What is Strategic Business Analysis?

Strategic business analysis involves outcome focused
thinking, simultaneously understanding business
context, business challenges, and the complexities of
the internal and external environment to frame the
scope of the transformation, articulate the business
need/outcome, and shape the agenda for
transformation. Strategic business analysis requires a
focus on all aspects of the organization. It leverages
business analysis, change leadership, and program
and project management. Strategic business analysis
focuses on ‘what and why’, not the ‘how’ of solution
implementation.

Strategic business analysts identify business needs
and solutions within the context of the overall direction
of a company. They develop and implement
critical business solutions
through
information
gathering, synthesis, review, and testing

Strategic Business Analysis (aka Enterprise Analysis)
encompasses all of the pre-project work to identify
business problems, define business opportunities,
develop a business case, and recommend whether to
initiate a project. This level of business analysis is
relatively methodology independent because it has
nothing to do with software development per se. The
only impact is the form in which the outcome is
expressed. If a traditional methodology is in place,
Strategic Business Analysis delivers business strategies,
goals, and objectives and develops Project Scope
and Business Requirements. For an Agile SDM,
Strategic Business Analysis defines the high-level of the
project in terms of Themes and Business Epics, which
are less formal and postpone details until the
developers need them. In either case, those
performing this level of business analysis need a broad
set of tools and techniques to ensure that the resulting
projects support the organization’s business goals and
objectives.
What is strategic business analysis?
An approach to business analysis with the following
characteristics:

Focused on value, business vision and strategic
objectives.

Interventions prioritized according to risk:
Strategically critical areas come first

Encourages a balanced portfolio: Capability
expansion + Capability perfection

Supports business agility

Realized by a Business Analysis Centre of
Excellence