Objectives
This chapter creates a roadmap to prepare you for the business analysis process. Although it does not specifically cover any Microsoft exam objectives, it serves as an important step in setting the stage for the analysis and the objectives to come.
Outline
Business Analysis Planning Framework
What to Gain from the Analysis
Business Analysis Deliverables
Study Strategies
Be able to categorize the company relative to the industry in which it competes, as well as how it and its internal IT organization interoperate. Interoperability between business and IT is increasingly becoming a factor in today's business.
Understand the difference between a strategy and a tactic. You will need to create a strategy and understand how to execute it during the business analysis.
Know and understand the key Active Directory-related Windows 2000 feature sets. Understand not just what they are, but also how they can benefit the business.
Know how to extract the right information at the right time. Understand that the way a company gathers, manages, and uses information could be the difference between success and failure.
Stay on the business side of things during the business analysis. Don't talk technically; executives tune that out and you will have a very difficult time getting them back.
Understand key areas of business to discuss during the business analysis. Remember that technical information is not what you need; you need to understand the business's vision, including its goals and business problem statements.
Now that you've had exposure to the key technology benefits of Windows 2000 and Active Directory, you're ready to begin the business analysis process.
Like any process, the business analysis requires that you have a strategy. This chapter helps you define your deliverables, and from those deliverables, derive a strategy that will help you extract the information representative of those deliverables.
This chapter helps you categorize the company at a general level and with regard to its IT organization, and explains why that's important. It also presents a subset of the Windows 2000 feature set and explains the benefit of each feature as it pertains to the business.
Finally, you are presented with a list of key pieces of information you need to take from this analysis and a brief description of what to expect from each piece. This list represents the basis of the next chapter and the meat of the exam objectives in Part II, "Analyzing Business Requirements."
If someone asked you to go down to Joe's desk and fix his network connection, chances are you'd go and fix it without a single thought about planning the fix. That's good. Something as simple as Joe's problem should be handled fairly easily by anyone reading this book. If someone asked you to go to BigCo International, a 5,000-person company, and implement a Windows 2000 solution, you'd probably not view it the same as Joe's situation. That's good, too! You've made the distinction between a purely tactical solution, and a solution that requires a strategy.
It's important to make the distinction between a tactical solution and a strategic solution. A strategy, as defined by dictionary.com, is an elaborate and systematic plan of action, and a plan is a scheme, program, or method worked out beforehand for the accomplishment of an objective. A tactic is an expedient for achieving a goal. So, a strategic solution can be understood as an elaborate and systematic scheme, program, or method worked out beforehand for the accomplishment of an objective, and a tactical solution is a goal-driven solution to a single problem.
With a complex solution like Active Directory design as your overall objective, the importance of a well-thought-out strategy should be apparent. A well-prepared strategy will utilize tactics as the techniques to carry out the strategy. In a meeting, strategy relates to your planned meeting agenda, and tactics refer to the techniques you use to conduct the meeting.
Now that we've defined what a strategy is, how do we create one? If you've ever created a project implementation plan, you've created a strategy. Think of it as a roadmap to get from point A to point B taking into consideration obstacles along the way. In the case of the business analysis, our approach is going to be at a bit higher level. We want to create a strategy with the goal of extracting the information we need about the business, so we can design a solution to the problem.
Think of your strategy as a strategy to better understand your client's strategy for taking its business to the next level. The following list defines the areas of business from which you must extract information:
Business vision
Business goals and problems
Organization of the company
Geographical scope and company model
Company processes
Influences that affect company strategy
We explain each of these areas of business later in this chapter. To form your strategy, it is recommended that you create a checklist and add to it as you traverse this chapter. Leave a short amount of space at the top, and then start with a section labeled "Extract this information" and list the six preceding bulleted items. We drill down into them slightly more in this chapter and go in depth in the following chapter, so leave space between each bullet.
Before we cover those areas in more detail, you should jump over to the Windows 2000 Active Directory feature set and make sure you understand the pertinent Active Directory features and benefits. Having this knowledge before you begin the business analysis will help you begin to visualize solution scenarios. The following section provides you with this abbreviated feature set.
To list the entire Windows 2000 feature set is out of the scope of this book, so we list the features that specifically pertain to Active Directory. Again, understanding the business benefits these features provide will help you provide your client with the best solution for his or her problem. This is the second step of your strategy. You may want to write on your checklist the task "Review Active Directory feature set." Table 2.1 lists the feature set.
Note
Digital Nervous System . Don't confuse the acronym for Domain Name System (DNS) with the Digital Nervous System. The digital nervous system is more commonly referred to as Digital DNA.
Table 2.1. Windows 2000 Active Directory Feature Set
These few features don't cover all the Active Directory features by a long shot, but you should be able to use the information in the Table 2.1 to your advantage when you are visualizing the solution set for a client. If you want a complete listing of the Windows 2000 feature sets, look up the article "Windows 2000 Server Feature Tables" in Microsoft TechNet.
Another thing you'll want to consider doing as you develop your strategy is categorizing the company. By categorizing the company relative to the industry, as well as IT (we explain shortly), you can better understand the line of business the company is in. If, for instance, you are consulting for an automotive company, you don't want to go in and ask a question such as, "What kind of software do you write?" It just wouldn't make sense, and you'd end up losing credibility. The following two sections explain what we mean by categorizing the company. Update your checklist by adding this information in the space you left at the top.
If you don't already know it from past experiences with the company, you should do a bit of research on the company. Specifically, you should know the market in which the company competes, such as automotive, consumer electronics, manufacturing, distribution, and so on. You should also ask for or locate a mission statement. Additionally, it would be beneficial to know who the company's competitors are and research them as well. The Internet is a superb resource for this kind of research. With an understanding of the company's market space, competition, and mission, you can tailor your strategy to align with its business.
When you categorized the company relative to the industry, you probably didn't have much trouble figuring out which market segment they competed in and who their competition was. What about categorizing the company relative to IT?
Different companies treat IT in different ways. Some let business drive fundamental improvements in IT, others let new information technology drive business goals, and still others treat IT as if it were simply a cost center—another drain on company profits. It's important to get an overall picture of how the company as a whole and the IT organization as a whole work together (or don't) toward common goals. You may choose to use the terminology IT-centric or business-centric for those companies that, respectively, let IT drive the business or allow business decisions to force IT to take reactionary action.
You now have a fundamental understanding of the key elements that make up the business analysis. Now let's take a look at the key areas from which you need to extract information in order to come up with a solution.
There are many avenues you can take to get this information, but it is recommended you plan a meeting or series of meetings. You will need representation in these meetings from key company executives that influence /and/or decide the strategic direction of the company. You also will need representation from the IT organization, such as the CIO or Director of IT.
The six following sections describe how to extract the information. Chapter 3, "Analyzing the Results of the Business Assessment," will address how to take this information and perform an analysis on it.
A business vision is essential to the success of the company. Every company has a vision, whether stated or not—otherwise the company wouldn't exist. A vision states where the company will be X years down the road. Your job is to extract that vision from the powers that be. You should use an interview process, a strategic series of questions that gets the right information at the right time. Remember your categorization of the company? This is where the payoff is: in the formulation of your questions.
Here are some sample questions. Parentheses are used to denote the premise of the question. Your questions may be similar or totally different than these, depending on your situation.
What is your business vision? (general, icebreaker)
Where do you see your company in three, five, and 10 years? (general).
Do you see your competition moving in the same direction? (competition-focused)
Do you see your core business processes growing faster than, slower than, or side-by-side with technology? (question to help determine IT-centric versus business-centric)
How does your organization plan to manage its intellectual data? (information management)
Are you anticipating and preparing for networking capabilities that allow resources from around the world to collaborate in real time? (awareness of emerging technology)
Are you prepared to transport voice, data, and streaming video over your WAN? (checking awareness of emerging technology)
As you ask these questions, refer to the initially stated vision and see what doesn't match up. These and similar questions will provide you with a clear picture of not only the company's vision, but how it plans to leverage new technology to realize its vision.
Although the company's vision is certainly important, you must remember that you are performing an analysis of the business in preparation for the Active Directory design process. The vision will give you a picture of the end of the tunnel. Defining the business goals will light the tunnel, and correctly addressing relative business problems in the organization will ensure that the light is not a train!
Business goals and problems can best be described as desired end results and areas the company has identified as needs for strategic or planned improvement, respectively. Microsoft's famed slogan "Where do you want to go today?" is a great way to kick off a meeting to define these goals and business problems because it asks a very simple, yet thought-provoking question: "In what direction do you want to take your company?" Your job in this phase is to help the company define its goals and objectives for doing this project, and analyze business problems the company is or has been facing. This is where you get the "why" of the project.
Again, the questions in the following list are not all-inclusive, but are a representative subset of the type of questions you'll want to ask in determining the goals and business problems. Remember, this interview will have an IT twist since you are now talking about the project.
Again, the questions in the following list are not all-inclusive, but are a representative subset of the type of questions you'll want to ask in determining the goals and business problems. Remember, this interview will have an IT twist since you are now talking about the project.
Can you list your goals and objectives relative to this project? (If they have them, use them!)
Where is your business today with regard to directory services and IT in general?
Where should your business be when the project is completed?
What are some of the challenges you are facing now and how do you plan to alleviate them?
What are your expectations of Windows 2000 and specifically Active Directory?
Do you have immediate or future wishes to connect disparate directory services?
Make sure you take copious notes during this interview, as you should prepare a detailed "business goals and stated business problems deliverable" document so you and the company have agreement on these points. It's a good idea to have this document signed by both parties.
This section and the next section, "Geographical Scope of the Company," feed off one another in an iterative fashion. In the organizational analysis of the company, you need to discuss things like the company management model; the vendor, partner, and customer relationships; and merger and acquisition plans. The tie-in with the next section occurs really in the analysis of the management model because often you see the management hierarchy built around the geographic layout of the company.
The interview process for the organizational structure analysis should happen as explained in the following sections.
Do you allow vendors to access your network? Do you access theirs? For what purposes?
What are your future vendor relationship plans?
Do you currently use—or have future plans to use—electronic commerce to do business with vendors?
Do you see the number of partner relationships growing in the future? How?
Do you currently use—or have future plans to use—electronic commerce to do business with partners?
Do you allow partner access to your network? Will you in the future?
Do you have a customer service department? If so, how do they currently service customers?
Do you plan to leverage new technology to improve your customers' service experience? If so, what technology will you use? When?
How does your Web site currently fit into the vendor, partner, and customer relationships category? How will it in three years? Why?
Does your company have plans to acquire another company or companies in the next three to five years? How about merging with another company?
Do you have a plan to blend a newly acquired company into your network? Is it a phased plan?
Do you have a plan to allow for network-based communication to flow between your company and a company you've merged with?
Determining the amount of free access to your network you'll give to an outsider—such as a vendor or customer—has a significant impact on the design of Active Directory, especially in the design of the security model. The previous information will be used in several other areas of Active Directory design as well, which will be discussed in Chapter 3.
Determining the geographical scope of the company is not difficult. Determining how the company operates functionally within that scope is. You'll need to ask questions that extract information about both the current and future geographical positioning of the company and how it plans to operate within or between those bounds.
Functional company models relate to how they manage resources, distribute product, and so on, and have a direct influence on how they design their network infrastructure. Typical company models and generalized descriptions are as follows:
Regional. . Management of the company is divided into large multi-state sections, usually with multiple locations. One location is designated to be the regional headquarters. Company has national presence.
National. . Management of the company is centrally located at a corporate campus. Company has national presence.
International. . Management of the company is centrally located in each division. Divisions are typically per continent.
Subsidiary. . Company operates as several entities or business units, usually with different names, all reporting to a parent "umbrella company." Each entity has its own management hierarchy and all entities share a common board of directors.
Branch Office. . Company operates as a separately managed division at every branch location. Branch managers typically report to corporate executives at the central corporate office.
The preceding descriptions are not textbook by any means and should not be taken as such. They should give an accurate enough description of the differing company models as they relate to geographical scope for you to place the company you are working with. You should ask questions regarding the geographical scope and company model as follows:
Categorize your company in terms of geographical scope. (You can list the previous company models to help elicit a response.)
Discuss company operations relative to the previous answer. Ask questions such as the following: Are there separate business units within the company or at each location? Do you have different management methodologies in different offices? Are different networks in place at different locations or are you standardized?
How do your different locations affect communication?
Are time zones a problem when communicating? (For example, how do you handle communications between the U.S. and Singapore?)
Do you have offices that speak different languages? How do you address that issue?
How do your different locations affect the flow of information?
What are the differences between your various international offices in terms of policies and procedures?
The preceding questions give you the information you need to determine how to structure the Active Directory domain and organizational unit structure. You will analyze this information in Chapter 3 and discuss the Active Directory design in Chapter 11, "Designing the Active Directory Structure."
Company processes define how the company operates internally as well as externally. They define how it gathers disparate data and turns it into useful information, manages that information, and communicates that information. Bill Gates says in his book Business @ the Speed of Thought that "how you gather, manage, and use information will determine whether you win or lose." He goes on to talk about the digital nervous system and how the concept of knowledge management is the key to the success of a company. We'll incorporate the digital nervous system into the analysis of key company processes in Chapter 3. We'll focus on the following four company process classes: information flow, communication flow, service and product life cycles, and decision-making.
Service and product life cycles refer to the preparation, deployment, maintenance, and removal of a product in a production environment. Figure 2.1 illustrates these four areas and associates activity with each.
The service and product life cycle refers to the process of preparing, deploying, maintaining, and removing software and product from computing environments.
With emerging technologies and fierce competition in the industry, product life cycles are decreasing quickly, which is driving up service costs in the removal and re-deployment areas. Services define the tools users use to do their jobs. They can be anything from hardware and software to human resources and they sit at the core of the service and product life cycle. We'll ask the appropriate questions to try to extract the information we need to help reduce cost in these areas.
Decision-making is a broad topic, and we'll channel it to the context of process in this section. You'll see it reappear throughout the business and technical analyses in different contexts. For this section, we'll ask questions that pertain to identifying key decision-makers that influence the flow of information and communication within the organization.
Do you have an information repository now? Do you have plans to implement one in the future?
How do you communicate information across the company?
Do you receive feedback on information? Do you do anything with that feedback? Why or why not?
Can you put together virtual teams of people from different geographical locations? Can you give them a common virtual office?
Do you utilize a company intranet?
Do you utilize a workflow application to control the flow of information throughout the company?
Who are the key decision-makers in the area of information and communications processes?
Are there multiple levels of decision-making that need to occur in order to gain final approval?
Is there typically a waiting period when a decision is pending? Is there a cost in lost productivity associated with the waiting time?
What are the key influences that drive decisions? External influences? Competition?
As with other sections, these questions are not all-inclusive, but are designed to get the information you need for this assessment. The final section, "Company Strategy Influences," somewhat overlaps the earlier section "Key Company Processes," as you will see.
As alluded to in the previous section, there are several key influences that may affect the company's strategic direction. These influences can come from several places: the explosion of the Internet, competition, cost, and just about any other competitive business-related factor you can think of. In this section, we focus on the following key company influences: company priorities, projected growth and growth strategy, laws and regulations, tolerance for risk, and total cost of ownership.
We will remain consistent with the rest of the chapter by presenting sample questions in preparation for analyzing the results in the next chapter.
List the top five company priorities in order of precedence.
What could influence the company to shift priority away from one or more of these five?
Can you identify where a majority of factors originate that influence the strategic company direction to the point that you would consider shifting priorities?
We'll get into TCO and ROI studies in the next few chapters. For now, it is important to associate them with risk and the potential to affect the strategic influence of the company.
The result of any assessment or analysis should be a deliverable or set of deliverables. This section discusses some common deliverable documents you'll find are needed at the close of the business analysis. Keep in mind that not all analyses will require all of these deliverable documents, and others may require additional special purpose deliverables.
It is also important to take a step back here to understand where you are in the Active Directory design process. You might be thinking you're ready to build a vision/scope document, or even begin work on the implementation plan. Not yet. At this point, you're not ready to build any formal documents. The deliverables described briefly in the following sections will help you get to that point, but they focus on communicating back to the customer how you understand their business to be. You will re-visit a number of these documents further on in the project process (and this book), and they will help form the basis of a vision/scope document and project implementation plan.
Whether you conduct interviews, hold facilitated open discussion meetings, or have individual one-on-one conversations to determine the business goals and define business problems, the end result should be re-statement of these goals and problems, as you understand them. This business goals and problems document is of utmost importance because you are going to tell the company how you interpreted this information. This should facilitate additional communication to fine-tune the business goals and further discuss current business problems.
The Gap Analysis facilitates the comparison of the existing business with where it envisions itself sometime in the future. It specifically looks at current state compared with future state on a single objective level and analyzes the gap in between. From this analysis, a determination of how to get there can be drawn.
There are two parts to the Gap Analysis: one that analyzes gaps in the current versus desired state of the business, and another that analyzes gaps in the current versus desired state of the technical environment.
Because projects rarely, if ever, are completed without some sort of problem or unexpected blip in the process, you must perform a risk assessment and present a risk management plan as a deliverable. The best solution to a potential risk is to have it identified before it happens, and have a plan in place to deal with it. This is called mitigating risk. You should have some data now on how the company views risk—specifically, what its tolerance of risk is.
You need to spend a bit of time preparing a strategy for conducting your business analysis. A strategy is an elaborate and systematic scheme, program, or method worked out beforehand for the accomplishment of an objective. Your objective for conducting the business analysis is to extract the information you need to determine what the strategic direction of the business is in the following areas:
Business vision
Business goals and problems
Organization of the company
Geographical scope and company model
Company processes
Influences that affect company strategy
You must have good working knowledge of the Windows 2000 feature set relative to Active Directory before you conduct the analysis. This will allow you to begin visualizing potential solutions and will help drive communications.
You should categorize the company relative to the industry, such as automotive, manufacturing, distribution, and so on, and also relative to its IT organization. For example, if you categorize a company as a manufacturing company, you can formulate your questions relative to that industry. The way a business views its IT organization is becoming increasingly important. With the explosive use of the Internet as a business medium, the IT department is playing more of a strategic role in the business. Categorize the company as IT-centric if IT drives fundamental business changes, business-centric if business drives fundamental IT changes, or hybrid if the business views IT as a strategic business partner, like other departments. Understanding this during the analysis will allow you to recommend or suggest fundamental changes to the strategic direction of the company.
Potential deliverables of the business analysis include a goals and problems document, Gap Analysis, and risk management plan.
Exercise 2.1 gets you familiar with strategy. Its purpose is to step you through the process of creating a strategy to prepare for the business analysis.
You have been given the task of designing the Windows 2000 Active Directory for Migration Masters, Inc. This project is a major part of the overall Windows 2000 migration from NT 4.0. Your first goal is to prepare a strategy for extracting Migration Masters' business reasons for the migration. You should be able to gather all of the information with the exception of the internal IT relationship from outside the Migration Masters doors.
The following steps will prompt you with questions you should use in preparation for the business analysis process. It may help if you relate these questions to a company you are familiar with.
Estimated Time: 10 minutes
Who is Migration Masters?
In what industry does Migration Masters compete?
What product or service does Migration Masters offer its clients?
Who are Migration Masters's chief competitors and what do they do on the outside that's fundamentally different than Migration Masters?
Does Migration Masters have an internal IT staff?
How does Migration Masters view its internal IT staff? As a cost center? As a driver of change? As a strategic business unit?
What is Migration Masters's mission statement?
Where does Migration Masters operate geographically?
Maintenance. Change management occurs during the production life of a product. Change must be anticipated and managed effectively in order to deliver a high quality service. See "Key Company Processes." | |
A strategy, which is a sophisticated plan. Getting prepared for a meeting is a form of a strategy. See "Business Analysis Planning Framework." | |
The Internet. The explosive growth of e-commerce is causing many companies to fundamentally change they way they conduct business. See "Company Categorization." | |
IT-centric. Companies that center around the IT organization are considered IT-centric. IT-centric companies base strategic business direction on only the IT organization. See "Relative to IT." | |
Business-centric. Business-centric companies typically do not include the IT organization in key business decisions; rather, they often treat IT as a liability. See "Relative to the Industry." | |
Defines how a company operates internally. Company processes at a high level define how companies operate internally. Some company processes include communication flow and information flow. See "Key Company Processes." | |
Business problems are areas the company has identified as needs for strategic or planned improvement. See "Business Goals and Problems." | |
A set of deliverables. A completed business analysis results potentially in several documents, called deliverables, that provide feedback, assessments, and other information relative to the analysis. See "Business Goals and Problems." |
B. Preparation, Deployment, Maintenance and Removal define the service and product life cycle. If you are going to be responsible for managing a software product or products throughout the life cycle, you need to become familiar with what each phase of the service and product life cycle involves. See "Service and Product Life Cycle." | |
B. A strategic solution is an elaborate or systematic scheme, worked out beforehand for the accomplishment of an objective. A tactical solution is a goal driven solution to a specific problem. A strategy might be preparing the dialog of a presentation, and a tactic might be the technique you use to communicate that strategy during the presentation. See "Business Analysis and Planning Framework." | |
D. Information flow, communication flow, service and product life cycles, and decision-making are all examples of key company processes. Company processes relate to how a company operates internally and, in particular, how they manage intellectual capital, information. Communication is a part of information flow, the operational structure refers to the company model and geographical scope, and goals and problems represent why a company is seeking a solution to a problem. See "Key Company Processes." | |
A,D. There are many questions you might ask that arguably could pertain to information flow. Options A and D both discuss topics that directly relate to information and how it is managed or disseminated. Workflow applications typically integrate with intranets and messaging platforms to control the flow of information. Options B and C could pertain to information, but are targeted at a specific type of information, not how information flows. See "Information and Communication Flow." | |
C. MIT v5 Kerberos authentication protocol provides for a fast, single logon to the Windows 2000 server environment, as well as disparate systems that support Kerberos. Dynamic DNS refers to name resolution, Group Policy refers to administration and software installation, and IntelliMirror refers to desktop management. See "Windows 2000 Feature Set." | |
A. The Active Directory Services Interface (ADSI) greatly simplifies the development of directory-enabled applications by abstracting the interfaces of disparate directories and presenting them in uniform COM objects. This way, developers must know and understand one method of entry into the directory services, not one for each directory service. The schema refers to the Windows 2000 object and attribute type definition, Group Policy relates to administration and software distribution, and IntelliMirror relates to desktop management. See "Windows 2000 Feature Set." | |
B. When you perform the business analysis, a key to understanding why the company is considering or ruling out particular solutions is realizing its goals and problems. Additionally, the long-term strategic vision of the company will yield information about where it wants to be several years down the line. The Operational and Organizational structures refer to the management model and company model, and the Company Processes include items such as information and communication flow and decision-making, so only the Goals and Problems assessment might help you figure out the strategic impediments (real or imagined) that are envisioned down the road for the company. See "Business Goals and Problems." |
Microsoft TechNet Articles.
"Aligning Business and IT Goals."
"Planning, Deploying, and Managing Highly Available Solutions."
"Creating the Windows 2000 Vision/Scope Document and Risk Management Plan."
"Identifying Windows 2000 Features That Meet Enterprise Goals."
Gates, William H. III. Business @ The Speed of Thought. Warner Books, 1999.
Heiman, Stephen E. and Sanchez, Diane. The New Strategic Selling. Warner Books, 1998.