Customer Analysis (Task)

Definition

Customer Analysis

the requirements engineering task during which the customer organization’s current business enterprise is studied, modeled, and analyzed

Classification

As illustrated in the preceding figure, Customer Analysis is part of the following inheritance hierarchy:

• Type: Abstract
• Superclass: Business Analysis
• Subclasses:
  • None

Responsibilities

The typical responsibilities of Customer Analysis are to:

• Analyze the business model of the customer organization’s enterprise.
• Analyze the organizational relationships of the customer organization’s enterprise.
• Analyze the technology used by the customer organization’s enterprise.
• Identify the relevant planned improvements of the customer organization’s enterprise.
• Produce an accurate and complete business analysis report.

Preconditions

Customer analysis can typically begin when the following preconditions hold:

• The business strategy phase has begun.
• The business strategy team is staffed and adequately trained in customer analysis.

Completion Criteria

Customer analysis is complete when the following postconditions hold:

• The customer analysis document has been completed, evaluated, and approved by the authorized customer representative.

Steps

Customer analysis typically involves the business strategy team performing the following steps in an iterative, incremental, and parallel manner:

• Profile the customer organization's stakeholders
• Analyze and document the customer organization's current enterprise:
  • Obtain, read, and summarize the current:
    • Business Plan
    • Mission Statement
    • Core Values
  • Identify and summarize the:
    • Lines of Business
    • Target Market Segments
    • Products and Services
  • Obtain or create a top-level business:
    • Object Model
    • Process Model
• Analyze and document the organization of the customer organization's enterprise's:
  • Organizational Structures:
    • Management Structures
    • Business Units
  • Stakeholders
  • Partners
  • Suppliers
• Analyze and document the customer organization's enterprise's use of technology:
  • Current Applications
  • Technology Capabilities:
    • Staff Experience and Training
    • Data Centers
    • Contact Centers
    • Technologies
• Identify and document the customer organization's currently planned:
  • Initiatives
  • Business Changes
  • Applications

Techniques

Customer analysis can typically be performed using the following techniques:

• Reading documents
• Interviewing members of the customer organization
• Object and process modeling

Work Products

Customer analysis typically results in the production of the following work products:

• Customer Stakeholder Profile
• Customer Analysis report

Guidelines

• Customer analysis is definitely required for business engineering projects.
• Some level of customer analysis is usually needed to provide a foundation for application development.
• Customer analysis is usually performed during the business strategy phase, but it can also be performed of during the initiation phase if insufficient business [re]engineering was required to justify a separate business strategy phase.