Management: Analysis
Description
To take a systematic approach to business you need to document your business objectives and requirements. Documentation is an essential item for business success but who has time for all the paperwork when there is so much else to do?
Sample Questions
- What is the objective of your business?
- What interesting and important problems do you need to solve?
- What are the key processes?
- What are the critical success factors?
- What information is needed to run the business?
- What tools are needed to run the business?
- Is there an operational plan?
- What is your business model?
Value
Documenting your business objectives and requirements is essential to prioritizing and applying efficiency improvements to your processes and systems that really matter. Using a system approach can get you out of ad hoc fire fighting mode into a system that produces reliable results time after time. You can move on to building and growing your business rather than just trying to stay afloat. Quality and certification programs are almost always based on having documented business principles and processes.
How I can Help
Sometimes it helps to have someone objective facilitate the analysis and documentation by asking some key business questions and helping to structure the information to be more accessible and useful. After establishing some baseline information I can prepare an opportunities report identifying some ideas you may want to pursue to enhance your business.
Potential Solution Element Examples
A variety of techniques can be used to make the analysis more productive ranging from Requirements Analysis, Mindmapping, Brainstorming, UML diagrams, or flowcharts. Pictures with associated descriptions can help solve problems by making the key ideas and issues clear.