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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?
An automobile manufacturer is undertaking a project intended to modify or replace the company's current timekeeping system. Negative employee reaction to change follows as word of the proposed solution spreads throughout the company. What could a business analyst (BA) do to prevent or reduce employee discontent?
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) 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 business analyst (BA) is preparing a governance approach. The BA is trying to define the approval process. Which factors should the BA consider?
A customer has provided a business analyst (BA) with many business requirements and some have inter-dependencies with other requirements. To ensure the requirements are delivered according to customer expectations which requirements attribute should the BA consider including in the project requirements document?
The business analyst (BA) works in a global company and the majority of stakeholders are located in different countries The BA already explained the core requirements during the initial meetings. However due to the time zone differences it has been cumbersome to organize further meetings. What method should the BA use so the stakeholders can review the document before final approval?
An insurance company wants to implement a business intelligence solution to consolidate data from various different internal system to provide a better understanding of their customer base.
A business analysis (BA) is engaged to put together a tender (bid) to be sent to various business intelligence providers and implementation partners. Among other information the business analysis requests the following:
* Licensing costs for year 0 based on needing 1 Central processing Unit (CPU) license
* Licensing costs for specific user types such as Report Creators Online Analytical Process (OLAO) user and Power users
* Predicted licensing costs for renewing in Years 1 and 2
* Full implementation costs
After reviewing the received vendor responses the project team shortlists the candidates to 3 and the BA structures the received information as follows:
The Insurance company has a maximum bucket of $310,000 for the entire to implementation and operation over the first three years. Which vendor or vendors meet that criterion?
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 processes 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.
During elicitation the BA must understand the non-functional requirements. What nonfunctional requirement does System B support over System A?
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?
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?
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?
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?
Company A has been engaged to provided solution software to Company B as part of a combined service offering to Company C.
The initiative requires a sub project for Companies A and B learn Company Cs statutory requirements, a sub project for Company A to write custom functionality for the solution, and a sub project for Company B to develop infrastructure and support for the solution as well as the main project of implementation and cutover from Company Cs current data processing solution to the service from Company B, How does the business analyst (BA) assign requirements to the various solution components to ensure all objectives are met?
A business analyst (BA) working on a recently implemented project is approached by the sponsor to provide artifacts that can be used organization wide for the long -term. Which of the following should the BA provide?
Which of the following authorizes the project to exist within the organization?
A software company has won a contract to implement its product for a client. As part of the implementation work, a business analyst (BA) is asked to elicit information about the other client applications that will interface with the new system and provide the information graphically. The technical staff needs to understand the message interaction within the systems for key business transactions.
Which type of diagram should the BA use?
A business analyst (BA) has engaged various groups from across the organization to define the business opportunity a potential project will address. The BA must consolidate the information collected from the groups.
The BA should ensure the business needs.
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?
Which of the following is not a hygiene agent according to Frederick Herzberg theory?
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?
Which of the following qualitative techniques involves a disciplined analysis of the event sequences that could transform a potential hazard into an accident?
Which of the following captures all of the activities within a business, the inputs and outputs of each activity, and the required resources to complete each activity?
Which of the following is a method of displaying the timelines of all the various subtasks that are involved in any project?
A business analyst (BA) has completed the prioritization of requirements with various risk-averse stakeholder groups. Several requirements conflict with a regulatory requirement that, if not implemented, will result in a fine from a regulatory body.
What should the BA do?
In performing the task of planning for business analysis governance for a software implementation project, the business analyst (BA) recommends that prioritization of requirements be done based on the amount of work that the project team is capable of delivering in a given period of time.
Which of the following techniques is the BA recommending?
Which of the following defines how the project scope should be created, executed, monitored and controlled, and then validated?
The performance of the business analysis team has been reviewed by management to determine areas for improvement. The manager would like to help the business analysts (BAs) develop their skills and address the corrective actions.
What is a technique that may help achieve this goal?
The stakeholders are interested in ensuring that expected value is assessed prior to acceptance. To determine if the solution is providing expected value and ensure the accuracy of the measurements, the stakeholders and the business analyst (BA) determine that they need to measure.
Which of the following requires that all parties in the conflict must give up something?
Which of the following requirement attributes lacks any ambiguous characteristics?
Which of the following techniques is used to test customer acceptance of the solution and to measure marketplace demand?
In a software implementation project, the designated business analyst (BA) has conducted all the elicitation activities and now needs to confirm the elicitation results.
What is used by the BA Professional to guide which sources of information and which results are to be compared?
Which of the following is responsible for preparing the business architecture, feasibility studies, and business cases?
Which of the following is a graphical representation of roles and responsibilities of different project team members?
Which of the following process groups occurs at the beginning of the project?
Which of the following participants have to keep the minutes and details of the conversation during Interviews?
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?
The business analyst (BA) has been tasked with assessing and recommending the best solution that fits an organization's need for a new third-party sales tool.
What technique would be used for identifying suitable options?
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?
Which of the following diagrams is used to display sensitivity analysis data?
A business analyst (BA) is tasked with developing a business analysis plan and must decide the best approach to use. Which of the following factors would drive the decision towards an adaptive approach?
Which one of the following diagrams visualize the result of the root cause analysis study?
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 are 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 System A is unanimously selected to be the system for upgrade but the technical lead says that System A will have to be taken offline for 3 months, what kind of strategy should the project team develop while system A is offline?
A business analyst (BA) has recently completed a comprehensive stakeholder analysis. Next the BA would like to consider ways in which to ensure that the stakeholders remain engaged throughout the change strategy. Some of the considerations include timing and frequency, location, available tools, delivery methods and the stakeholders' preferences. In which of the following plans would the BA document these considerations?
Before investing further in the project, a customer and the key stakeholders of the project want to be able to visualize the final product. Which elicitation technique should the business analyst (BA) select?
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?
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 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?
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 the 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 argued 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.
What could the business analyst (BA) do to gain consensus between the CFO and other Management?
You are creating a model for your requirements.
Which model type categorizes and describes the people who directly interact with a solution?
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 coaching Marcy, a new business analyst for your organization, on business analysis processes. Marcy is concerned about the define solution scope process, especially the implementation approach element.
Which of the following statements best defines the implementation approach element for Marcy?
You are the business analyst for your organization. Management has asked that in the business case you're creating that you also include the projected costs and benefits to be realized and how those and benefits will be assessed and evaluated.
What term matches management's request?
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?
What business analysis element tries to identify as many potential options as possible to meet the business objectives and fill identified gaps in capabilities?
You are the business analyst for your organization. Management has asked that you create a method to store the project requirements including those under development, under review, and the requirements which have been approved.
What is management asking you to create?
What two factors must the business analyst consider when conducting stakeholder analysis?
You are the business analyst for your organization. Management has asked that you create a stakeholder map as part of the conduct stakeholder analysis process.
What is a stakeholder map?
Which one of the following business analysis planning and monitoring techniques can be used to define and document the business analysis approach?
Management has asked you, a business analyst for your organization, to create the solution scope for an identified problem. In order to complete this task, you'll need three elements.
All of the following are elements you'll need in order to write the solution scope except for which one?
You are the business analyst for your organization and are coaching Roberta on how business analysis works.
Roberta is confused about what a business analysis methodology is during the business analysis planning and monitoring phase of the business analysis duties.
What is a methodology?
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?
You are working with Terry on the conduct stakeholder analysis task as part of the business analysis duties in your company. Terry wants to know why it's so important to identify stakeholders so early in the business analysis duties.
Which one of the following statements best addresses the need to identify the stakeholders early on in the business analysis duties?
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?
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?
Fred's organization is using a plan-driven approach for the business analysis deliverables.
In this approach how will the requirements be captured?
You are creating the solution scope for a proposed solution in your organization. You need to understand the scope of work that needs to be completed. You elect to identify the solution scope and then break the solution scope into smaller work products or deliverables.
What technique are you using in this instance?
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. A customer has approached your organization and is requesting that your company create new software for them that will help them collect customer information.
In regard to enterprise analysis this business needs stems from which one of the following need generation approaches?
You are hosting a collection of stakeholders from across the organization to identify the ideas and attitudes about your company's help desk. You want the stakeholders to honestly share their opinions about the help desk service so you can identify problems, solutions, and take actions to improve the service.
What type of requirements elicitation activity is this?
Nancy has asked you to trace a particular requirement for her.
What does 'to trace a requirement' mean?
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 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 and management has asked that you identify opportunities to improve the operations of the business. You notice that some of the stakeholders use several pieces of software and several duplicate activities within each software package to generate data reports for customers.
What type of recommendation can you make in regard to this observation?
Which of the following processes is used to make certain that the project team members are completing the project work according to the project plan?
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?
You are the business analyst for your organization and are working with Jennifer to conduct stakeholder analysis. You would like to create a RACI chart to help with the roles of the people involved in the stakeholder analysis process. Jennifer is not familiar with this chart and asks what does RACI mean.
Which one of the following best describes the RACI chart in the conduct stakeholder analysis process?
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?
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?
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?
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?
You are the business analyst for a large, complex solution and you are working with the stakeholders to determine the prioritization of the requirements. You would like to use the decision analysis to determine the best decision for the requirements outcome. You must know four things as part of decision analysis.
Which one of the following will not help you with this approach to the requirements prioritization process?
Gina has been asked to provide decision analysis for her solution scope.
Which one of the following best describes the decision analysis technique?
What element of the conduct elicitation activity is tracked to provide a basis for future planning?
Which of the following process models needs to complete each set of tasks in one phase before moving into the next phase in a project development life cycle?
Holly is the business analyst for her organization. Holly encourages teamwork and open communications among the business analysis team and the stakeholders. She wants stakeholders to drop by her office and freely discuss the requirements, the solution scope, and other concerns about the solution she's working on. Holly definitely prefers informal communications.
What is the danger Holly may experience with informal communications?
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. 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 is the best definition of the business rules analysis?
Mark is the business analyst for his organization. Mark and his business analysis team have used the whiteboard to record the documentation as the result of requirements elicitation.
What must be done with this information if Mark uses a whiteboard?
You are the business analyst for your organization. You are currently writing the business goals and objectives as part of the elements for the define business process.
Which one of the following statements best describes the business goals and objectives element?
Which of the following meeting brings all of the potential vendors together to discuss the statement of work and the request for proposal?
You have identified several stakeholders that you believe are kinesthetic learners.
Which statement best describes the kinesthetic learning approach?
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?
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 your organization and are leading a presentation about an identified problem. This presentation will help the stakeholders to understand the problem and it will help you when you begin to elicit requirements from the stakeholders.
Which type of learner learns best through the presentation of models?
Which of the following tasks does not rely on other activities, and no other activities rely on this task completing?
Your organization is using a plan-driven approach to business analysis.
What must you do with all of the communication documents created as part of this high-priority project that you are serving as the business analyst for?
Which of the following is mandatory in most software development projects?
You are the business analyst for your organization. You are identifying new opportunities to improve upon your existing web services. Management isopen to new opportunities as long as the changes do not take more than 60 days to implement.
What type of a factor does the 60-day implementation represent?
You are the business analyst for your organization and are preparing to conduct stakeholder analysis. As part of this process you realize that you'll need several inputs.
Which one of the following is NOT an input you'll use for the conduct stakeholder analysis task?
Marcy is the business analyst for her organization. She is completing the business analysis task of defining the business needs. She has the business goals and objectives and the requirements stated documentation.
What must she confirm about the requirements stated documentation before defining the business need based on her analysis?
Robert is the business analyst for his organization and he's working with several stakeholders to identify the business need for an opportunity. Robert needs to identify the stakeholder that will be responsible for authorizing the actions needed in order to meet the identified business need.
Which stakeholder does Robert need to identify?
Zoe is the business analyst for her organization. She is currently prioritizing the requirements based on the implementation difficulty of the requirements to help with the solution planning.
Which of the following best describes the approach Zoe is taking with requirements prioritization?
Which of the following is NOT a component of an entity relationship diagram?
You are the business analyst for the NHQ Organization. Management has asked that you examine the workflow and internal processes for order fulfillment. Specifically, they'd like you to complete an in-depth analysis and documentation of the business problems and opportunities that may be exist for the organization.
What business analysis knowledge area does this activity map to?
A popular department store chain wants to make computer upgrades as well as conduct a major remodeling effort to increase revenue to all their 100 stores over the next 2 years. The remodeling will occur in two phases. The two phases are required at each store and can be completed in any order, but each phase must be fully completed before the next phase can begin. Phase 1 will take approximately 32 weeks and will not require a store to be temporarily closed. Phase 2 will take approximately 20 weeks and will require a store to be temporarily closed.
In order to keep inventory level and total revenue for the department store chain at an operational level, 75% of the stores must remain open to the public at all times. Against the board of director's advice, the Chief
Executive Officer (CEO) made a decision to start and complete the top 25 revenue-producing stores in the first year to get those stores remodeled and fully operational.
A business analyst (BA) has been brought in to help with planning the project and gathering requirements. What activity should the BA do to determine which stores will be the first to start the renovations?
A financial institution engaged in mortgage lending has embarked on a business process improvement initiative to eliminate the activities that hinder growth to ultimately improve the success rate of its mortgage business. As a benchmark for identification, the institution is keen on improving any business process that has less than a 75% success rate. The institution has appointed a business analyst (BA) to review the business transactions for the processes of origination, payments, and closures, as well as identify opportunities for improvements and recommend solutions.
The BA has collected the following information over the last three months pertaining to these business processes:
•All the business processes are at their maximum capacity in terms of the current number of transactions.
•Each business process has a certain number of rejects and the reasons for rejection include documentation, verification, collateral, and funding. Funding rejects occur when the bank's customers have failed to make payment of their mortgage processing fee or mortgage closure payment.
The BA has also recommended the use of documentation checklists as a solution to eliminate the documentation rejects.
Assuming the BA's recommendation to be true, what will be the new success rate of the mortgage closure process?
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.
A BA suggests interviewing employees to elicit user requirements and then performing a gap analysis to identify solution customization requirements. However, the sponsor believes that it will be a waste of time because the employees do not know how the process should work in the future. The sponsor expects the solution to help shape their process and wants to start with the solution as is, amending it as necessary based on the user feedback.
What should the BA do?
A popular department store chain wants to make computer upgrades as well as conduct a major remodeling effort to increase revenue to all their 100 stores over the next 2 years. The remodeling will occur in two phases. The two phases are required at each store and can be completed in any order, but each phase must be fully completed before the next phase can begin. Phase 1 will take approximately 32 weeks and will not require a store to be temporarily closed. Phase 2 will take approximately 20 weeks and will require a store to be temporarily closed.
In order to keep inventory level and total revenue for the department store chain at an operational level, 75% of the stores must remain open to the public at all times. Against the board of director's advice, the Chief
Executive Officer (CEO) made a decision to start and complete the top 25 revenue-producing stores in the first year to get those stores remodeled and fully operational.
A business analyst (BA) has been brought in to help with planning the project and gathering requirements. Based on the CEO's executive decision, which risk tolerance attitude is the CEO exhibiting?
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 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?
A business analyst (BA) is developing an approach for information management. The BA needs to identify and categorize which information is to be managed.
Which of the following techniques should the BA use to achieve this objective?
Most users of a pilot application have experienced more efficient processing compared to the old system. However, the business analyst (BA) has observed that a few people took much longer to complete the process. The system event log shows that those users encountered errors when they attempted to sign on.
Which of the following would the BA recommend to improve overall performance?
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'.
During a brainstorming session on improvement opportunities, the Director of Human Resources repeatedly interrupts the group and states why the proposed ideas will not work.
Which approach should the business analyst (BA) take to refocus the group?
A business analyst (BA) has just completed a number of elicitation activities and is preparing to review the stated requirements. As part of this, the BA is checking the compliance of the stated requirements with organizational standards for business analysis.
What state is the BA attempting to move the requirements into?
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.
The lead BA wants the BAs to report anticipated and actual completion dates for their deliverables, as well as the time spent on planned and unplanned activities. What is the lead BA trying to do by analyzing the results of such measurements?
A financial institution engaged in mortgage lending has embarked on a business process improvement initiative to eliminate the activities that hinder growth to ultimately improve the success rate of its mortgage business. As a benchmark for identification, the institution is keen on improving any business process that has less than a 75% success rate. The institution has appointed a business analyst (BA) to review the business transactions for the processes of origination, payments, and closures, as well as identify opportunities for improvements and recommend solutions.
The BA has collected the following information over the last three months pertaining to these business processes:
•All the business processes are at their maximum capacity in terms of the current number of transactions.
•Each business process has a certain number of rejects and the reasons for rejection include documentation, verification, collateral, and funding. Funding rejects occur when the bank's customers have failed to make payment of their mortgage processing fee or mortgage closure payment.
The BA has also recommended the use of documentation checklists as a solution to eliminate the documentation rejects.
Which of the following business processes can be identified for the process improvement initiative?
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 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?
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:
What did the BA create to ensure that everyone who needed to be included had been?
A health insurance provider undertakes enhancements to its mobile application platform and finalizes the following capabilities as part of the scope of the next release:
I.Ability to integrate online maps and global positioning system (GPS) technology with the mobile application in real time to display location of service providers in the subscriber's vicinity that participate in the subscriber's plan network.
II.Ability for the subscriber to lookup the service providers by specifying either a postal code or a search area radius in miles.
III.Ability for the subscriber to initiate the download of fee information for one or more service providers in a single request.
Through requirements workshops the business analyst elicits the following detailed business requirements:
1.The company's mobile application platform must support real time integration with the following third party systems:
A ) GPS System
B ) Postal Code Validation
2.The service providers available for selection must participate in the subscriber's medical plan network as of the current system date.
3.The map display shall highlight the boundary of the search area with a dotted yellow line.
4.The extent and shape of the search area shall be determined based on one of the following user choices:
A ) Postal code – Subscriber location acquired from GPS shall be used to determine and populate the related postal code as the default postal code with options for the user to change the postal code.
B ) Radius for the search area around the subscriber's location, that will have default value of 5 miles. The radius can be changed by the subscriber with a maximum range of 50 miles.
5.Subscriber shall be able to select one of the options above and supply corresponding input.
6.System shall validate the user input and display appropriate error messages if invalid.
7.Based on the inputs and the plan of the subscriber, the system shall retrieve information for the participating service providers that are located within the designated search area.
8.System shall display a map including visual markers to indicate locations of the service providers in the top half of the device screen and a list of the same service providers in the bottom half of the device screen.
9.The list of service providers shall include the Name, Phone Number and Street Address.
10.If the subscriber specified the radius or retained the default postal code for the search area, the list shall additionally include the approximate driving distance in miles from the subscriber's last registered location and the list shall be sorted in the ascending order of the driving distance.
11.The subscriber shall be able to select a service provider either from the list or from the map and download a document that contains the name, contact telephone, email address, fax number and the fee schedule for the covered services applicable to the subscriber's plan.
Which of the following characteristics is violated by requirement 5?
A software development company is in the process of creating a new product for their customer base. It has been several years since such a project has been initiated and the organization has created a new team to own and develop the product. The project team will be evaluated by the successful adoption of the product, which will be developed over the next 12 months.
The team's business analyst (BA) has analyzed the current state in partnership with the product owner and has been meeting with senior management to identify the goals that need to be attained. A broad view of the business has been analyzed in order to have an understanding of how the company is currently providing value to its customer base.
What has the BA evaluated to help determine value of the project?
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 popular department store chain wants to make computer upgrades as well as conduct a major remodeling effort to increase revenue to all their 100 stores over the next 2 years. The remodeling will occur in two phases. The two phases are required at each store and can be completed in any order, but each phase must be fully completed before the next phase can begin. Phase 1 will take approximately 32 weeks and will not require a store to be temporarily closed. Phase 2 will take approximately 20 weeks and will require a store to be temporarily closed.
In order to keep inventory level and total revenue for the department store chain at an operational level, 75% of the stores must remain open to the public at all times. Against the board of director's advice, the Chief
Executive Officer (CEO) made a decision to start and complete the top 25 revenue-producing stores in the first year to get those stores remodeled and fully operational.
A business analyst (BA) has been brought in to help with planning the project and gathering requirements. What tool will help the BA understand the changes needed to keep the majority of the stores open?
A financial institution engaged in mortgage lending has embarked on a business process improvement initiative to eliminate the activities that hinder growth to ultimately improve the success rate of its mortgage business. As a benchmark for identification, the institution is keen on improving any business process that has less than a 75% success rate. The institution has appointed a business analyst (BA) to review the business transactions for the processes of origination, payments, and closures, as well as identify opportunities for improvements and recommend solutions.
The BA has collected the following information over the last three months pertaining to these business processes:
•All the business processes are at their maximum capacity in terms of the current number of transactions.
•Each business process has a certain number of rejects and the reasons for rejection include documentation, verification, collateral, and funding. Funding rejects occur when the bank's customers have failed to make payment of their mortgage processing fee or mortgage closure payment.
The BA has also recommended the use of documentation checklists as a solution to eliminate the documentation rejects.
If the financial institution always works at full capacity month to month and the new success rate continues to remain the same after implementing the BA's recommendation, what is the average number of successes per month for the mortgage closure process, if the current process capability were increased by 50%?
During requirements review, the implementation subject matter expert (SME) identified the requirement 'parsing of data' that must be implemented before other requirements. The business analyst (BA) has given this requirement high priority.
What factor influenced the prioritization of the requirement?
A company finalized the implementation of a new, corporate-wide database. After nearly three months of operation, the solution is repeatedly producing invalid outputs. A business analyst (BA) has been asked to investigate the solution's problem. The BA has been able to find several instances where the outputs from the solution are below an acceptable level of quality.
Which of the following techniques should the BA use to identify the solution limitations?
A floral company wants to gather information about each of its 30 international facilities to determine whether employees are satisfied with their jobs.
Which of the following elicitation techniques should the business analyst (BA) use?
A business analyst (BA) has been assigned to manage the ongoing stakeholder collaboration after completing a project. The BA needs to understand the stakeholders' level of satisfaction and wants to offer stakeholders an opportunity to help improve the working relationships based on this information.
Which technique should the BA use?
A business analyst (BA) is running a workshop with a group of stakeholders to understand the requirements for a change that the company is planning to implement.
What important factor does the BA need to understand to ensure the workshop remains focused on the topic in question?
A very large insurer of General Liability and Property Damage insurance has an upward trend of increased claims over the past 5 years.
The Risk Control Area for that company has just completed a 12 month Pilot of a new improved Risk Control Site.
The purpose of the site is to help their customers manage their exposures and ideally prevent them from having claims There were 100 customers that were part of the Pilot that represented 25 different industries. The business goals were to increase use of the site and provide tools to help customer awareness of their exposures, so that they may reduce existing exposures and ultimately reduce claims.
The sites Features were as follows:
* Improvements to the search engine to all customers to search for articles, tools and services on the site
* A checklist function that allow customer to create their own unique Checklists or utilize a sample provided by ABC company to use daily, weekly etc for an area of their facility.
* A promotion feature - where Risk preventing Articles, and tools on the site are marketed toward a customer.
* A profile section allowing for Customer Name, Address and contact Phone number.
Alter the 12 month pilot the business sponsor received an assessment of what was working and what was not. The Assessment of the pilot revealed overall site activity had significantly increased, however only 5% of the time the promotions were viewed. And the most shocking was that total claims increased by nearly 20% for these 100 customers during the pilot period. The business sponsor was perplexed as he had an expectation of reduced claims and at least for 30% viewing of promotions since the project team had spent a lot of careful time and effort on this feature. A BA was assigned to do further analysis regarding the low use of the promotions and why claims were not being reduced.
Regarding the use of promotions the BA looked into other similar companies to see what they did differently to get their customer to look at their promotions. The BA found that similar companies had promotions that targeted the industry the customer was in so it was more relevant to them and they were more interested to view the promotion. In addition the BA sent out a survey to all 100 pilot customers asking probing questions about what they thought of the site and if they felt it had decreased their exposure to risk sufficiently. The Survey responses came back with raving positive comments and providing examples of how the site had been helping in the reduction of claims from the customer's perspective. In addition the survey also revealed insight that the customers found the promotion often irrelevant to their industry.
The BA asked for a dump of all documentation of the 1000 claims that were filed over the 12 month pilot period. The BA found the nearly 90% of the claim filed were all in one region of the country and were all for property damage related to several severe winter storms in the region and the claims were nearly all unavoidable by the customers. The BA brought all this analysis back to the business sponsor and made the recommendation to the business sponsor to require the customer to select 1 of 25 industries in their profile. This would in turn allow for the ability to show industry specific promotions and promote search results relative to a customer's industry to be sorted at the top giving the customer a more personalized experience.
What technique led the BA to the source of the increase in claims?
A solution implemented three months ago has decreased performance as the volume of transactions has increased. A business analyst (BA) is tasked with analyzing the performance of the application and providing recommendations.
What actions does the BA need to take?
The BA is analyzing the requirements that are represented in the Class Diagram. In addition to the diagram, the BA would like to include a separate document that has the information about the data elements to ensure a common understanding of the classes' attributes. What technique is used to define the data elements?
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?
TESTED 23 Nov 2024