Business Analysis_ How to Perform Gap Analysis and Create Gap Documents

Business AnalysisTuesday, March 6, 2012

Gap Analysis- Professional Way

Gap analysis is the technique to identify the area of improvement in anyprocess ranging from Business to technology. The areas of improvementdoesn’t necessarily mean any new enhancement, it is either about finding agap between what is expected and what is really done. Gap analysis is not atool for IT or Engineering but it can also be used to implement any businessprocesses or strategies that are implicit to be improving soon.

Gap analysis doesn’t have to have any specific template or any standardmodel however, any artifact which reflects the differences between what isnow and what it should really be in an organized way. This gap analysistechnique is being used by almost all the businesses without knowing whatthis approach is really called. The beauty of Strategically Gap analysis is thatit is not a certificate or any affiliate or compliance document rather is it atraceability strategy to improve the process with a perfect monitoring system.

Now, as we now understand what is gap analysis, what is left to understand iswhere really this analysis comes into play during Business Analysis. Well,there is no distinct time when this should be done but the good thing is thatwe can work on gap analysis as soon as we have two things to compareagainst. The first thing is the current state and the next thing is the future orexpected state of the improvement. Take a situation when a Business Analystwork as an Enterprise BA and he is working on a Project plan. Now, as theproject plan gets extended into high level requirement document then this aperfect time when you will have both current state and the future state. AnEnterprise BA will then compare that Project Plan with the Higher Levelrequirements, which is also called gap analysis and try to find out what arethe gaps that BA missed to include in the requirements. This is a chance forall Business Analysts to protect their responsibility and they themselves; justwhat they need to do is to create GAP Documents proactively. Not to mentionthat 75% projects fail due to wrong or missing requirements. No one canreally take that responsibility to mislead any project.

In short, Gap analysis is an analytical and strategical process to identify themissing details or gaps in a document or process when we have both currentand future state identified. It doesn’t have to be only the project documentsfor Gap Analysis nor it only have to be done by Business Analyst. Anyone whowants to proactively monitor and improve the process/system/policies or eventhe corporate strategies and cultures can use this ultimate technique to keepyou into right track.

Efficient Way of Performing Gap Analysis:

With the advancement in the technology, especially with InformationTechnology, companies now start looking outside of their confined traditionalknowledge library for the best practices and Job aids to improve their quality

How to Perform Gap Analysis and Create GapDocuments

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of product and culture. Gap analysis is a tool for those managers and CEOswho want to stay on the top of success. If a gap analysis is done only onetime then it makes very easier to monitor any new changes or improvements.Gap analysis is an In-process document and it is never considered a completedocument until the whole project is either completed or terminated.

Let’s create a basic yet effective Gap Document for our Gap Analysis. We willattempt to identify the Gap between Current and Future State (assumingcurrent and future states are both known to us). Open an excel file and startcreating columns as steps below:

1. Identify the Current State or As-Is process/state: Name the firstcolumn as “Current State “ and start listing all the current statefunctionalities or processes or anything that you want to perform gapanalysis on.

2. Identify the future state or To-Be process/State: Name the SecondColumn as “Future State” and start listing the future statescorresponding to Current states. If there is no future state thenmention “N/A” in the corresponding row. In care we do not know thename of future sate or simply the future state is unknown to us thenmention “Unknown”.

Note- Lets take an example as I am creating a Business RequirementDocument and I want to make sure that I listed out all therequirements. The best way to identify the missing requirement is byperforming a quick gap analysis but how? Now after completing abovetwo steps you can create a third column as “Identified asRequirement”. If you identified that enhancement in functionality as arequirement then mention “YES” in the corresponding row if not thensay “NO” and this “NO” is the problem now. It is a GAP for thissituation.

3. Gap Exists? The third column can be named as “Gap Exists?” Whencurrent state and future state doesn’t perfectly match up then GapExists= “Yes”. In our example, when future state is unknown or N/Afor us then that means there is a gap.

4. Fourth Column as “Gap Description”: Use the fourth column to describethe Gap in detail. For the Gap which exits as Unknown, we candescribe it as this gap exists due to unknown future state ofcorresponding current state. This gap should be resolved after theidentification of future state is completed. You can even provide theName of contact person and gap resolution strategies here in thiscolumn.

5. Fifth Column- “Gap Resolution”: Column 5th, 6th and 7th are dedicatedto Gap Resolution. As we already found Gaps, now we need to resolvethem. In this column mention the detail how the Gap was resolved. Provide all the information as possible.

6. Column Six- “Gap Resolved By”: It is always good to mention thesource in documents. Here in this column the name of person orsource who resolved the Gap.

7. Column Seven- “Gap Resolved Date”: Mention the date when the Gapwas resolved.

8. Column Eight – “Comments/Attachments”: Mention additional detailwhich you missed to include before.

There columns are not the standards. You can use it whichever way you wantto, there are no standards or Gap Analysis Columns. These columns are used

Shawn Chhetri

View my completeprofile


2 of 5 5/29/2013 5:16 PM

here because they are the best fields I could find to compare the Current andFuture State, a simple illustration. You can add other columns like:Dependencies, Risk, Priority and so one as needed by your situation.

Flow Diagram of Basic Gap Analysis (stated above) should look like as imagebelow:

Some Quick Tips on Gap Analysis:

1. Color coding: Use color “Red” as the Gap Exists =”Yes” and Green for“No”. It will make it easier to read, understand or to demonstrate it toanother person.

2. Use Excel file – It is not limited to excel file, but excel is very effectivetool for creating tables and comparing each cell.

3. Use a Tab as “Version/History”: When you completed first gap analysisgive it a version 1.0 and for next analysis version it as 1.1 or 2.0.Provide Date and Description of each version.

4. Use a Tab “Supporting Documents”: Provide links or attachments inthis tab with description of all the documents or sources that wereused to create this gap document.

Gap Analysis is a general tool to monitor higher level functionality, especiallyused by Business Team; however, it has some limitations. One knownlimitation worth mentioning here is that it is nearly impossible to monitor aproject which has thousands of small improvements and also when theseimprovements are broken down into many phases. In other words, we canonly use a Gap analysis in Higher Level or for small part of a huge project.Mostly, gap analysis is done in a different way and named differently when ithas to deal with system level details. Most of the times, we call it TraceabilityMatrix or Mapping Documents. These documents use some concepts of GapAnalysis but they are not considered as an Authentic Gap Documents. Theyare system level Docs or reference docs for system specs. I will make sure topost another blog on Traceability Matrix and Mapping Documents.

Feel free to add comments and suggestions!

SGR, Business Analyst/ Project Manager

www.sentiencetms.com


3 of 5 5/29/2013 5:16 PM

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Posted by Shawn Chhetri at 9:08 AM

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3 comments:

nagendra March 19, 2013 at 2:58 AM

Please help me out with RTM and other Mapping Docs

Reply

Abdulhamid Elamami April 5, 2013 at 3:08 AM

thank you it's very useful information

Reply

Innovation April 25, 2013 at 1:54 AM

Thanks, very useful. Do you have any implemented example?

Reply


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Business Analysis_ How to Perform Gap Analysis and Create Gap Documents

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