Business Analysis now featured on Trailhead

Salesforce has added a brand new role tag to Trailhead content: Salesforce Business Analyst  and has some new modules. With this new tag, finding and skilling up on business analyst content is more frictionless than ever before — enabling you to filter and find relevant modules, trails, and projects.

And the need for business analysts has never been greater. Demand is not going away anytime soon. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, business analyst roles are expected to grow 14% from 2018–2028. Business analysts can be found at the center of a cross-functional team, helping a company in multiple ways. In our new work-from-anywhere world, business analysts are key in helping companies go digital fast. In fact, 77% of professionals are involved in digital initiatives.

There are huge business benefits from business analysis. Here is an article that is based on 20 years as a business analysts and over 1,000 customers showing the tangible benefits that customers have got.

New trail and new badges

There is a Get Started as a Salesforce Business Analyst trail, featuring modules on:

• Salesforce Business Analyst: Quick Look — Learn what Salesforce Business Analysts do and the skills they need to succeed.
• Admin and BA Job Comparison: Quick Look — Learn what Salesforce Admins and Business Analysts do, and how their roles differ.
• Essential Business Analyst Skills — Explore fundamental skills that drive successful projects.
• User Story Creation — Discover the importance of user stories and learn how to write them.
• Strategies for Presenting to Executive Audiences — Learn how to effectively present to executives.
• Business Analyst Best Practices — Improve your skills as a business analyst with pro tips from the experts.

There are also some Trailhead Live sessions to give you an overview and more information:

• Understanding the implementation lifecycle  – Understand how the business analysis documentation is used around the project cycle
• A deep dive into business process mapping – The documentation module gives you a high level so this is a deep dive in to the key documentation technique.

Business analysts create documentation, not apps. 

The Trailhead module on documentation lists a whole set of different documentation types. So what do you use to create them and where do you store them? You could use GoogleDocs but then you are creating silos of unconnected information with limited version control. The power is in the connection.

It is exactly the same as the relationships between accounts, contacts and opportunities in Salesforce. There is a good reason why we store them in a related objects in Salesforce so that then can be connected and we DON’T store them in different spreadsheets, documents and Quip.

We built Elements.cloud to makes it super easy to create, manage and connect the different documentation – so you can focus on being a great Business Analyst.

The image below shows the relationships between the different business analysis data types, all of which are managed in Elements.cloud. (BTW we mapped this ERD using Elements)

Mapping Requirements to Business Process

• Normally changes to an existing app or suggestions for a new app start as a set of requirements or end user feedback. These will be different levels of detail, accuracy and relevance. They need to be validated, triaged and prioritized in a central database.
• The easiest way to validate them is to map the business process and link the requirements to the business process activity or step. The act of mapping will also identify new requirements that hadn’t been considered.
• Requirements should be managed through a formal lifecycle, so it is possible to see if there is an impact of constant change or conflicts on the business operations. i.e several requirements being delivered in different releases with changes to the same area of the business.

Mapping User Stories to Business Process

• User stories are the technical specification that are passed to the development team.
• Links to the business processes and visibility of the related requirements and ERD give valuable context for the developers
• Context reduces ambiguity. Risk of wrong changes. Less rework. Faster development. Shared documentation
• Developers push back / alternative approach for tech reasons, then easier discussion plus changes can be documented so that all stakeholders have clear understanding of implications of change on ERD and business process

Mapping ERDs to Business Process

• What are the key data objects impacted by the business processes
• Not all the data will be in one system, Business process normally span many systems
• The business process will highlight the data handoffs and therefore the integrations between Salesforce and other apps
• As business processes also have links to requirements and user stories, it is possible to see the roadmap of changes required to the data model and integrations. This could highlight constraints, risks or issues.

Mapping Salesforce Metadata items to Business Process

• Not every Salesforce metadata item needs to be linked to a process step, but the key ones that have been configured to support the process. At a minimum the objects and any flows
• Multiple process steps use the same metadata items.
• A single step uses multiple metadata items

• It helps answer 2 questions as the business changes
  • if I change this business process, which metadata items need to be updated
  • if I change this metadata itesm, which other processes are affected

Elements.cloud: 424,734 process diagrams and counting

There is a reason why Elements.cloud is the #1 app for Salesforce Business Analysis used by 1,000’s of customers and consulting firms.  Get started now.