Business Analysis using "Method H"
by Neville Turbit
Many Business Analysts start a conversation with users by asking what they do. The conversation tends to drift in no particular direction until a thread is sighted, then the BA follows that thread to the end. The next thread is fleshed out and a similar process followed. Hopefully, by taking enough random walks around the person’s job, sufficient information will be collected to come up with a requirement.
In this article Neville Turbit describes a more methodical approach to eliciting requirements called "Method H".
| Attachment | Size |
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| Method_h.pdf | 113.74 KB |
How do you address 'Why?'?
I was first introduced to this idea with structured analysis as 'IPO' (inputs/process/outputs) or 'HIPO' (hierarchica IPO) I found it works really well at the system design level. I can see that it would also work well for documenting the 'as-is' process.
My problem with using it for business analysis is that it doesn't answer the question of 'why'. This is the first thing I start with -- why are you doing this? what is the goal? how does this benefit the company? I don't think you can really figure out the 'to-be' solution unless you know the answers to this.
Ginny