Assessment & Solution

Assessment & Solution are not just limited to application software, but also address a variety of other areas such as business processes, organizational change, outsourcing agreements, and any other component of the solution. The knowledge area usually consist of six tasks, which are:

• Allocate Requirements

Project managers have to match team members to the right tasks to deliver projects on time and within budget. Effective resource allocation is the process of assigning tasks to the right team members and is at the heart of every successful project.

There’s a reason resource allocation is a top priority among enterprises, small businesses, and everything in between. Without it, things can get out of hand and lead to employee burnout, poor performance, and missed deadlines.

• Assess Proposed Solution

After requirements have been defined and prioritized, the proposed solution with its set of requirements is analyzed to determine whether the solution will deliver sufficient business value to justify its implementation. This can be viewed as kind of a checkpoint or gate to make a go/no go decision before the solution is acquired or built.  Solution assessment may be performed on a single solution or be used to compare multiple proposed solutions to recommend the best course of action to proceed.

• Define Transition Requirements

In most cases, a solution is implemented within an enterprise in order to enhance or replace an existing solution. During the transition period (the time when both the old and new solutions are operational), the enterprise may need to operate both solutions in parallel, move information between the new and old solution, conduct training to enable stakeholders to effectively operate the new solution, and so forth. In addition to developing the solution itself, the implementation team is likely to have to develop additional capabilities to support this transition.

These capabilities are requirements, as stakeholders need to be able to make this transition successfully - but they are different in nature from other kinds of requirements, as they cannot be defined until a solution has been designed. These requirements also have a different lifespan from other types of requirements, as they remain relevant only during the transition period between solutions.

Transition requirements are elicited, analyzed, managed, and communicated by performing the same tasks as for other requirements. The difference is not in the methods for defining them, but in the inputs, the nature of transition requirements, and in that they cease to be relevant once the existing solution is eliminated.

In instances where there is no existing solution, and the new solution is adding a entirely new capability to the enterprise rather than extending and improving an existing capability, then transition requirements do not need to be analyzed.

• Assess Organizational Readiness

A readiness assessment helps you gauge how ready your organization is for a transition. It looks at things like awareness, acceptance, knowledge, and more. A readiness test before a project is deployed in an organization is a critical component of change management. It increases the success of the project by ensuring that impacted individuals and groups are ready to adopt the changes required.

• Validate Solution

Solution validation is required to ensure that the project and its outputs deliver a proposed solution that meets defined requirements.  Problems identified through solution validation are reported and prioritized for resolution. When a problem is identified with the solution such as a failure to meet a stakeholder need or requirement that was not correctly specified, the business analyst helps the team determine the most appropriate action to resolve the problem.

Defects are generally identified through participation in lifecycle events. Below are some examples of lifecycle events for waterfall projects: Design Review, Code Review and Demonstration, System and Integration Test, User Acceptance Test, Organizational Change Plan, Solution Deployment Plan, etc.

The process also applies to agile projects, although the lifecycle events may differ.  Examples of lifecycle events for agile projects include: Product Backlog Prioritization, User Story Sizing and Estimating, Sprint Plan, Demonstration, Sprint Retrospective, Release Plan, etc. 

• Evaluate Solution Performance

Solution performance evaluation involves analyzing how a solution is functioning after it has been deployed.   Assessments are performed to determine if the solution is achieving the expected benefits in the business case.  Solutions are adapted and modified by end users, often using workarounds, recording additional information in spreadsheets, or adopting informal policies and procedures to resolve problems.

Performance is evaluated based on various Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) that are generally documented in the business case. The goal is to assess whether the solution is achieving the expected benefits and, if not, to determine why it is not and then assess what can be done to fix the problem.  Fixing the problem may involve making additional system changes, making organizational changes, providing additional training and support, or simplifying the workflow. These assessments are generally performed every quarter.  The solution, along with the proposed optimizations, is reevaluated the next quarter to ensure the expected improvements were realized.

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