Knowledge Audits Business Analysis

Question: Discuss about the Knowledge Audits for Business Analysis. Answer: Introduction: The competencies of the business analyst (MA) are prescribed IIBAs Business Analysis Body of Knowledge also known as (BABOK). Business analysts are individuals in any organization who performs the analysis of business operations within that entity. Business analysis is a set of duties and techniques used in operations of a business entity among various stakeholders. Analyst in a given business can be any individual in the business regardless of the roles they play in the entity or the title they have. These individuals are required to be competent in order to perfectly perform their duties. The core competencies that a business analyst should are as follows: Compliance to Business Analysis Practices The IIBAs Business Analysis Body of Knowledge (BABOK) requires any business analyst to comply with the thirty two processes or tasks. Business analysis practices enable the analysts to have focus on their roles and go through the required process in order to analyze any business project. Therefore, for any business analyst to be competent in their work and produce steady and reliable results, he should always have in mind all the BABOK tasks and techniques. Object-Oriented Analysis There are 34 task and practices created by the IIBAs Business Analysis Body of Knowledge (BABOK) which should be adopted by any business analyst to produce object oriented analysis. In the current world most of the software developed are object oriented, the Unified Modeling language (UML) should be applied by the business analysts for production of reliable results. Quality Control It is among the obligations of any business analyst to provide various stakeholders with valid solutions. They should therefore, verify and validate all the requirements during business analysis. A business analyst should be well equipped with knowledge and skills to review and perform system test to validate the result of analysis (Sukiam, Rahman and Abidin 2008). Documentation Documentation is another critical area that any business analyst should be competent in during business analysis.to avoid production of poor quality resulting from imperfect documentation, business analyst should create clear and valid documentation. Business Process Management In order for a business analyst to provide best and valid results he should clearly understand various concepts of Business Process Management (BPM). Having a proper knowledge enable the analyst to analyze business process. Usability Engineering Business are required to have proper knowledge on the usability engineering lifecycle especially during user centered design analysis and usability test. Communication Skills It is mandatory that an analyst become a decent communicator. This implies that the analyst can expedite effective meetings, undertake effective interrogations, listen effectively to responses as well as absorb whatever is being said. An analysts must also be a strong communicator in a virtual. Problem Solving All problems have problems. The whole of the project is always aimed at finding a solution to a given problem. An analyst enables a common sympathetic of a problematic issue, potential solutions as well as determine the project scope. The business analyst must also facilitate teams to solve technical problem during negotiation between various business and technical stakeholders. Critical Thinking Skills A business analyst is responsible for the evaluation of multiple alternatives before assisting a team to settle on a given solution. A business analyst has to listen to stakeholders needs while discovering the underlying problem by critically considering the needs and task. The business analyst will do this by probing questions until the real needs surfaces and understood. This is what constitutes critical thinking and evaluations skills essential for new business analyst. Visual Modeling Skills The analyst must have the aptitude to establish models (visual) including workflow diagram and wireframe prototypes. It is essential for the analyst to cover visual information irrespective of being in napkin drawing or formalized model. Facilitation and Elicitation Skills A business analyst must undertake elicitation sessions to facilitate the interviews and observations. Relationship building skills The business analyst must have the ability to forge relationships or stakeholders relationships. This skills is critical in trust building and imply getting into the role of leadership in a given team of the project thereby bridging the disparities. The model The SWOT analysis model can be used in the formulation and analyzing the external and internal environment. It will help recognize where the creation of knowledge is taken place, place knowledge exists previously and the point it is required to back given choices as well as activities. As shown in the figure below, the SWOT analysis will help identify the strength, weaknesses, opportunities and threats involving project (Wu and Li 2008). It will be appropriate to capture both external and internal factors and outputs from the analysis SWOT analysis will also in the transit from the needs analysis to knowledge audit in the process of developing a knowledge management strategy as shown in the diagram below. Link between Knowledge Audit Plan and Organizational Strategy A strategy of an organization is general summation of all the activities that it is planning to act upon. These action forms up the business and planning. Strategy planning involve all the sections of the business organization. Organizational strategy is drawn from the knowledge audit plan. The diagram below illustrates the relationship between organizational strategy and knowledge audit plan. Organizations and internal audit activities most of the time involve around organizational strategies. The knowledge of audit plan involve several audit risks which drawn from the organizational strategy. The performance of the process of strategy audits involve the exploitation of a more extensive strategy. The organizational strategy is therefore the most convenient extensive strategy which is also part of audit plan (Perez-Soltero et al. 2007). References Perez-Soltero, A., Barcelo-Valenzuela, M., Sanchez-Schmitz, G., Martin-Rubio, F., Palma-Mendez, J.T. and Vanti, A.A., 2007. A model and methodology to knowledge auditing considering core processes. ICFAI Journal of Knowledge Management, 5(1), pp.7-23. Sukiam, A.S., Rahman, A.A. and Abidin, W.Z., 2008. Knowledge Audit on Special Children Communities. In Pacific Rim Knowledge Acquisition Workshop (pp. 198-207). Springer Berlin Heidelberg. Wu, Y.L. and Li, Y.H., 2008. Research on the model of knowledge audit. In 2008 4th International Conference on Wireless Communications, Networking and Mobile Computing (pp. 1-4). IEEE.