Project Manager's Toolkit: Practical Checklists for Systems Development
Offering practical and easy to apply checklists, this quick reference provides a fast way to reduce an insolvable problem/issue to a set of smaller solvable ones.
TABLE OF CONTENTS Project Manager's Toolkit: Practical Checklists for Systems Development
Chapter 3: Business Analysis Checklists
3.1 Nine Key Questions for High-Level Business Understanding
Type: Analysis
Checklist Description
This checklist can be used to give a high-level, strategic view of a company and how it operates. It could be used to understand the company's relationship to internal and external factors.
A separate study should also be made of the company's relationship with its customers (see checklist How well do we serve our customers? ).
Checklist
Look at the Industry
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What are the barriers to entry?
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Are the set-up costs high or low (e.g. assembly line machinery vs network server)?
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Do patents exist to prevent entry?
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Do regulatory bodies protect the existing market?
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What is the level of innovation and product release in the industry?
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How would you characterize customer behaviour?
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Is it easy for a customer to change from one competitor to another? What makes it hard or easy?
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Is there brand loyalty?
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What are the characteristics of the product?
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What benefits does the customer gain from the product? Do your customers sell your product onto others? What is the gain for the customers of your customers? Map out the value-added chain to find the end result. For example, if you're a power-drill maker ultimately you sell holes.
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Are all the products across the competition essentially the same? Does the customer choose the product primarily on price, service, brand, or something else?
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What are the alternative or substitute products? Are there products which deliver the same benefit to the customer under development (e.g. LPs vs CDs)?
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Copyright David M. Shailer 2001 under license agreement with Books24x7
