Document Analysis for App Support

Document analysis is an elicitation technique used to gather requirements. It is also the study of the existing document and the information relevant to the current application support process so that one could have better understanding of the process. Business analysts can gather requirements from stakeholders using questionnaires, interviews, or facilitating sessions. The objective of Document Analysis is to gather details of the key functions such as business rules, business entities, and business attributes that needs to be updated. Document Analysis includes various strategies such as analyzing the business plans, keeping records of contract details, training guidelines for the process, customers review, suggestion logs and the existing system specifications. Identifying and implementing the strategies will result in improving requirement gathering for the process and the documentation format.

Documents for App Support Process can be analyzed on the basis of various aspects:

Statement of Work(SOW):

Statement of Work (SOW) is the work agreement between the client and the service provider. This includes Expected services from the vendor, quality of the service provided, and conditions for the availability of the services, RACI (Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, and Informed) for the service provided, escalation procedures and cost for the service provided. It covers the work requirement for the process, addresses the performance and design requirements. 

Some of the commonly addressed key areas for SOW are:

• Purpose of the SOW: It defines the liabilities, responsibilities and work agreements between client and the service providers. This document can include functional requirements or non-functional requirements. 
• Scope of work: It is a process which includes how the work will be divided and who is responsible for completing the work. 
• Scope of work can be categorized into two types:
• In Scope: This section describes about the activities which will be performed in this scope. For e.g. If we consider an application support process, we would prefer Query management, User management etc. 
• Out of Scope: This section describes about the activities which will not be considered in this scope. 
• Timelines: This specifies the allowable time for projects, such as start and finish time, number of hours that can be billed per week or month, where work is to be performed and anything else that relates to scheduling.
• SLA: Service Level-Agreement (SLA) describes the level of the services expected by the client from the vendor for the process. This determines the response time that needs to be given to a particular request. The severity levels with a defined response time is mentioned in the scope of work. For e.g. There can be different levels such as High, Medium and Low which would have a response time as 5hour, 1 day and 2 days respectively.
• Payment Schedule: Payment Schedule of SOW includes the bills to be invoiced and payment to be scheduled for the work done by the supplier.

Pros of Document Analysis:

• Document Analysis plays a vital role in understanding gathered data in order to efficiently plan next course of action. 
• Obtaining and analyzing documents is often far more cost efficient and time efficient than conducting the research or experiments for the process.
• Document Analysis can help an individual understand the processes and sub-process in an application support project without attending formal training on the same. Thus, reduces dependability on human intervention.
• Document Analysis is a beneficial method for research as it can provide supplementary research data. Documents helps in contextualizing one’s research within the process. Documents contains data that are no longer can be observed, providing the details that Business Analyst have forgotten, and can easily track the changes and development done in the process.
• Documents analysis presents the Business Analyst as a knowledgeable person as he/she gains extensive knowledge from the respective documents in a short span of time.

Conclusion:

Document analysis is very critical in Application support as it is part of each and every Process that is implemented and is in process of implementation.

About Author:

Nancy Jain

 is a consultant in Systems Plus Pvt. Ltd. Within Systems Plus, she actively contributes to the areas of Technology and Information Security. She can be contacted at: 

nancy.jain@spluspl.com