A major manufacturer of popular beverages has appointed a local distributor to serve a specific territory. The demand for the beverages has a pronounced seasonal pattern. The distributor performs well overall, but is repeatedly unable to keep up with fulfilling many customer orders during peak demand periods. The distributor's current delivery capability is stretched to deliver 60 tons of merchandise per day whereas the season's peak demand periods need a daily delivery capability of up to 100 tons.
The distributor is under pressure to fully meet the year-round market demand in order to stay in business. The distributor's management wants to identify and consider more cost-effective options as resorting to adding more trucks and drivers would not be economically feasible.
A business analyst (BA) has spent several days observing and measuring the warehouse activities to understand the situation and to gain insights into possible solutions. The delivery workflow is a four-step process: (1) picking the orders and assembling them on trays, (2) bringing the trays to the loading bay, (3) loading the orders into trucks, and (4) delivering the orders to customers. As the following table illustrates, overall performance depends is dependent on five major resources: (1) the workers who pick the orders and load them into trucks, (2) the tallyers who check the orders, (3) the drivers, (4) the trucks, and (5) eight loading bays (LBs).
If the driver's average throughput is 0.6 tons/hour, how many hours per day would 15 drivers have to work to deliver 100 tons of merchandise?
A software development company is in the process of creating a new product for their customer base. It has been several years since such a project has been initiated and the organization has created a new team to own and develop the product. The project team will be evaluated by the successful adoption of the product, which will be developed over the next 12 months.
The team's business analyst (BA) has analyzed the current state in partnership with the product owner and
has been meeting with senior management to identify the goals that need to be attained. A broad view of the business has been analyzed in order to have an understanding of how the company is currently providing value to its customer base.
What has the BA been identifying that will be used to evaluate the solution?
A business analyst (BA) is running a workshop with a group of stakeholders to understand the requirements for a change that the company is planning to implement.
What important factor does the BA need to understand to ensure the workshop remains focused on the topic in question?
A company with a big information technology (IT) department has hired a lead business analyst (BA) to enhance its business analysis practices. The lead BA discovers that sponsors are not satisfied with project outcomes. Developers complain about incomplete, ambiguous, and changing requirements. All stakeholders, including project managers, are blaming long cycles of analysis for the delays. The business analysts, in turn, feel overwhelmed with the number of projects and frustrated by the lack of collaboration from reviewers of their deliverables. All of the evidence is anecdotal and none of the groups could strongly substantiate their opinions.
The lead BA wants the BAs to report anticipated and actual completion dates for their deliverables, as well as the time spent on planned and unplanned activities. What is the lead BA trying to do by analyzing the results of such measurements?