A national branch of a global company is struggling to improve business processes of its Public and Government Affairs (PGA) department. To work with external stakeholders effectively, PGA employees need to collect, manage, and exchange a vast amount of information. Complex cases involve collaboration of many employees from different departments. The ability to share information and to coordinate corresponding activities is crucial for the company's growth plans. Their current tools and practices do not serve the purpose well. The existing system, which was deployed a couple of years ago, has only a few active users. The majority of PGA employees avoid using it because the system is hard to use and lacks needed functionality. Consequently, available information is mostly unstructured and stored either locally or on a shared network drive. Some of the information exists only in a paper form.
The branch's PGA head, who sponsors the project, wants to implement a configurable solution that two other branches successfully deployed several months ago. Both deployments were done by three solution consultants, who will be available to assist in the project. They will be responsible for tailoring the solution to PGA needs, as well as for training the PGA staff. With their help, the sponsor plans to complete the project in approximately three months.
The solution consultants reside in another country 7 hours ahead of the rest of the project team. They will be available part-time, but are planning two one-week long trips to the PGA central office to conduct initial training and to participate in the final deployment of the system into production. The consultants, in turn, expect a business analyst (BA) to assist in collecting necessary data and defining customization requirements.
The solution consultants have composed a set of as-is solution documents. A spreadsheet contains a catalog of brief definitions of all requirements with priorities assigned to them. A separate document explains data models and user interfaces. For the new and changed requirements, the BA wants to capture additional attributes such as the source, reason, complexity, and priority of change. Some of these requirements can be reused in other work.
How should information for these requirements be managed?
A business analyst (BA) is preparing to specify requirements. Various attributes can be specified for each requirement or set of requirements.
Which approach contains a suitable set of attributes?
A business unit of a transnational manufacturer wants to implement a robust process for addressing integrity- critical equipment deterioration incidents. Timely and complete resolution of such incidents is vital for the business unit’s continuous safe and profitable operation. Treating each incident involves many employees from different departments extensively collaborating and exchanging information. That information is spread across multiple systems having their access limited to particular user groups. With the current manual process, some incidents get forgotten and remain unresolved for years.
The project’s Sponsor is an Equipment Integrity and Reliability Advisor, who moved into this position from
another business unit. That business unit implemented a proprietary application to integrate the information and to assist in tracking and managing the incidents. Having a positive experience with the application, the Sponsor is suggesting to customize it and reuse in the new business unit.
The business unit’s Enterprise Architect (EA), who is responsible for assessing solution options and presenting them to executive decision makers, has a few concerns with adopting the existing application. The application uses point-to-point interfaces with other data sources whereas the business unit’s target architecture relies on a data warehouse-based integration. Moreover, the two business units use different legacy systems, as well as different front-end implementation technologies. Additionally, the existing application is monolingual, while the business unit needs user interfaces and some data to be presented in two languages. With all of this, it may be easier to build a new application from scratch than to customize the existing one. To understand which option is better, the EA asks a business analyst (BA) to define business requirements.
With the team ready to consider design options, they are reviewing the following requirement: "Appropriate stakeholders shall be timely and reliably notified on incident-related events."
What quality criteria does this requirement fail to satisfy?
An organization is trying to streamline its current processes to improve performance and reduce costs. A business analyst (BA) conducted a process improvement workshop and identified the following issues as the top three items to be addressed:
1: There are multiple teams to define systems, functionality, and content, in many instances, multiple teams are defining the same Functionalities while other functionalities are not being defined at all. leading to unclear understanding of business requirements
2: Product specification forms are published each year. A comparison tool is used to evaluate specification differences between yearly releases; but does not adequately identify changes between versions and needs to be improved.
3: Training consists of a new team member shadowing a seasoned team member. There are no written training materials or formal training sources therefore training is inconsistent and not meeting the needs of the organization.
The BA learns that formal training programs are not often devised for teams as small and diverse as this team, but still believes it is a viable solution to the training need. What type of analysis would help the BA gain approval to proceed with creating this type of training program for this team?
A business analyst (BA) wants to create a high-level Overview of a business process as a part of an exploratory analysis. The sponsor has asked for a model that demonstrates the movement and transformation of data between entities and processes. What technique should the BA use?
A business analyst (BA) on a project is in the process of validating requirements and finds that there is a high degree of uncertainty related 10 one of the assumptions being true. The BA adds the assumption to the risk register and performs a fun risk analysis to handle this situation. What type of strategy is in place if the organization is risk-averse?
A business analyst (BA) conducts a process analysis on the business analysis practices that were used on the previous major implementation. From this the BA identifies and documents that there are three improvement areas which would make the business analysis process more efficient In which business analysis artifact does the BA document these measures of improvement for the next piece of analysis work?
After having created several prototypes of a new. web-based application, a business analyst (BA) would like to meet with the organization's stakeholders to elicit their perception ideas, and attitudes about the prototypes Which of the following techniques should the SA use?
A business analyst (BA) has a meeting next week with the project sponsor to ensure that the requirements align with the objective of the project. Prior to the meeting, the BA must ensure that the requirements are:
A service provider has seen significant erosion of its profit margin so engages an external consultancy firm to assess its business operations and recommend options to improve profitability. What is the first step that the business analyst (BA) will perform as part of this engagement?
A card printing solution is comprised of 4 stages: Loading, Printing, Packaging and Sorting. Loading and sorting of cards is done manually through operators, while printing and packaging are automated. The loading stage requires the operator to load 100 cards after an alarm is raised. Sorting requires an operator to distribute each package based on the printed address into the appropriate delivery box.
Which stage should be assessed as the most likely to increase process inefficiencies?
A big construction company has grown into a group of 17 companies spread across the country. The rationale behind forming the group was to become more competitive in bidding for federal and regional government contracts. Another reason was to increase consolidated profitability by lowering the cost of materials and using combined assets more efficiently. Disjointed technological capabilities of the individual companies impede gathering the data needed to make decisions on both handling materials and allocating the resources.
What improvement opportunity does this represent?
Which of the following describes the actual users who interact with one another, a system, or data moved between two users?
An organization Is trying to streamline its current processes to improve performance and reduce costs. A business analyst (BA) conducted a process improvement workshop and identified the following issues as the top three items to be addressed:
1: There are multiple teams to define systems, functionality, and content in many instances, multiple teams are defining the same functionalities while other functionalities are not being defined at all leading to unclear understanding of business requirements
2: Product specification forms are published each year. A comparison tool is used to evaluate specification differences between yearly releases, but does not adequately identify changes between versions and needs to be improved.
3: Training consists of a new team member shadowing a seasoned team member. There are no written training materials or formal training sources therefore training is inconsistent and not meeting the needs of the organization.
Which stakeholders would the BA interview to determine the changes needed to the comparison tool?
Which of the following graphical presentations of a project plan is most appropriate for presenting to upper management?
A business analyst (BA) in a large financial institution, responsible for the management of requirements, has completed all the activities related to tracing requirements and is now pursuing to maintain them. The BA has identified a large number of requirements which have long term reuse and is now looking for guidance to manage these requirements.
Which of the following will indicate how requirements will be managed for reuse?
Which of the following is the process of developing a document that formally authorizes a project or a phase?
In a requirements elicitation effort, the business analyst (BA) needs to define boundaries for business domains, categorize and create a hierarchy of items, and show data sources and their relationships for specific audiences.
Which of the following modeling formats should the BA use?
As a program manager, you decided to overlap two phases of your program.
Which of the following terms best describe your act?
Which of the following types of elicitation allows each stakeholder to freely discuss their role in a particular process?
Which of the following techniques involves coordinating and collaborating with other credible sources in risk?
A project's change in scope is assessed and a newly assigned business analyst (BA) is unsure how to communicate the findings and final decision to the wider stakeholder group.
In which of the following can the BA find this information?
Which of the following participants have to keep the minutes and details of the conversation during Interviews?
ON NO: 310
A large health care provider has recently purchased and installed a solution that automates some of the activities that coordinate patient recovery activities. A business analyst (BA) is in the process of evaluating this solution and analyzing the performance measures against the value it brings. At this juncture, the BA has uncovered some threats in the solution which could hamper its performance and erode the value it brings.
Which technique will enable the BA to record and handle these on an ongoing basis?
A company that specialized in manufacturing vending machines for books has been in business for 10 years. As the e-book and online retailing grow, the company perceived that a change is required to respond to the new emerging market forces. However, the change should focus on reusability as much as possible to reduce expenses. After analyzing the current state with the business subject matter experts, the business analyst
(BA) proposed investing in a new business line of vending machines that sell pay per use mobile device phone fast charging stations.
Due to the urgency of this change, the BA was asked to finalize requirements elicitation in the shortest possible time.
Customers who want to utilize the pay per use mobile device fast charging stations may choose one of two features: fully charged (F1) or partially charged (F2). If partially charged is selected, the customer needs to specify their charging needs.
What is the relationship between F1 and F2?
A business analyst (BA) is outlining who should participate in an upcoming requirements elicitation meeting.
From whom should the BA obtain approval before selecting the participants?
Which of the following roles approves the project scope statement, phase gate reviews, solution validations, scope changes, and project success criteria?
During a retrospective, the project team agrees the way they organized the user stories during the first sprint could be improved. The business analyst (BA) plans to make the stones more accessible going forward. Which of the following will the BA update?
A business analyst (BA) has been coordinating several meetings with stakeholders to reach consensus regarding the solution design to implement a global currency exchange system for an international bank. Consensus has not been reached yet, although BA has great communication skills and is trusted by all stakeholders. The stakeholders formally approved the business need initially.
Why is there disagreement?
The objective of a solution implemented was to increase the number of customer calls resolved per hour.
When using basic statistical sampling concepts, what does the business analyst (BA) need to consider?
Which of the following is the process of identifying and assessing factors that may jeopardize the success of a project or the achievement of a goal?
Which of the following roles works with the project team to understand the deliverables and then teaches the users of the deliverables how to utilize the project's product?
A business analyst (BA) is preparing for observation. A passive approach has been selected for establishing performance metrics. What should be identic for the next step?
Which of the following processes measures the maturity level of the security program?
Following a recent, successful deployment a business analyst (BA) has noticed that several of the requirements are candidates for reuse in multiple, upcoming change initiatives. Which type of requirement is a potential candidate for re-use?
While defining what necessary conditions are required to achieve the business need for a highly regulated government client, a business analyst (BA) discovers that some legacy policies will either constrain or are insufficient to achieve value desired by the future state.
How should the BA proceed?
In order to align with the added value required from the parcel tracking solution, what would be an important requirements' category for the BA to give more focus?
The project manager wants to have the requirements analysis phase approved and asks the business analyst (BA) if this is possible The BA wants to ensure that the requirements package
A business analyst (BA) is assigned to a project which has two main stakeholders: a highly regulated government agency and a less formal private company. To select the business analysis approach, the BA mi! conduct a meeting with representatives from each entity to decide on the level of formally needed for requirements and design specifications. During the meeting, what should the BA’s strategy be?
Before investing further in the project, a customer and the stakeholder of the project wants to be able to visualize the final product. Which elicitation technique should the business analyst (BA) select?
A business analyst (BA) is working on improving solution performance and increasing value. The BA discovers that a set of interfaces and activities do not contribute to the final product either directly or indirectly What should the BA recommend?
A conservative company with rigorous risk control plans and internal audit rules has a recurrent problem with a core Business application. As a result access to this application must be restricted and controlled and maintenance must be on-site. However, the company feels that the application must have an emergency service team. The routine maintenance of this solution is provided by an external vendor and the vendor requested 24 hours remote access to quality and production data. In this context what is the company's response to the vendor's request?
A business analyst (BA) is preparing a governance approach. The BA is trying to define the approval process. Which factors should the BA consider?
The table illustrate the statement of cash flower for a courier company for the last fiscal year:
Due to aggressive market competition the management of the company performed a strategy review and based on their0-findings and the current market conditions, they came up with strategic and tactical changes in order to keep a competitive market position.
In order to strength customer retention strategies through a new competitive advantage, the company is considering implementing a live parcel tracking system. The added value will be that the customers may determine the exact location on of the parcel whether it is in a warehouse, crossing the ocean through an overseas the exact location of th parcel whether it is in a warehouse, crossing the ocean through an overseas the ship, or travelling in a delivery truck at any time. The system tracks the location of the parcel by tracking the vehicle in which it is contained. However, for a group of old delivery trucks, it was noticed that the engine sound and vibration disturbed the tracking signal and caused of management would like to sell these vehicles and replace them with newer ones, the Chief Financial Officer (CFO) was strongly against that approach. The CFO argoad that instead of hanging tracking devices on the trucks body they can have the truck drivers manually send the truck send the truck location from a hand held mobile device every 20 minutes.
The CFO's resistance to replacing the older vehicles represents which type of cost?
A large insurance company wants to buy a new claims processing system or upgrade one of its two existing system. Each year the claims department is given a $3.5 million budget to spend. Time is of the essence since there are tome regulatory charges that will be coming the following year that will require several features that currently neither one of the two claims System currently support.
There are eight stakeholders involved in this initiative. There are local to where the claim system is managed, while five are located across the country. The business analyst (BA) struggled to get all stakeholders to agree on the desired features but ultimately got agreement on ten identified key features for the new claims system. The BA was able to build a current state and future state process model which included all ten key features.
System a process 75% of the company's claims. It is 5 years old and the claim processors love it because it is easy to use. However, it must go offline for two hours each day. The code is very module so it does have flexibility to be modified. To upgrade system A to have all ten features it would cost $5 million. System A would be at capacity if it were to process all of the company's claims.
System B process 25% of the company's claims. It is an older mainframe system, but rarely goes offline. It could easily handle double the number of claims that system A processes. However, it has a lot of legacy code and would cost $6 million to upgrade.
Both systems have some of the desired key features. But neither system has all ten. The cost to buy a new system would be $7 million.
Below is the estimated cost for each feature in priority order.
If the budget for the initiative was firm, what is a feasible solution to make sure the project stays within budget?
While working on a major project to replace the billing mechanism at a bank, a major change in scope is discussed. Which approach does the business analyst (BA) use to help determine the formality of the assessment process to be followed to understand the impacts of the scope change?
In a risk assessment exercise of a software implementation program, the business analyst (BA) has successfully computed the probability of occurrence (POC) and the cost of impact for each of the identified risks as follows:
Which of the following will have the highest negative impact to value?
When determining the success criteria for an initiative a business analyst (BA) engages end users in order to understand what they would define is an effective solution. What two types of data will the end men need to perform the evaluation?
A business analyst (BA) finds that the solution service level agreement (SLA) cannot be met m one out of five identified scenarios. is there 4 a dependency on a requirement which is a part of a future release. How should the BA approach the solution limitation?
A business analyst (BA) had identified redundancy in the process for the first contact resolution for customer issues: currently two separate a visions handle this task. A new solution identifies a single point of contact that will eliminate the redundancy. What can the BA do to highlight the required changes to the structure?
A corporation is experiencing poor financial performance and needs to change many aspects of its business strategy in coder to become solvent again. A business analyst (BA) is conducting a feasibility analysis and analyzing resources required. The BA has identified the existing resources, the resources that need to be increased, and the required additional capabilities. What is the other dimension this analysis should indicate?
The business analyst (BA) presented a concept model during a requirements walk through to the project sponsor, implementation subject matter expert and operational support start. While the presentation was clear to the project sponsor the other stakeholders were unsure about the impacts to their respective daily tasks. What should the BA include in the next walk through, so that all stakeholders have a better understanding of the requirements?
A business analyst (BA) has defined a business analysis approach and presented the documents to the sponsors, the senior executives, the domain experts, the project manager and the head of technology, to obtain agreement from all. At this juncture, the prefect manager objected to some of the estimates determined m the budget and refused to agree with the estimates. Which guideline or tool, if followed by the BA. would have helped in avoiding such disagreements?
Due to the complexity of a project the project board a concerned that the business analyst (BA) will not be able to ensure all requirements are verified. What toed can the BA present to the project board to mitigate their concern?
While reviewing the data feeds on a project the business analyst (BA) realizes there is a feed that contains complex relationships. In order to help understand the data and accurately reflect a set of requirements the BA decides to prioritize the requirements. What modeling format could the BA use?
A business analyst (BA) was tasked with eliciting requirements for a new product scheduling system. The BA interviewed and discussed the requirements with the manager and Supervisor. The requirements were written and approved by both the supervise and manager. Which stakeholders were missed in the requirements?
The stakeholder of a new product that is in early adaptive development has requested a change to an approved feature. How should the business analyst (BA) handle this change?
The business sponsor of a project to automate a high risk, high profile process has expressed concerns that some activities people perform will be missed. The business analyst (BA) has already created a process flow with associated user stories.
Which of the following actions will address the sponsor’s concerns?
Which of the following qualitative techniques involves a disciplined analysis of the event sequences that could transform a potential hazard into an accident?
A business analyst (BA) plans to hold a workshop next week to elicit requirements for a project. In an informal conversation, another employee mentioned that one of the attendees is likely to be unhappy about the project's impact on their work.
Which of the following techniques will the BA use to avoid disrupting the workshop?
What plan includes the description of the scope of work, the deliverable Work Breakdown Structure, the activity list, and estimates for the business analysis activities?
When an organization is using a change-driven approach to business analysis, how are communications managed?
You are the business analyst for your organization. You are currently identifying opportunities for a customer to improve their business processes. The customer wants to streamline their business efforts either through new technologies, better processes, or a combination of both. The customer demands, however, that the solution should not cost more than $300,000 to implement and support for one year.
What does the $300,000 represent?
What type of a business analysis approach focuses on the rapid delivery of business value in short iterations?
You are the business analyst for a large project in your organization. While your company prefers face-to-face communications there are many stakeholders located in different geographical locations.
How can you still effectively serve as a business analyst when the stakeholders are not collocated?
You are the business analyst for your organization. You are currently working with Steve on the organize requirements process. You and Steve have elected to use the user stories approach for this process.
What is the user stories approach for requirements organization?
What technique used during the manage business analysis performance process can help identify the underlying causes of failures or difficulties in accomplishing business analysis work?
Wanda is the business analyst for her organization and she is currently working on the specify and model requirements process. One of the elements of this process is the documentation of the textual requirements.
Wanda must describe the capabilities of the solution, any conditions that must exist for the requirements to operate, and what third component of the textual requirement?
Jane is the business analyst for her organization and she is completing passive observation to identify improvement opportunities in the workflow. She notices that some of the employees perform certain customer- facing activities in a different format than the other workers.
Is this a problem that can be addressed as part of an improvement opportunity?
You are the business analyst for your organization. Management wants you to prioritize the identified requirements by the requirements that have the highest likelihood of success.
Why would management want you to prioritize the requirements with this factor even though some of the requirements may be difficult to implement?
You are the business analyst for the TGH Organization and are determining if you should buy or build a solution for your company. You have determined that you can create the in-house solution for $78,000 with a monthly support cost of $8,765. A vendor can create the solution for $61,000 with a monthly support cost of $7,990.
How long will it take your company to break even if you choose the internal solution versus the vendor's solution?
You are the business analyst for your organization. You are preparing the business needs documentation for a new solution to an identified problem. Parts of your input for this process are the business goals and
objectives set by your organization.
What approach can you use to assess the business goal and their validity and longevity?
One of the processes within requirements analysis is to prioritize requirements.
As a business analyst why would you ever want to prioritize requirements?
You are the business analyst for your organization. On your current project you'll be using the change-driven approach for defining requirements and gathering feedback.
Which of the following statements best describes the change-driven approach?
You are the business analyst for your organization and you are preparing the business case for a proposed solution. You need to include the management horizon in your business case.
What is the management horizon?
You are the business analyst for your organization and are working on organizing the identified requirements for a new solution. Nancy, your assistant in this process, says that these requirements aren't very complex. You agree but add that it's this thing that makes the overall solution complex.
What thing adds to the level of complexity among requirements?
You are the business analyst for a smaller project where there are few requirements. Management would still like you to create a method to trace the few requirements for this project.
What type of matrix would be best in this instance?
You are the business analyst for your organization and working with Tim to identify the assumptions within the business solution.
Which one of the following is an assumption?
What business analysis process ensures that requirements specifications and models meet the necessary standard of quality to allow them to be used effectively to guide further work?
Your organization needs to adapt to the change economy, new technologies, and an increase in competition in order to survive. They've asked you to complete a business analysis approach that will help them change their organizational policies in order to achieve their goals and objectives.
What business analysis technique has this organization asked you to complete?
Which one of the following statements best describes requirements prioritization?
You are the business analyst for a large project in your organization. You are working with Ben to create requirements packages to present to the stakeholders, the business analyst team, and to the project manager. Ben wants to know why you're creating requirements packages.
What's the primary goal of developing a requirements package?
Which of the following reports is generated whenever the project is slipping off the project schedule and includes an of the problem?
You are the business analyst for your organization and you are working with Bill on creating a model. Bill is a little confused about all the different things a model can do for the stakeholders.
You explain to Bill that a model can do all of the following except for which one?
You are the business analyst for your organization and are currently with several key stakeholders as part of the determination of which business analysis approach is most appropriate for the current project.
Which one of the following is not a stakeholder that is considered when completing the business analysis planning and monitoring task to determine a business analysis approach?
Which of the following meeting brings all of the potential vendors together to discuss the statement of work and the request for proposal?
Management would like you to front-load the requirements with the most risk requirements.
Why would management prefer the risky requirements first in the prioritization?
There are four inputs to writing the business case as part of enterprise analysis.
Which one of the following is not an input to writing the business case process?
Which of the following is a process of adding labor to a project to reduce the project duration?
is a process to determine the completeness of the project work and to gain the customer's acceptance to move the project forward.
You are the business analyst for THY Organization and you have gathered the requirements. You have presented the requirements to the stakeholders and they have approved your requirements.
You are now working with Francie on recording the dependencies and relationships for each of the requirements.
Why would you want to record the dependencies and relationships for the requirements?
You are the business analyst for your organization. You want to use a requirements elicitation technique to produce a broad set of options for an identified problem. You want the stakeholders to help you identify options, factors that affect the solution, any possible delays in the solution implementation, and ideas for creating a solution.
Which of the following requirements elicitation activities would best satisfy these requirements?
Which solution scope technique can help the business analyst understand the scope of the work by breaking down the scope into smaller work products?
There are four inputs to the plan business analysis activities.
Which one of the following is not an input to the plan business analysis activities process?
You are the business analyst for a new project. Part of this project is for the project team to manually install new workstations through the company's campus. Based on your research you have determined that the project team can install 25 new workstations per hour. Since there is a fixed amount of time that these workstations need to be installed you are considering adding additional labor for the implementation. You are also considering to adjust the prioritization of the project requirements based on the amount of workstations the project team can install per hour.
What does the 25 workstations per hour represent in this scenario?
You are the business analyst for your organization. Your current project is using a plan-driven approach for the requirements, business analysis, and monitoring.
Which one of the following statements best describes the plan-driven approach to business analysis planning and monitoring?
Which of the following statements best describes the purpose of the confirm elicitation results process?
What type of interview is the most common as part of requirements elicitation?
You are completing the prepare for elicitation process for an identified problem in your organization. The prepare for elicitation process requires three inputs for this process.
Which one of the following is not an input that will help you prepare for the elicitation activities?
You are creating a model that shows how data moves through a system. Each function that modifies the data in any manner is identified, decomposed to smaller levels, and the system is completely described from start to storage.
What type of a modeling technique are you using in this scenario?
Which of the following phases is the first step towards creating a business continuity plan?
What is the degree to which a set of inherent characteristics fulfills requirements.
A business analyst is helping management determine which solution they should choose. As it happens that the organization can only choose one of the two solutions due to time and resource restrictions. Solution A
worths $456,000 to the organization while solution B worths $565,000 to the organization. While solution A costs less, it is less risky and takes less time to complete so management elects to seize Solution A.
What is the opportunity cost?
Which of the following processes can start with the source of problems or with the problem itself?
You are the business analyst for your organization and are about to conduct requirements elicitation for a process to streamline the customer fulfillment system your organization uses. You need to understand how the people, processes, and technology within the customer fulfillment system operates before you begin the elicitation process.
What type of analytical thinking are you participating in this scenario?
Bob and Susan are business analysts for their organization. They are examining two materials that could be used in an upcoming project. They are testing the materials and measuring the results of each test to compare the materials to each other. This process will help Bob and Susan determine which material is best for their upcoming project.
What type of process are Bob and Susan completing with these materials?
You are currently working on creating the activity list for an initiative in your organization.
What characteristic must be assigned to each task in your task list?
You are completing the requirements for vendor selection and need to create a procurement form that will ask the vendor to provide only a price for commercial-off-the-shelf solution.
What type of procurement form will you need to provide to the vendor?
What element of the conduct elicitation activity is tracked to provide a basis for future planning?
Which of the following defines how the project scope should be created, executed, monitored and controlled, and then validated?
A non-profit utility company has 900 employees, a majority of whom are hourly employees and must track their time using a paper based process. A few years ago, the Director of Human Resources purchased a software system to eliminate the current paper-based time reporting process. No requirements specific to the utility company were defined prior to the purchase. A team was formed to implement the software. During implementation process, the team discovered the software lacked functionality and was not robust enough to support the general ledger requirements The company stopped the effort and incurred a 1500.000 USD loss on the cost of the software.
This year, the Director of Finance requested that a team investigate the current paper-based time reporting process and recommend solutions. The Director of Finance feels that the Director of Human Resources must be involved as a critical stakeholder The Director of Human Resources is still bitter about the last effort because the process stopped.
During a design review meeting to discuss the future state, all stakeholders are in agreement except the Director of Human Resources. Who makes the final decision?
A project is implemented using a predictive approach. Unfortunately, a lot of change requests (CR) have been raised. A project manager (PM), who should approve each change request, is overworked.
What could the business analyst (BA) propose to make things better?
A company that specialized in manufacturing vending machines for books has been in business for 10 years. As the e-book and online retailing grow, the company perceived that a change is required to respond to the new emerging market forces. However, the change should focus on reusability as much as possible to reduce expenses. After analyzing the current state with the business subject matter experts, the business analyst
(BA) proposed investing in a new business line of vending machines that sell pay per use mobile device phone fast charging stations.
Due to the urgency of this change, the BA was asked to finalize requirements elicitation in the shortest possible time.
By proposing this change, what type of view did the BA use to analyze the current manufacturer's state?
Which of the following quantitative risk analysis techniques relies on experience and past data to compute the probability and impact of risks on project objectives?
The business analyst (BA) is facilitating a requirements workshop with a large group of diverse stakeholders, some of whom are not entirely familiar with the goals and objectives of the project.
The BA must understand the business domain, corporate culture, group dynamics, and expected outputs to adequately communicate the:
Rachel is writing the business case for her organization. As she's completing this process Rachel is concerned that she's including all the correct information for management.
Which one of the following should Rachel not include in her business case?
Henry is the business analyst for his organization. Management has created a pre-determined budget of
$450,000 for his solution. Henry has identified the project requirements but now wants to prioritize them based on timeboxing and budgeting. Henry examines the cost of the requirements and begins removing the requirements from the allowed list in order to meet the $450,000 budget.
What timeboxing or budgeting approach is Henry using?
Ned is the business analyst for the NHQ Company. He is working with Stan on completing the requirements prioritization of all the identified requirements.
Why would Stan and Ned complete requirements prioritization?
Fred's organization is using a plan-driven approach for the business analysis deliverables.
In this approach how will the requirements be captured?
Stakeholders have indicated concerns with the level of uncertainty they are willing to accept with the solution.
What type of analysis can the business analyst (BA) use to alleviate these concerns?
You are completing enterprise analysis. Management has asked you to create a document that will help them create a go/no go decision to invest and more forward with a proposed project.
What document does management want you to create?
You are the business analyst for your organization and are working with Virginia on the allocation of requirements for a new solution. You have assigned Virginia the task of breaking down the solution scope into smaller components for allocation.
What technique have you asked Virginia to complete in this scenario?
You are the business analyst for the NGQ Company. Management is concerned that their company is not able to meet an identified business need with their current existing structure, people, processes and technology. They've asked you to complete an analysis of their organization's ability to meet the identified business need.
What business analysis process are you completing for your organization?
You are the business analyst for your organization and are creating the solution scope definition.
Which of the following should be included in the solution scope definition?
Donna is leading a brainstorming session for her organization. She has asked the participants in this group to come up with at least ten ideas for possible solutions to an identified problem.
What is the problem with setting the goal as ten ideas for possible solutions in this session?
Which one of the following terms is not a business analysis planning and monitoring approach?
A business analyst (BA) wants to estimate the potential value delivered by a set of requirements and design options by targeting a small group of stakeholders to understand their perceived value and expectations. The BA is going to organize a discussion during which feedback is collected.
Which technique will be used?
A non-profit utility company has 900 employees, a majority of whom are hourly employees and must track their time using a paper based process. A few years ago, the Director of Human Resources purchased a software system to eliminate the current paper-based time reporting process. No requirements specific to the utility company were defined prior to the purchase. A team was formed to implement the software During implementation process, the team discovered the software lacked functionality and was not robust enough to support the general ledger requirements The company stopped the effort and incurred a $500,000 USD loss on the cost of the software.
This year, the Director of Finance requested that a team investigate the current paper-based time reporting process and recommend solutions. The Director of Finance feels that the Director of Human Resources must be involved as a critical stakeholder. The Director of Human Resources is still bitter about the last effort because the process stopped'.
Which of the following is included in performing a stakeholder analysis?
An organization is trying to streamline its current processes to improve performance and reduce costs. A business analyst (BA) conducted a process improvement workshop and identified the following issues as the top three items to be addressed:
1: There are multiple teams to define systems, functionality, and content in many instances, multiple teams are defining the same functionalities while other functionalities are not being defined at all leading to unclear understanding of business requirements.
2: Product specification forms are published each year. A comparison tool is used to evaluate specification differences between yearly releases; but does not adequately identify changes between versions and needs to be improved.
3: Training consists of a new team member shadowing a seasoned team member. There are no written training materials or formal training sources therefore training is inconsistent and not meeting the needs of the organization.
What analysis approach must the BA use to determine changes required to address the training needs?
A national branch of a global company is struggling to improve business processes of its Public and Government Affairs (PGA) department. To work with external stakeholders effectively, PGA employees need to collect, manage, and exchange a vast amount of information. Complex cases involve collaboration of many employees from different departments. The ability to share information and to coordinate corresponding activities is crucial for the company's growth plans. Their current tools and practices do not serve the purpose well. The existing system, which was deployed a couple of years ago, has only a few active users. The majority of PGA employees avoid using it because the system is hard to use and lacks needed functionality. Consequently, available information is mostly unstructured and stored either locally or on a shared network drive. Some of the information exists only in a paper form.
The branch's PGA head, who sponsors the project, wants to implement a configurable solution that two other branches successfully deployed several months ago. Both deployments were done by three solution
consultants, who will be available to assist in the project. They will be responsible for tailoring the solution to PGA needs, as well as for training the PGA staff. With their help, the sponsor plans to complete the project in approximately three months.
The solution consultants reside in another country 7 hours ahead of the rest of the project team. They will be available part-time, but are planning two one-week long trips to the PGA central office to conduct initial training and to participate in the final deployment of the system into production. The consultants, in turn, expect a business analyst (BA) to assist in collecting necessary data and defining customization requirements.
What should define the timing of business analysis work in this project?
The BA is working on the design options for the future state at the martial arts organization. There are several design elements that need to be considered for the future state. Which of the following design elements does the Activity Diagram address?
An organization has a procedure for receiving requests from its customers: investigating each and then replying with an answer. The general manager asks a business analyst (BA) to identify ways to improve the current practice because it takes too long for the requests to be answered.
Which of the following techniques will the BA use to review the tasks?
A company that specialized in manufacturing vending machines for books has been in business for 10 years. As the e-book and online retailing grow, the company perceived that a change is required to respond to the new emerging market forces. However, the change should focus on reusability as much as possible to reduce expenses. After analyzing the current state with the business subject matter experts, the business analyst
(BA) proposed investing in a new business line of vending machines that sell pay per use mobile device phone fast charging stations.
Due to the urgency of this change, the BA was asked to finalize requirements elicitation in the shortest possible time.
The BA was able to complete requirements elicitation activities in a short period of time. Which type of elicitation approach did the BA use?
A company with a big information technology (IT) department has hired a lead business analyst (BA) to enhance its business analysis practices. The lead BA discovers that sponsors are not satisfied with project outcomes. Developers complain about incomplete, ambiguous, and changing requirements. All stakeholders, including project managers, are blaming long cycles of analysis for the delays. The business analysts, in turn, feel overwhelmed with the number of projects and frustrated by the lack of collaboration from reviewers of their deliverables. All of the evidence is anecdotal and none of the groups could strongly substantiate their opinions.
Even after dozens of reviews, some stakeholders refuse to sign off on the requirements specification documents because of a few questionable requirements. This puts the projects at risk and creates tension between the participants. What should the lead BA do first?
A major manufacturer of popular beverages has appointed a local distributor to serve a specific territory. The demand for the beverages has a pronounced seasonal pattern. The distributor performs well overall, but is repeatedly unable to keep up with fulfilling many customer orders during peak demand periods. The distributor's current delivery capability is stretched to deliver 60 tons of merchandise per day whereas the season's peak demand periods need a daily delivery capability of up to 100 tons.
The distributor is under pressure to fully meet the year-round market demand in order to stay in business. The distributor's management wants to identify and consider more cost-effective options as resorting to adding more trucks and drivers would not be economically feasible.
A business analyst (BA) has spent several days observing and measuring the warehouse activities to understand the situation and to gain insights into possible solutions. The delivery workflow is a four-step process: (1) picking the orders and assembling them on trays, (2) bringing the trays to the loading bay, (3) loading the orders into trucks, and (4) delivering the orders to customers. As the following table illustrates, overall performance depends is dependent on five major resources: (1) the workers who pick the orders and load them into trucks, (2) the tallyers who check the orders, (3) the drivers, (4) the trucks, and (5) eight loading bays (LBs).
Each truck can only make two trips a day. The BA has noticed that only 30% of trips have their orders available for loading when a truck arrives. Otherwise the truck has to wait one extra hour until the orders are picked and brought to the loading bay.
If trucks are the only constraint, approximately how many hours are lost due to this downtime?
An organization is trying to streamline its current processes to improve performance and reduce costs. A business analyst (BA) conducted a process improvement workshop and identified the following issues as the top three items to be addressed:
1: There are multiple teams to define systems, functionality, and content, in many instances, multiple teams are defining the same functionalities while other functionalities are not being defined at all. leading to unclear understanding of business requirements.
2: Product specification forms are published each year. A comparison tool is used to evaluate specification differences between yearly releases; but does not adequately identify changes between versions and needs to be improved.
3: Training consists of a new team member shadowing a seasoned team member. There are no written training materials or formal training sources therefore training is inconsistent and not meeting the needs of the organization.
What approach would help the BA to understand the functionality definition issues?
After releasing its beta version of a travel assistance mobile application, a travel company has received feedback from a public survey proposing new features. The company is struggling with the large number of ideas and would like to make a decision on which to consider in the next implementation cycle.
Which of the following considerations should be used first for filtering ideas?
An insurance company wants to increase sales by 15% and customer retention by 10% within 1 calendar year.
Various strategies to achieve this were considered and a restructure to the existing pricing model is selected to help achieve these goals.
A business analyst (BA) works with stakeholders such as actuaries, product specialists, sales staff, risk managers, and underwriters who agree to applying varying levels of discounts to customers based on:
•Total annual premium the customer has with the company (Financial worth)
•Time with the insurance company (Loyalty)
Various financial models are considered but the stakeholders agree that an initial applicable discount is determined based on the customer's overall premium:
The percentage of the maximum possible discount available to the customer is adjusted based on time with the company:
If within the first six months, customer retention increased by 5 % and sales increased by 6%, then when will the desired sales and retention goals be achieved assuming the trend continues at the same pace?
An insurance company wants to increase sales by 15% and customer retention by 10% within 1 calendar year.
Various strategies to achieve this were considered and a restructure to the existing pricing model is selected to help achieve these goals.
A business analyst (BA) works with stakeholders such as actuaries, product specialists, sales staff, risk managers, and underwriters who agree to applying varying levels of discounts to customers based on:
•Total annual premium the customer has with the company (Financial worth)
•Time with the insurance company (Loyalty)
Various financial models are considered but the stakeholders agree that an initial applicable discount is determined based on the customer's overall premium:
The percentage of the maximum possible discount available to the customer is adjusted based on time with the company:
As the new pricing structure was being implemented, the chief executive officer (CEO) of the company wanted to change the premiums and associated discounts offered to customers. The BA investigated the cost, anticipated benefits and the length of time the change would likely take to complete before presenting the results back to the CEO.
What type of analysis has the BA just conducted?
A major manufacturer of popular beverages has appointed a local distributor to serve a specific territory. The demand for the beverages has a pronounced seasonal pattern. The distributor performs well overall, but is repeatedly unable to keep up with fulfilling many customer orders during peak demand periods. The distributor's current delivery capability is stretched to deliver 60 tons of merchandise per day whereas the season's peak demand periods need a daily delivery capability of up to 100 tons.
The distributor is under pressure to fully meet the year-round market demand in order to stay in business. The distributor's management wants to identify and consider more cost-effective options as resorting to adding more trucks and drivers would not be economically feasible.
A business analyst (BA) has spent several days observing and measuring the warehouse activities to understand the situation and to gain insights into possible solutions. The delivery workflow is a four-step process: (1) picking the orders and assembling them on trays, (2) bringing the trays to the loading bay, (3) loading the orders into trucks, and (4) delivering the orders to customers. As the following table illustrates, overall performance depends is dependent on five major resources: (1) the workers who pick the orders and load them into trucks, (2) the tallyers who check the orders, (3) the drivers, (4) the trucks, and (5) eight loading bays (LBs).
Preparing a customer order for loading takes about one hour. Upon the BA's observation, only 30% of trips have their orders available for loading when a truck arrives. This causes a waste of both the truck's and the driver's time.
What should the BA recommend to eliminate such waste?
A leading software manufacturing company has appointed a business analyst (BA) to ensure that requirements are managed effectively and efficiently. The BA discovered some missing functionality as well as some implemented functionality which are not supported by requirements.
Which of the following tasks did the BA use to discover the issues?
A business analyst (BA) has been given a defect during user acceptance testing. After analyzing the defect, the BA determines it is a change in the requirement.
What does the BA need to do to assess the change?