Business Analysis Artifacts Every Business Needs Before Starting Software Development

When you have an idea of an app or a system, you might understand one important thing: unless it lives only in your mind, other people will never know how to realize it. 

Your vision of the product may differ from that of your stakeholders and a project team and this fact may cause problems such as failed expectations or even the product’s fiasco.

Our VP of Operations, Alex Hul shares the experience:

“Misunderstandings, broken deadlines, and overrun budget of the project happen because of bad communication between a client and a development team. It appears when the client has a blurry vision of a product. BA artifacts help to capture all requirements in the documents and save the process of development from potential dangers”.

Software business analysis is the way to clarify and fix stakeholder requirements, functionality, and business goals in detail.

For the past 10 years, at Rubyroid Labs, we have been helping our clients in shaping all their business requirements, desired features, and experience in clear specifications.

When a customer comes up with a project idea and hardly understands how to start the development, in the discovery phase he gets a full description of the system or application.
After a call with a business analyst, he gets business artifacts that include:

• a clear concept
• business goals
• special needs

If you have an idea and feel lost on how to develop it, write to us, and we’ll transform your thoughts into a profitable project.
This article will explain what business artifacts help to make project development more effective. We’ll discover it through the following points:

• Importance of artifacts
• Reasons to Create Business Analysis Artifacts
• Types of Artifacts Templates For Effective Software Development
• Rubyroid Labs’ Experience in Business Analysis Artifacts at The Discovery Phase

Importance of Artifacts

BA artifacts are the documents that every development process needs to build a successful app or system.
Just like road maps, artifacts show the product’s capabilities and the direction of the development from start to finish, and how to effectively achieve the desired result.

Here’s how it works

Business analyst is responsible for the creation of artifacts. The expert produces them at the discovery phase of a project, which is the initial step of the software development life cycle. The analyst engages with client, stakeholders, and programmers to gather core information including:

• project requirements
• system requirements
• functional requirements
• features of the product
• business needs

In the end, the business analyst creates a formalized specification that consists of a project plan, a deadline, a project team, and a scope of work.
Artifacts streamline the entire building process and save the project time and money.

Reasons to Create Business Analysis Artifacts

Software business analysis artifacts offer a clear template for each stage of the product development life cycle.
This helps developers better understand project requirements and comply with them, while stakeholders have the guarantee that their needs are considered.
Here are the main reasons why requirements elicitation improves the process of product development.

To track the development process

Building a program becomes transparent for all people involved in the project. Programmers won’t miss any details, and business owners understand the current development phase of the project.

To improve communication

Formalized requirements improve communication. When a project manager, developers, a UX designer, and a QA engineer understand the business goals of stakeholders and the user’s needs indicated in the artifacts, the entire workflow runs smoother.

To save time

Even if a new developer is assigned to the project, the transfer process will be faster as he can review the artifacts and easily integrate them into the project.
Creating BA artifacts secures the project from failure, allowing stakeholders to stay calm and focus on other workflows.

Types of Artifacts Templates For Effective Software Development

In software business analysis, the creation of artifacts varies depending on the factors such as:

• the nature of the product
• the methodology used
• specific needs and stakeholder requirements

The following scheme illustrates the requirements collected by a business analyst. Although they are numerous, it doesn’t mean that the specialist will use them all.

For each project, the business analyst prepares artifacts individually using business analysis standards. These standards consist of special techniques and professional skills that provide a comprehensive view of the future app or system.

Leveraging all his knowledge and experience, the business analyst produces BA artifacts.
Here we describe the most commonly used business artifacts in the development process.

Vision & Scope

It’s the first step of requirements analysis. This document provides a general vision of the future product and the estimated scope of work planned for its initial and later phases.
The document includes the following artifacts:

Vision & Scope Document

It’s a standard document that describes the vision of software, business goals, limitations, and a brief description of the major features. It helps project participants define the purpose and scope, and understand where to go to transform the concept into a reality.

Context Diagram

This document illustrates how the product will communicate with users and other systems, giving developers a clear understanding of the final product and who will use it.
Use Case Diagram
This specification graphically shows how the program will interact with a particular system. It showcases the system’s behavior under specific conditions and helps stakeholders understand the project’s scope and objectives.

Business Process Model

This artifact captures the main features of the future product and ensures that no important details are missed when describing the software’s main functionalities to other project participants.

Requirements Specification

After the Vision and Scope phase, the business analyst starts collecting the client’s requirements for product development.

User Stories and Use Cases

User stories describe the program’s functionality of the software and are written from the perspective of an end-user or customer, addressing to “who, why, and what?” will get a final result of the product.
Use cases demonstrate the logic of how users will interact with the system or how the system will respond to their requests.
User stories and use cases provide as many scenarios as possible about each situation and feature of the product. Taking them into account helps the developers to deliver better software.

Software Requirements Specification

Identifying the software requirements is another work that business analysis documentation consists of. It includes functional and non-functional requirements, as well as business requirements.

• Functional requirements outline the basic system features desired by the end-user and are included in the product development contract.
• Non-functional requirements specify quality needs that the software should meet according to the project contract, for example:

“The system should be able to handle 20 million users without performance deterioration.”

• Business requirements help developers better understand the product’s functionality within a commercial context.

User Profiles or User Personas

Writing down in detail user profiles and user personas artifacts provides programmers and stakeholders a clear view of who will be using the final product.

Workflow Model

A more advanced version of a business model, the workflow model demonstrates the use of application logic with various user roles.

Conceptual Data Model, Logical Data Model, Data Dictionary

These artifacts, usually created by a Tech Specialist or Architect, involve planning the data architecture before development begins to avoid rework in later stages.

UML Diagrams

The Unified Modeling Language (UML) is used to visualize and graph program activity. It is useful for mapping out connections, processes, and other aspects. It is important at the design stage for a better understanding and development of software.

Risk Assessments

This type of artifact highlights potential dangers and drawbacks that may arise during the process of development, providing instructions to developers on how to overcome them.

Mockups or Wireframes

Visual design of user interfaces helps stakeholders visualize how the product will look.

Prototypes

A preliminary version of the software with the final design. Prototypes may have clickable buttons for clients to try before development begins.
This artifact confirms that the final product meets all requirements.

Rubyroid Labs’ Experience in Business Analysis Artifacts at The Discovery Phase

The variety of business artifacts may surprise at first sight. However, when you rely on a specialist with a business analysis best practice, the whole process of artifact creation goes easy.

With Business Analysts from Rubyroid Labs, you will find out the potential of your product at the discovery phase.
Thanks to deep experience in BA practice, our specialists accompany you from the very start of communication and help in finding out every detail and business goal you would like to achieve with your prospective product.

Our discovery phase service starts with the creation of basic project documentation made on 20-40 PDF pages. The document consists of:

Vision and Scope

At this stage, a business analyst contacts you and creates a project plan artifact with specific requirements including the main concept, needs, core features, target audience, priorities, etc.

Software requirements specification

The document contains:

• Functional requirements as user stories/use cases
• Non-functional requirements
• Technology stack
• UI/ UX requirements for prototyping
• Data requirements

Your benefit: you get a full view of your future project point by point and understand how to achieve your goals on time.

Prototyping

The procedure combines:

• Designer consultation, where you get personalized expert advice on your website or application’s design.
• Wireframes creation. You get an interactive design draft and will see what your product will look like and how it will work.

Your benefit: You can interact with your software and make changes before you start developing it.

Estimates and Priorities

You obtain the Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) with the time and cost of each
feature development, hourly rates, covering QA and project management.

Your benefit: You will know what to focus on and how to organize an efficient workflow to achieve the goals.

Team Structure

We recommend an effective team structure for your specific case and software type. This structure should consider the following factors:

• Number of developers
• Seniority of the developers
• Number of UI/UX designers
• Number of QA engineers
• Number of project managers and business analysts

Share with us your idea, and we’ll transform it into a powerful project that will satisfy you.

Wrapping Up

BA artifacts work together to provide a structured approach for data gathering, documentation, and communication during the lifespan of a project.

Skipping the creation of business artifacts, the same as the discovery phase, can lead to misunderstandings of the product vision and unexpected results, such as the project’s failure.

A detailed discovery phase and the creation of business analysis documentation will provide a clear picture of your prospective project and give you a chance to make changes before the start of the development.