The analysis phase begins by describing the present situation.
You may interview the business representatives and find out the
organization’s
- customers
- external partners
- competitors
- information
- processes
- information security architecture, policy and rules
- risks of the present situation (the risk-analysis)
- business strengts, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (the
SWOT-analysis)
- problems and their possible solutions (the problem-solution
-analysis).
Based on the information thus received, it is possible to
describe the business requirements which can be derived from the
current, problematic situation. If everything is fine in the
present situation and there are no problems, the organization has
no need to change its processes and there is no need for any
development project.
The business requirements lead to the picture of the goal
situation which will be described next. This includes the
following:
- the definition of the goal situation
- the concrete measures with which is it possible to prove that
the goal has been achieved.
In addition you may describe the possible changes as for
- customers
- external partners
- competitors
- information
- processes
- information security architecture, policy and rules
- risks.
Picture 1. An Internet service project
If the picture of the goal situation does not cause any changes
to the present situation or procedures, one may ask why to invest
anything in the project. Usually, the business information does not
change when a new system is introduced. However, the new system may
have new information concerning to the user interface or other
technical features, but, they are not modelled in the analysis
phase but only in the design phase.
In the analysis phase, one may interview business experts, get
familiar with different descriptions, brochures, memos, statistics
and business features, the organization’s competition situation,
customers and external partners. The
electronic commerce maturity model can be used to describe the
organization’s Internet activities in regard to its customers’
Internet activities. This gives an idea whether the organization
should develop or increase the effectiveness of its electronic
commerce or services to keep its customers or to get new ones.
To find out the business processes one may use the top-down- or
bottom-up -method. The first one means that, first one sketches out
rough overview picture of the processes and then one specifies it
to the needed level. The second one means that, first, one
considers the tasks and then compiles them to greater, hierarchial
unities.
Present methodologies make it possible to describe the business
information and processes at the same time. It should be concerned
the information each process needs and produces is listed and
described. And, vice versa, that each piece of information (object
class, entity) is produced and used by a processes. The
organization does not need any unuseful information.
As we mentioned before, the analysis should be delimited to that
part of the organization which will be developed. However, one
should – at some level – take into concideration also the processes
which may need the information these processes produce. For
example, the leadership decision making, marketing development,
product development or the organization’s accounts which are all
based on operative statistics.
The analysis report offers the reasons to the development of the
Internet service and an accurate description of it. It describes the
information the Internet service should handle and what kind of
functionality it should have from the organization’s and from its
customers’ point of view.
The decision to develop the Internet service is based on the
analysis report. It offers the facts to evaluate whether the
Internet service will solve the present problems and answer to the
business requirements. If the answer for both questions is
positive, the organization should invest in the continuation of the
project. On the other hand, if the answer is negative, the
organization’s resources are released to some other tasks.
It is important that the analysis does not go too deep in
technical solutions but stays at the business level. Then the
analysis report is re-usable along with the changing technology.
Based on the same analysis report, one may implement the Internet
service to the present and to the next generation environments.
The desing and implementation of the Internet service may be
outsourced to some expert or an online shop service provider. It is
of great importance that the company participates in the developing
process of the Internet service. This ensures that the new Internet
service will answer to the enterprise’s business requirements.
Analysis report outline
Analysis report
example