the system. You would, on the other hand, produce business requirements with enough information about how the stakeholders need to interact with the product and for what purpose. These requirements would also include some important qualities of the system (e.g., the system must comply with the organisation’s standard operating environment). A product vendor can then provide a detailed response that aligns with the criteria of the organisation.

Where a custom solution is being implemented, highly specific descriptions of functional and non-functional qualities are necessary. In addition to the initial business requirements, the deliverables could include use cases, a user interface specification and data flow diagrams. These documents must be written with enough detail to hand over to the people who design the system’s technical architecture and write the code.

This is your starting point.

Use your documentation to demonstrate real value

The delivery and presentation of your documentation is one opportunity to demonstrate the value of a project, and your value to a project.

Whether you’re recommending a case for change to decision makers or delivering a functional specification to a technical team, your documents must contain value for your audience.

Value may come in the form of:

• Clearly describing a problem and recommending a solution that is aligned with the organisation’s needs,
• Assisting decision makers with the best approach moving forward by helping them understand costs and benefits,
• Succinctly describing the characteristics of a solution (whether it be a new system, a process change or something else), or
• Assisting an organisation with managing change or continuous improvement.

It’s my opinion that there’s no right or wrong way of communicating value as long as you know what you need to communicate and why.

Your documentation may be written according to a best practice framework and your diagrams may follow the UML specification to the letter. However, if your stakeholders cannot interpret and visualise the solution you’re describing, your documentation is ineffective. And will contain significantly less value than the document that doesn’t follow best practice but effectively expresses the intended message.

The delivery and presentation of your documentation is one opportunity to demonstrate the value of a project, and your value to a project. Your value is frequently demonstrated in how well you have understood a problem and aligned it with a solution.

Throughout the lifecycle of a project, you have the opportunity to deliver value at every step of the way. Just ask yourself “What’s of value here? What’s really important? Why is it important?” And at every point, try to express these important things as clearly as possible. Do this through all channels of communication including your documentation to make clear and powerful statements about how a problem can be solved.

Use your documentation to communicate clearly to your audience

Value is the key. How you deliver that value occurs through a variety of mechanisms but it includes your documentation.

Determining what documents to deliver on a project is not done in isolation. If you recall from my eBook, The First Bite , the very first questions I ask when I commence a project include:

• What is required of me?
• Do you have an outcome already in mind?
• What are the expected deliverables?
• In what format do you expect the deliverables to be produced?

The answer to these questions not only provide you with a broad overview of the business activities to be undertaken, but also the type and format of the documents to be produced. As more is understood about the project, the more refined your understanding of those deliverables will be.

Therefore, the questions above are the starting point for understanding the objectives of project. The project objectives inform the documents and deliverables required, and the deliverables inform the type of information you need to gather.

In understanding the objectives of the project, and the things that you need to produce, it’s important to understand these three things.

• The intended “end game” may change as the project progresses. As new information comes to light, the objectives may change and so may the required deliverables.
• The project is not about producing good documents, but adding value to the organisation. The documents just help you deliver that value.
• Documents are not true deliverables. Nor are systems or processes. The true deliverable is the value you bring to the organisation.

Value is the key. How you deliver that value occurs through a variety of mechanisms but it includes your documentation. And your documents must communicate clearly and accurately to your intended audience.

For instance, I’ve read many business cases that lacked a suitable description of how the recommended change would provide value to the organisation. As is frequently the case, the so-called value is written from the perspective of the solution.

For example, the recommended  XYZ system  will:

• Store data in a central repository
• Provide a single source of truth
• Eliminate duplicate records
• Improve accessibility

These are good benefits, but what is the real value to the organisation? The decision makers need to know but it is not communicated clearly.

The same scenario applies if you were delivering a detailed functional specification. You need to provide the information in a way that the technical team (your audience) can design and implement code with as little re-work as possible. Therefore, they need a suitable description of what the solution will look like and how it will work.

So a document must accurately communicate to the intended audience. And it’s my opinion that there is no right or wrong way of doing this, as long as it communicates its value.

The Business Analyst Template Toolkit

The  Business Analyst Template Toolkit , by Laura Brandenberg (CBAP), is not just a bunch of templates containing empty sub-headings!

It is a valuable resource containing 12 fully annotated templates and helpful guidance on how to use them. And for each template, a corresponding work sample shows you what the template will look like when completed.

These business analysis templates will increase your effectiveness as a business analyst by helping you produce better quality and concise deliverables.

The template pack includes:

• Business Process
• Change Request
• Data Feed Specification
• Glossary Template
• Issues List
• Meeting Agenda
• Meeting Notes
• Requirements Development Plan
• Scope Statement
• Use Case Template
• Use Case List
• User Interface Specification

The toolkit comes with instructions on how to apply these business analysis deliverables in each of the three broad phases of a project. These phases are initiation, definition and implementation. And for each phase you – the business analyst – will provide input at varying degrees.

Whether you’re scoping the project requirements in the initiation phase, developing the functional requirements in the definition phase or revising changes during the implementation phase – the  Business Analyst Template Toolkit  gives you the guidance you need to produce the correct deliverables in each phase.

Even though this template toolkit won’t be the magic bullet that makes your work suddenly exceptional, it will assist you in improving the quality of your work through increased alignment amongst stakeholders.