The Salesforce Business Analyst Handbook: Proven business analysis techniques and processes for a superior user experience and adoption

BIRMINGHAM—MUMBAI

The Salesforce Business Analyst Handbook

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Contributors

About the author

Srini Munagavalasa has more than 20 years of global IT experience in Salesforce CRM and PRM, SAP CRM, and HR. He has a passion for learning about new and emerging technologies and products and prototyping and implementing solutions resulting in customer satisfaction and business benefits. He has authored 10+ articles on CRM, HR, and project management with Wellesley Information Services (WIS). He has also presented papers at Salesforce Dreamforce and SAP Sapphire/ASUG. He is currently working as a VP at Salesforce COE at MUFG Americas. He has a bachelor’s degree in metallurgical engineering and holds a post-graduate diploma in operations management. He has worked with renowned companies such as CA Tech, IBM, The Walt Disney Company, and PwC.

I would like to thank my wife, Sunanda, and my children, Sravan and Sai, for all their support and encouragement; my Packt team, for their guidance and keeping me on track; and my reviewers, for providing valuable feedback.

Finally, thanks to my family members, friends, and all my colleagues at work, who helped me learn and grow from my experiences.

About the reviewers

Jarod McCarty has 15 years of experience in the manufacturing and construction industry, 5 years of which have involved a Salesforce business analyst role.

Jarod lives with his wife and four kids in Fort Worth, TX, where he enjoys spending time with his family, spending time outdoors, and, of course, learning more about tech and Salesforce.

Andrew Nixon is a certified Salesforce application architect with over 20 years of experience in software delivery. He has a deep appreciation of all software life cycle management aspects, having progressed through support, business analyst, and program management roles delivering tier 1 ERPs and CRMs for global organizations.

In 2016, he took the decision to focus solely on Salesforce and now heads a Salesforce Centre of Excellence managing an enterprise-wide Salesforce instance.

Andrew is passionate about learning, sharing knowledge, mentoring, and upskilling his teams. In his spare time, he also volunteers as a Salesforce administrator for non-profit organizations.

Table of Contents

Preface

Part 1: Planning and Analysis – BRD/Prioritized Product Backlog

1

Identifying Requirements

The role of business analysis in identifying requirement sources

Types of requirements

Securing support from the project sponsor

Common sources where you can identify business requirements

Document analysis

Identify key stakeholders

Navigate the organization

Current system usage

Identify the key end user

Needs decomposition

Get a system walkthrough

Active participation

Existing systems

Note-taking

Assumptions

Meeting minutes

Real-life scenarios with examples

Scenario 1

Scenario 2

Scenario 3

Practical tips for success

Summary

Questions

Further reading

2

Elicitation and Document Requirements

Elicitation planning

Elicitation tasks

Requirement elicitation techniques

Observation

Brainstorming

Surveys

Interviews / focus groups

Conference room pilots / requirements workshops

Prototyping

Process models

User stories

Requirement documentation

The art of elicitation

Practical tips for success

Summary

Questions

Further reading

3

Prioritizing Requirements

The importance of requirement prioritization

Reviewing prioritization techniques

MoSCoW analysis

Story mapping

Dependency map between requirements

Managing prioritization meetings

Practical tips for success

Simple CRM requirement prioritization and roadmap scenario

Summary

Questions

Further reading

4

Process Flows – As-Is versus To-Be

Reviewing the process flow

Process flow types

Understanding and capturing the current state as-is

Current state swim lane process flow diagram

Proven techniques to capture the current state

Identifying gaps and improvement/automation opportunities

Developing the future state – to-be

Future state swim lane process flow diagram

Benefits of creating process flows

Summary

Questions

Further reading

5

Business Requirements Document

Reviewing the need for business requirements documentation

Understanding user requirements and use cases

Exploring functional and non-functional requirements

Functional requirements

Non-functional requirements

Learning what level of detail is sufficient

Requirements matrix (prioritized product backlog)

Explaining a typical business requirement document and its key attributes

Practical tips for success

Summary

Questions

Further reading

Part 2: Design, Development, and Testing – Iterative Cycles with Prototypes and Conference Room Pilots

6

Solution Design and Functional Document

Understanding solution design

Identifying functional requirements

Identifying non-functional requirements

Reviewing data conversion requirements

Understanding the functional requirements matrix

Developing the function document

Practical tips for success

Summary

Questions

Further reading

7

Demonstrate Functionality Using Prototypes

The need for prototyping and its categories

Categories of prototype

When to do prototyping

Prototype stages

What and how do you prototype?

Tools to document prototyping

The benefits of prototyping

Practical tips for success

Summary

Questions

Further reading

8

Exploring Conference Room Pilots

Understanding what CRPs are

Exploring the timing and participants of CRPs

Scope CRP

Design CRP

Build CRP

Test CRP

Facilitating CRPs

Managing scope creep during CRPs

Reviewing the benefits of CRPs

Practical tips for success

Summary

Questions

Further reading

9

Technical and Quality Testing

Planning testing activities

Testing strategy

Testing levels

Testing methods

Testing schedule

Testing approach

Testing phases

Types of testing

Sample test script/case fields

Benefits of testing

Practical tips for success

Summary

Questions

Further reading

10

Requirements Traceability Matrix

Understanding the importance of an RTM

Learning what to capture in an RTM

Exploring types of traceability

Reviewing an RTM template sample

Benefits of an RTM

Practical tips for success

Summary

Questions

Further reading

Part 3: End User Testing, Communication, Training, and Support

11

User Acceptance Testing

Identifying the right set of UAT users

Learning how to help UAT users test effectively

Getting feedback on usability

Exploring the need for UAT

Reviewing the benefits of UAT

Practical tips for success

Summary

Questions

Further reading

12

Communication and Knowledge Management

End user communication

Different knowledge management types

Explicit knowledge

Tacit knowledge

Knowledge artifacts accessibility

Benefits of communication and knowledge management

Practical tips for success

Summary

Questions

13

End User Training

Planning for training

Preparing for training

Setting up the training environment

Reviewing types of training materials

Understanding the importance of in-person or live training

Facilitating a training session

Benefits of end user training

Practical tips for success

Summary

Questions

14

Post Go-Live Support / User Forums

Super care

Production support

User forums

Topics to cover during the user forum

Delivery cadence

Benefits of production support

Practical tips for success

Summary

Questions

Assessments

Chapter 1 - Identifying Requirements

Chapter 2 - Elicitation and Document Requirements

Chapter 3 - Prioritizing Requirements

Chapter 4 - Process Flows – As-Is versus To-Be

Chapter 5 - Business Requirements Document

Chapter 6 - Solution Design and Functional Document

Chapter 7 - Demonstrate Functionality Using Prototypes

Chapter 8 - Exploring Conference Room Pilots

Chapter 9 - Technical and Quality Testing

Chapter 10 - Requirements Traceability Matrix

Chapter 11 - User Acceptance Testing

Chapter 12 - Communication and Knowledge Management

Chapter 13 - End User Training

Chapter 14 - Post Go-Live Support / User Forums

Index

Other Books You May Enjoy

Preface

I have covered business analysis activities for every phase of many projects in my 20+ years of experience working on many successful global implementations. I have seen many project phases being negatively impacted by a lack of proper business analysis activities. It starts with understanding what your business users’ needs are, and they are not always in black and white. This book addresses what your users’ true needs are and how you, as a business analyst, can untangle and read their minds to understand the true essence of their needs and the benefits they provide to your organization. You’ll get to learn various methods, tools, and techniques to help you with the analysis process. The most critical and significant activity of any project is to be able to understand what the business needs are, and if we cannot do this, it does not matter what kind of hi-fi solution your project team provides. Your project will be another artifact sitting on the shelf, dusty.

This book will help you understand various techniques to document value-added business requirements; translate these requirements into viable and acceptable solutions; verify and validate the developed and tested solutions; help end users understand how to use the new features and functions; and be a trusted advisor in supporting your end users on their journey to achieve amazing user adoption.

For projects to be successful, you do not need magic. All you need is for your team to understand business analysis processes, tools, and techniques. The chapters in this book will help guide you through business analysis activities in all project phases.

Who this book is for

This book is for intermediate- to senior-level business analysts with a basic understanding of Salesforce CRM software or any CRM technology who want to learn proven business analysis techniques to set their business up for success.

What this book covers

Chapter 1, Identifying Requirements, discusses the role of a business analyst and different types of software requirements. You will learn how to explore common sources to look for things that help spot and identify business requirements.

Chapter 2, Elicitation and Document Requirements, discusses various methods to draw out the business needs and wants from various sources. This enables you to extract sufficient information to understand users’ expressed and unexpressed business needs and formalize and document them as detailed requirements.

Chapter 3, Prioritizing Requirements, covers the process and techniques of requirement prioritization, helping you understand the dependencies between various requirements and prioritize dependencies in the right order without creating gaps in the requirements flow.

Chapter 4, Process Flows – As-is versus To-be, helps you understand the importance of business process flows. We will discuss how to develop and understand current and future process flows. We will see how we can identify any gaps that can be addressed and opportunities to automate the functionality.

Chapter 5, Business Requirements Document, reviews different types of requirements and the level of detail to be captured for each of these types of requirements for better understanding by all team members. We will discuss and understand the importance of documenting key attributes of a business requirement document.

Chapter 6, Solution Design and Functional Document, covers different ways to identify functional and non-functional requirements using process flows. We will cover aspects that can make the designed solution flexible, maintainable, and scalable. We will also cover transitional requirements and the critical part they play in making your projects successful.

Chapter 7, Demonstrate Functionality Using Prototypes, covers ways to demonstrate functionality by translating functional specifications into a visual working model using different techniques and tools. You will learn ways to help team members see a visual of the requirement and provide an opportunity to ideate, collaborate, and obtain feedback iteratively.

Chapter 8, Exploring Conference Room Pilots, discusses ways to collaborate and showcase prototypes to a wider audience. We will see how conference room pilots can help us progress from individual requirements to proposed design solutions in the right direction. We will also discuss how various team members can benefit and add value to other project phases.

Chapter 9, Technical and Quality Testing, reviews and shows how testing helps us with exploring the system to verify, validate, and confirm that the system functionality developed works as intended. We will explore and see what tools, traits, and skills make effective testing. We will explore various testing approaches, testing phases, and testing types.

Chapter 10, Requirements Traceability Matrix, helps you understand the importance of the relationships between requirements and various project artifacts and how they help us establish traceability. We will explore how this helps us in identifying and in bridging any elusive gaps. We will also see how to link requirements to project deliverables, ensuring that we have complete test coverage.

Chapter 11, User Acceptance Testing, shows how user acceptance plays a crucial role in a successful Go-Live. We will discuss how to work with business users and help them test real-life business scenarios and get feedback on usability. We will also discuss how to plan and execute user acceptance testing in a structured way that can reduce post-production issues and save the organization’s time and resources.

Chapter 12, Communication and Knowledge Management, discusses aspects of communication and knowledge management, especially focused on end users. We will explore various options to make sure we provide timely and appropriate communication. You will learn how to tailor knowledge management artifacts related to the usage of the functions of the new systems.

Chapter 13, End User Training, discusses the important role end user training plays in the successful adoption of the system functionality by end users. We will see how to train and prepare users so that they can understand the core system functionality, integrations, and business process flows.

Chapter 14, Post-Go-Live Support / User Forums, covers details on why post-go-live support is so critical for users to adjust to the system’s new functionality. We will learn to plan and facilitate user forums with end users that help establish continued collaboration. We will see what makes you a trusted advisor to your users and help continuously improve the system and its usage.

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Part 1: Planning and Analysis – BRD/Prioritized Product Backlog

In this part, you will learn about planning and analysis activities, starting with ways to identify the right sources of requirements and use elicitation techniques to understand business needs by engaging the right stakeholders. You will learn how to utilize tacit business analysis and Salesforce system analysis skills to rank and stack all requirements, and communicate and get buy-in from all stakeholders. Finally, you will document all your prioritized requirements in a business requirement document artifact. You will also learn how to create a roadmap to deliver a set of high-level requirements.

We will address some of the key challenges faced during this phase:

Not being able to identify the right requirements, resulting in delivering unnecessary nice-to-have features without adding any business value

Due to a lack of requirements or product backlog prioritization, projects not delivering the right solutions as requirements are accepted on a first-come, first-served basis, or the loudest voice gets prioritized

Going all in rather than defining a clear Salesforce roadmap

Not assessing the dependencies and integration impacts on concurrent Salesforce projects

No clear understanding of what the current state process looks like or what the future proposed state process should be

The following chapters will be covered under this part:

Chapter 1, Identifying Requirements

Chapter 2, Elicitation and Document Requirements

Chapter 3, Prioritizing Requirements

Chapter 4, Process Flows – As-Is versus To-Be

Chapter 5, Business Requirements Document

1

Identifying Requirements

In this chapter, we will discuss the role of a Business Analyst and different types of software requirements. Then, we will review some important factors that will help gain project sponsors’ confidence and trust. Finally, we will explore common sources to look out for that help us spot and identify business requirements. We will also touch upon, at a high level, some business analysis lingo that you should be aware of to be able to facilitate business analysis activities. Remember, we wish to identify requirements at a very high level. We will do a deep dive into understanding requirements in more detail and from different perspectives during the elicitation phase, which will be covered in the next chapter.

In this chapter, we will cover the following topics:

The role of business analysis in identifying requirement sources

Securing support from the project sponsor

Common sources where you can identify business requirements

Real-life scenarios with examples

Practical tips for success

By the end of this chapter, you will have a good idea of where and how to find requirements that will help you with requirements gathering. You’ll also know what you should do to understand current processes and observe the inefficiencies, roadblocks, and opportunities surrounding them.

The role of business analysis in identifying requirement sources

Before we get into details of the business analysis role, let’s quickly review what some common terms mean, which will be helpful in our upcoming discussions:

Business analysis: Business analysis is a practice that involves understanding the current capabilities and needs of the business users, identifying gaps in the current processes, and enabling desired future capabilities to derive efficiencies, competitive advantage, and business benefits.

Business Analyst: A Business Analyst is someone who practices business analysis while utilizing various tools, techniques, and resources. The goal is to help businesses move from their current state to a desired future state by understanding business needs, pain points, opportunities and gaps in processes, and providing robust, efficient, and effective solutions that are simple and usable.

Customer Relationship Management (CRM): CRM is the practice of helping customers manage sales, service, and marketing processes effectively and efficiently so that they can grow their business and provide excellent customer service.

Salesforce: Salesforce is a cloud-based CRM technology platform that helps organizations serve their customers with CRM functionality.

With this basic understanding, let’s discuss business analysis in detail.

Business analysis work starts with planning – there is no one cookie-cutter approach that works for every project. Business Analysts need to know and understand the context and characteristics of the project to ensure that the planning activities are scoped accordingly. Prior planning and spending time on identifying the