BCS Practitioner Certificate in Business Analysis Practice - Key Concepts and Practice Questions

Flashcards covering core principles, frameworks, investigation techniques, and stakeholder analysis from the BCS Practitioner Certificate in Business Analysis Practice.

Organisation (POPIT Model)

The element of the POPIT model concerned with organizational policies, structures, and job roles, including overlaps in responsibilities or inconsistencies in policy.

Threat of New Entrants (Porter's Five Forces)

The competitive force that evaluates the ease or difficulty for new competitors to enter an industry; high initial capital requirements act as a barrier to entry.

Constant Active Management

A stakeholder management approach applied to key players with high power and high interest, ensuring they are kept informed at all project stages so no recommendations come as a shock.

Enabling Activities (BAM)

Activities on a business activity model that lead into doing activities by acquiring or replenishing the necessary resources, such as recruiting staff or setting up a website.

Business Case

A document providing information to the business sponsor and key decision-makers to support decision-making, specifically the Go/No Go decision.

Worldview (CATWOE)

The core element of CATWOE that reflects a stakeholder's outlook, beliefs, and underlying rationale for what makes an organization successful and why a system exists.

Description of the Current Situation

The business case section where problems, limitations, and high operating costs of existing systems are documented.

Consensus Business Activity Model (Consensus BAM)

A model negotiated between stakeholders and business analysts combining individual perspectives into an agreed way forward to secure stakeholder buy-in.

Organisation Chart

A research artifact that illustrates the shape of an organization, reporting hierarchy, structure, and managerial span of control.

Procedure Manuals

Organizational documents that provide detailed operational steps showing the exact way each actual business process operates.

Low Power / High Interest Stakeholder

A stakeholder classification applied to individuals whose day-to-day responsibilities are heavily affected by operational changes but lack decision-making power; they must be kept informed.

Risk Transference

A risk management strategy wherein the financial or operational liability of a risk is transferred to an external party, such as a supplier covering project failure costs.

Internal Business Event

A type of business event initiated by an internal management decision, operational choice, or action taken within the system itself.

Ideate Stage

The solution design phase where divergent thinking is applied to explore customer needs and generate multiple possible solutions.

Realisation Stage

The stage of the business change lifecycle where the business benefits documented in the original business case are evaluated to confirm if they have been achieved.

Define Stage (Double Diamond Model)

The phase of the Double Diamond framework that employs convergent thinking to achieve stakeholder consensus and define the specific problem or opportunity to be solved.

Customer Journey Map

A technique used to map and analyze a business process from a specific customer or persona viewpoint, identifying pain points and areas for service improvement.

Internal Business Process Perspective (Balanced Scorecard)

The balanced scorecard quadrant measuring how effectively and efficiently internal operations run, tracked by KPIs such as process cycle times and right-first-time percentages.

Vision (VMOST)

The forward-looking component of the VMOST framework defining an organization's ultimate long-term aspiration (e.g., to become the leading online provider).

Objectives (VMOST)

Specific, quantitative targets in VMOST designed to assess the achievement of organizational goals (e.g., growing profit margins by $10\%$ year on year over $3$ years).

Scenario Analysis

An elicitation technique that systematically explores various alternative paths, variants, and exception paths in a business process.

Observation

An investigation technique used to study how tasks and workflows are executed in real time by directly watching staff members perform their work.

Document Analysis

An elicitation technique that inspects organizational artifacts, completed forms, reports, and system documents to evaluate information structures and data details.

Individual Business Activity Model

A conceptual model formulated for an individual stakeholder to outline the necessary activities needed to satisfy that specific stakeholder's worldview and perspective before negotiating consensus.