Business Analysis for Dummies

I come from a background of software and systems analysis. My goal in reading this book was to compare and contrast what I knew with the techniques and roles of business analysis. There Wes a lot of overlap in terms of what needed to be done and who fires what seems more a matter of new names for old jobs than something novel.

Business analysis is presented as a combination of systems analysis and project management. Various disciplines, such as requirements , analysis and planning are all familiar and decomposed hierarchically. When used during a project, these categories can serve as a checklist to assure that nothing is overlooked.

The authors choose to not identify brand names with tools on the assumption that the recommendations would quickly go out of date. They pointed to a website– b2ttraining.com.com– where you could find current recommendations. The URL more goes to a new website with a lot of material but no resource page I could find. This is no worse than a book with stale recommendations, but no better. Without the references, the book feels dated.

The book promotes the virtues of the organized thinking and planning process of business analysis. Unfortunately it does not do that by comparing it to something else.