=Paper=
{{Paper
|id=Vol-3013/20210129
|storemode=property
|title=Business Analysis Learning Perspectives in ICT Education
|pdfUrl=https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-3013/20210129.pdf
|volume=Vol-3013
|authors=Vladimir Sklyar
|dblpUrl=https://dblp.org/rec/conf/icteri/Sklyar21
}}
==Business Analysis Learning Perspectives in ICT Education==
https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-3013/20210129.pdf
Business Analysis Learning Perspectives in ICT Education
Vladimir Sklyar 1
1
National Aerospace University “KhAI”, 17, Chkalova Street, Kharkiv, 61017, Ukraine
Abstract
This paper aims to develop a practical learning framework with the implementation of business
analysis methods in ICT education. General issues of business analysis applicable in ICT
education are analyzed. The BABOK Guide describes knowledge areas for business analysis,
as well as tasks and main competencies, techniques, and perspectives concerning business
analysis. Reasons for business analysis learning include its support with the case method and
project-based learning including the development of students’ hard and soft skills. We
prioritize business analysis and exercises and activities applicable to ICT education. Taxonomy
of learning effectiveness indicators related to business analysis is developed together with a
business analysis learning framework.
Keywords 1
BABOK, business analysis, business analyst, ICT education project-based learning, case study
1. Introduction
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text. Paragraph text. Paragraph text. Paragraph text. Paragraph text. Paragraph text. Paragraph text.
“A Guide to the Business Analysis Body of Knowledge” (BABOK) [1] has been issued by the
International Institute of Business Analysis (IIBA) as Version 3.0 in 2015. This document is provided
to the business analysis (BA) community for educational purposes with describing knowledge areas for
business analysis, as well as tasks and main competencies, techniques, and perspectives concerning
business analysis. BABOK describes six knowledge areas of BA including planning and monitoring,
elicitation and collaboration, requirements life cycle management, strategy analysis, requirements
analysis, and design definition, and solution evaluation.
Depending on the project, a Business Analyst can have different responsibilities and skills. The most
common definition is a Business Analyst is a member of a software development team who analyzes
the business domain, elicits requirements, and develops a business model for the developed software
products and services.
Usually, ICT high-schools do not pay much attention to BA believing that it doesn't put a value on
the education of future programmers. However, when programmers understand BA basic concepts, they
will develop their hard and soft skills with increasing competitiveness in the labor market. In this paper,
we attack some ideas concerning opportunities to implement the BA approach and techniques for
education in the ICT domain.
2. Literature Review
During our review, we discovered a lack of research in both the common BA approach and BA
application in education. It means BA is underestimated as a powerful learning tool, and we have the
intention to cover this gap in the rest of the paper.
ICTERI-2021, Vol I: Main Conference, PhD Symposium, Posters and Demonstrations, September 28 – October 2, 2021, Kherson, Ukraine
EMAIL: v.sklyar@csn.khai.edu
ORCID: 0000-0001-5425-4098
©️ 2021 Copyright for this paper by its authors.
Use permitted under Creative Commons License Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0).
CEUR Workshop Proceedings (CEUR-WS.org)
Some professional editions introducing the profession of business analyst, the common concepts,
and the business analysis process. Nowadays this book discusses BA in the context of digital
technologies and the role and competencies a modern analyst needs [2]. However, such professional
publications do not take into account the needs of high-school education. Quite often, the BA approach
is related to the research with financial statement data including business strategy analysis, accounting
analysis, financial analysis, and prospective analysis [3].
Another approach in BA-related research is to analyze the institutions using the business anatomy
model, to identify the underlying causes of the problems observed [4]. Company analysis is a powerful
tool in developing both pieces of research case studies and teaching case studies. Researchers identify
the case studies based on company analysis, case studies published by top publishers on company
analysis, the difference between research case study and teaching case study, company analysis as a
methodology in management research, and effective method of developing research case studies based
on company analysis using a framework for a research case study based on company analysis, and the
possible recommendations based on analysis [5].
We need to mention also the article presenting a methodological tool for analysis and evaluation of
business processes of Ukrainian enterprises [6]. This article proposes a methodology for the
identification of “problem” areas of certain business processes by calculating averagely weighted,
integral, and generic indicators of efficiency and effectiveness. Assessment of the efficiency and
effectiveness of business processes by the specified criteria and indicators allows one to monitor the
current activity of the enterprise and evaluate the effectiveness of its operations at every moment.
Most BA publications are devoted to business and entrepreneurship education. The assessed
education factors include the following: level of the innovation potential of an enterprise; degree of
utilization of the business analysis instruments at the enterprise; level of interconnections between the
corporate information systems and business analysis; the needs of the corporate information systems
[7]. Some results indicated that a gap does exist between business students’ skills/competencies and the
needed skills/competencies in the job market [8]. The results of such studies are important for both
business educators and employers in bridging the skills gap. The above researchers indicate a gap in
business education, but we also can find a gap in ICT education [9].
One of the prospective areas of BA application is different business domain studies, such as banking,
e-commerce, e-learning, telemedicine, smart manifesting, etc. As an example, we can mention the
safety and security domain [10], when the BA approach supports exercises directed to safety and
security assessment and assurance [11].
Also, we include in our review scope researches related to the case method and project-oriented
approach. The case method or case study means the analysis of realistic economic, managerial, and
other situations (cases) to teach participants certain skills during the discussion of the case, including
through the training of other participants [12]. Firstly, the case method was implemented at Harvard
Business School in the 1920s [13]. At that time, teachers were faced with the problem of the lack of
actual business manuals. The way was found as a description of specific situations from the practice of
real companies. The cases as simplified descriptions of problematic business situations were offered to
students, and students had to find and substantiate solutions. From the field of business education, the
case method was extended to social sciences and STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and
Mathematics) [14]. Since the 1990-s the case method started to apply in the post-soviet countries. It is
worth mentioning a fundamental work “The Case Study Method: Anatomy and Application” [15]
published in Kyiv in 2002.
Most of the studies in the area of case method are traditionally devoted to business education [16],
and we emphasize on the need for experience transfer from business education to technical education.
So, there are not many papers demonstrating case method application for the STEM domain, but
between the known papers we pay attention to the few following kinds of research.
The case method is used for teaching an automobile design course at some Chinese colleges [17].
Only some qualitative assessments are provided in the paper. The conclusion is that the case method
positively affects students’ understanding of the material, creates a positive and creative atmosphere
during teaching sessions, and permits the creation of a high-quality interdisciplinary curriculum.
Russian studies related to the use of the case method in chemistry have shown an increase in student
achievement and professional self-awareness [18], which coincides with the results obtained for
entrepreneurial education [19].
There are some empirical studies, which do not confirm the effectiveness of case method application
in education. For example, the paper [20] explores hypotheses about the impact of case studies and
other teaching methods (lectures and business simulations, which means working with an interactive
model of the economic system) on the development of skills such as problem-solving, interpersonal
communication, and professional identity. This study shows that business simulation is more effective
than the case method from the point of view of developing students’ skills.
One more important issue is a set of indicators that are used for case method effectiveness assessment
as well as for education effectiveness assessment as a whole. Such indicators include indicators
determined by teachers and indicators determined by students [21]. It should be noted that, in our
opinion, the assessment of the learning process by students only is quite subjective, since students do
not fully possess information about the actual usefulness of the acquired skills and knowledge.
The case method is also used to conduct scientific research in the conditions of the impossibility of
collecting data sufficient to perform statistical analysis [22], when, firstly, it is necessary to analyze the
object or phenomenon directly in the context of its development, secondly, it is impossible to control
the environment in which the object is located or a phenomenon occurs, and thirdly, the number of
instances insufficient for static analysis is observed. A comparative analysis of the main approaches to
the implementation of the epistemological and methodological aspects of the case method was
performed in [23], while the case method allows combining quantitative and qualitative research
methods [24]. For example, the cases in the study provide a descriptive representation of three
innovative career and technical education programs in energy management and alternative energy
programs at the U.S. community college level [25].
Researchers state some important features of Project-Based Learning (PBL), like the following [26].
PBL projects are central, not peripheral to the curriculum, so students learn the fundamentals of
discipline via the project. Projects involve students in investigations that provoke the transformation
and construction of knowledge. Projects are student-driven and do not end up at a predetermined result
since students are provided with more autonomy than usually. The project should be indifferent to usual
school exercises. For example, [27] describes a case study devoted to the implementation of software
development on the agile base between software engineering students. Results of the case demonstrate
the essential improvement in understanding the agile development process. A conclusion is that most
students became ready for employment at software development companies.
Survey [28] represents results of applicability analysis of 84 skills related to business analysis. These
skills are grouped under soft skills, business, technical, and green parts. Results of the survey discovered
that soft skills for business analysts are the most important while business skills are more important
than green skills (which include sustainability strategy, management, assessment, and engineering), and
green skills are more important than technical skills. It is better to train business and green skills in a
postgraduate degree. Some knowledge gap of graduated students has been identified for all four groups
of skills.
3. Objective and tasks
Based on the literature review, we recognize some gaps in areas of research related to Business
Analysis learning in ICT education. These gaps are in the area of some lack of empirical data as well
as a lack of theoretical basis to understand and research the importance of BA in ICT education, to
analyze BA methods and exercises from the point of view of the educational task, and to improve the
case method and project-based learning related with BA. The objective of this paper is to develop a
practical learning framework with the implementation of BA methods in ICT education. To achieve the
paper objective, we perform the following research steps:
• Firstly, we analyzed general issues of BA in ICT education;
• Secondly, we defined skillset and methodologies supported with BA learning;
• Thirdly, we screened BA activities and exercises applicable for ICT education;
• After that, we proposed a taxonomy for learning effectiveness indicators related to BA;
• Finally, we develop a practical BA learning framework with the implementation of the case
method and PBL.
4. General Issues of Business Analysis Applicable in ICT Education
The BABOK Guide [1] describes knowledge areas for business analysis, as well as tasks and main
competencies, techniques, and perspectives concerning BA. The primary purpose of the BABOK is to
define the business analyst profession and provide a set of applied practices. The main goal of business
analysis is launching positive changes for a company or an institution by defining goals and needs
following by value-based recommendations, actions, and solutions.
The core content of the BABOK is composed of tasks organized into six knowledge areas, including
BA planning and monitoring, elicitation and collaboration, requirements lifecycle management,
strategy analysis, requirements analysis, and design definition, and solution evaluation. The Business
Analysis Key Concepts, Underlying Competencies, Techniques, and Perspectives sections form the
extended content in the BABOK that helps business analysts to perform their daily duties and activities.
Business Analysis Core Concept Model (BACCM) defines a conceptual framework for the business
analyst profession. The six core concepts in the BACCM are: Change, Need, Solution, Stakeholder,
Value, and Context. Each core concept is fundamental for the BA performance, and all the concepts are
equal and necessary (Fig. 1).
Figure 1: Six-Core Concepts of Business Analysis (source: BABOK Guide)
BABOK provides a list of techniques applicable for requirements analyses and elicitation including
benchmarking and market analysis, brainstorming, mind mapping, workshops, business cases, business
model canvas, concept modeling, data flow diagrams, interview, focus groups, functional
decomposition glossary, interface analysis, process modeling, prototyping, root cause analysis,
sequence diagrams, stakeholders’ analysis, personas, state modeling, etc.
Each technique description includes a list of stakeholders who probably might participate in the
exercise or who could affect or to be affected. The generic list of stakeholders includes the following
roles: business analyst, customer, domain subject matter expert, end-user, implementation subject
matter expert, operational support, project manager, regulator, sponsor, supplier, and tester.
Requirements are considered from the point of view of four groups including Business Requirements,
Stakeholder Requirements, Solution Requirements (including both functional and non-functional), and
Transition Requirements (see Fig. 2).
Figure 2: Requirements Groups in Business Analysis (source: BABOK Guide)
5. Skillset and Methodologies Supported with Business Analysis Learning
Reasons for BA learning include its support of the case method approach with PBL as well as the
development of students’ hard and soft skills (see Fig. 3). BABOK provides evidence that BA learning
and training support the development of such hard skillset as analytical thinking and problem-solving,
business knowledge, and tools and technical knowledge. Analytical thinking and problem-solving skills
are required to identify and define problems, extract key information from data and develop workable
solutions for the problems identified to test and verify the cause of the problem and develop solutions
to resolve the problems identified. These core competencies include creative thinking, decision making,
learning, problem-solving, systems thinking, conceptual thinking, and visual thinking.
Business knowledge is required to perform of understanding on customers" needs and preferences,
business environments and their dynamics, staff skills, experiences and potentials, and the business"
overall foreseeable direction. Business knowledge underlying competencies include the following:
business acumen, industry knowledge, organization knowledge, solution knowledge, and methodology
knowledge.
Figure 3: A Concept of Business Analysis implementation to enforce ICT Education
Tools and technology core competencies include knowledge of the following: office productivity
tools and technology, communication tools and technology, and, what is the most important, business
analysis tools and technology. The last category supports such capabilities as the following: modeling,
diagramming, documenting, analyzing, and mapping requirements, identifying relationships between
requirements, tracking and storing requirements artifacts, and communicating with stakeholders.
Modeling tools can provide functionality that assists business analysts with several modeling related
tasks, including creating models and visuals to help align stakeholders and outline the relationship of
needs, entities, requirements, stakeholders, and context; tracing visuals to business rules, text
requirements, scope statements, scope visuals, data requirements, product needs, and other requirements
context and information; and creating an executable for a proprietary engine to execute the model or
generate an application code which can be enhanced by a developer. These tools frequently validate
compliance with the notation. Some modeling tools support the creation of executable models, such as
business process management systems, which allow for the creation of executable process models, and
business rules management systems, which allow for the evaluation of captured business rules.
Requirements management technologies can provide functionality that assists business analysts with
several requirements management related tasks including requirements workflow including baselining,
approvals and sign-off, change control, and implementation status; traceability including backward
traceability forwards traceability; relationships between requirements, and impact analysis of
requirements change; configuration management of requirements and requirements artifacts; and
verifying the quality of requirements through checking for defined characteristics and relationships.
Issue tracking tools can provide functionality that assists business analysts with some issues tracking
related tasks such as tracking requirements risks, tracking requirements conflicts and issues, and
tracking defects. Prototyping and simulation tools can provide functionality that assists business
analysts with prototyping or simulating the solution or pieces of the solution.
Concerning soft skills, BABOK presents the following three categories: behavioral characteristics,
communication skills, and interaction skills. So, all these skills can be trained during BA exercises
performed by students. Behavioral characteristics have been found to increase personal effectiveness in
professional practice. These core competencies include ethics, personal accountability, trustworthiness,
organization and time management, and adaptability. Communication skills core competencies include
verbal communication, non-verbal communication, written communication, and listening. Interaction
skills core competencies include facilitation, leadership and influencing, teamwork, negotiation, and
conflict resolution, and teaching.
We agree with many advantages of case method application for education such as orientation to
students’ individuality, development of entrepreneurial and managerial skills as well as problem-
solving abilities and critical thinking, increasing motivation for learning, active involvement in the
educational process, getting experience of teamwork and communication, decision making in
conditions of stress and uncertainty. From this point of view, BA provides many advantages, since most
parts of BA exercises are industrial cases. The BA case can support students’ hard skills development
in engineering through requirements analysis, elicitation, and management.
On the other hand, engineering hard skills can be developed with the PBL approach supported by
BA. PBL is aimed at training students to use the acquired knowledge and skills, and most importantly
to be able to solve real professional tasks. Project training usually runs in parallel with the main schedule
and helps students transfer knowledge and skills from classes to the real work environment in which
they plunge during the project activity. The advantages of PBL are very similar to the advantages of the
case method. There is active and creative learning of students, facing real life and real professional
work, a positive impact on student motivation, training in teamwork skills, project management, and
BA. At the same time, it is a huge challenge for students and teachers, which can be pretty unusual and
hire extra effort.
6. Business Analysis Activities and Exercises Applicable for ICT Education
In general, there are the following main activities performed by business analysts during IT projects
running:
• Pre-sales which include activities related to preliminary negotiation with a potential client
communicating him generic information about future project scope and price;
• Discoveries which include an initial project phase related to elicitation, analyzing, and
documenting of requirements with the execution of different kinds of BA exercises (see Table 1);
• The main project activities are usually managed under agile methodologies including backlog
prioritization and grooming with communicating requirements to the project team and organizing
User Acceptance Tests to get feedback from stakeholders;
• Internal company activities directed business processes management and improvement of the
company processes which can be described, for example, in a view of Business Process Modeling
Notation (BPMN) diagrams.
Table 1
Business Analysis exercises for ICT education
Name Description Applicability Priority
Desk research Get general knowledge about Learn general issues in the Medium
domain and project domain
Project context Context diagrams are visual tools Learn how to establish product Medium
diagramming that depict the scope of the and project borders and
product interfaces
Stakeholder Assessing a system and potential Learn how the interests of Medium
analysis changes to it as they relate to stakeholders should be
relevant and interested parties addressed in a project plan,
policy, program, etc.
Interview with A structured conversation where Learn how to get important Low
stakeholders participants ask a question and information during a
get an answer conversation
Market research Discover market trends and Learn market, competitions, Low
competitors’ actions and and risks to get commercial
practices perspectives
Personas and design of all the audience Make decisions concerning the High
users users’ experience
Customer journey Creation of a visual story of Learn influential channels and High
mapping customers' interactions with the touchpoints and how can you
brand impact these
Business process Representing how the current Learn how to improve process Medium
modeling process may be improved or points like speed, time, cost,
automated etc.
Design of Structural design of shared Classify the content in a clear High
information information environments and understandable way
architecture including websites
Project Define project scope, road map Learn how to build a minimum Medium
prioritization and put priorities viable product
High-level Explains the architecture that Draw the diagram that Medium
architecture would be used to develop a provides an overview of an
modeling system entire system identifying the
main components
Third-party Extension of external data using Check which existing APIs can Medium
integration analysis APIs (Application Program be used to simplify the design
Interfaces)
Database structure Ensures that all data objects Draw the Entity-Relationship Medium
modeling required by the database are diagram
accurately represented
The discovery stage is relatively independent of the business environment and can be established for
students separately from the full scope of the real project. If students are involved in the real live project,
they can perform discovery activities depending on their skills and abilities. Secondly, discovery
includes most exercises and cases which students can perform one by one. We analyzed typical
exercises which ICT companies perform during the discovery phase. The results are presented in Table
1, including the following: name of exercises, description of exercises, the applicability of exercises for
the education of students, the priority of exercises used for the education of students (high, medium, or
low).
A list of BA exercises in Table 1 is not comprehensive and may be extended depending on the
curriculum. For example, the focus for the software engineering curriculum can be displaced to details
of the design of high-level architecture, third-party integration analysis, or the design of a database. BA
exercises with high priority including personas method, customer journey mapping, and design of
information architecture are the most applicable for ICT education. Priorities also can be updated
depending on specific objectives of the learning course program.
7. Taxonomy of Learning Effectiveness Indicators related to Business Analysis
We proposed three-level taxonomy of E-learning effectiveness indicators in [9]. This taxonomy is a
good starting point to analyze the known empirical researches, but also the taxonomy can be enriched
by the results of new experiments.
Researches, which are analyzed above in this paper, deal mainly with the education performance
indicators defined by teachers and students in the learning process. It should be noted that assessment
of the learning process by students is quite subjective since students do not fully possess objective
information about the actual usefulness of the acquired skills and knowledge. The same applies to some
extent to teachers. Complaints about the lag of teachers’ experience from industrial daily life's realities
are justified in many cases (Table 2).
Therefore, if teachers are working in the framework of the curriculum only, they can also not always
fully appreciate the objective usefulness of the knowledge and skills taught. Therefore, in our opinion,
it is necessary to take into account two more important categories of indicators. The first category is
effectiveness indicators determined by graduates during some time after the end of graduation, and the
second category is effectiveness indicators determined by the employer. A challenge is to take valid
and relevant data to estimate these kinds of indicators, but modern online technology can help to resolve
this issue. We also put in the taxonomy some metrics related to the application of the Learning
Management System (LMS), since LMS is a centralized environment for administration,
documentation, tracking, reporting, and delivery of learning courses [29]. In the actual paper, we
updated the existing taxonomy with specific BA learning indicators. The main ideas to develop BA-
specific indicators can be taken from the skillset that is already described in the paper. Concerning
students’ hard skills development, we consider the BA analytical thinking and problem-solving,
business knowledge, tools and technical knowledge. The same approach we use to provide soft skills-
related metrics, which cover abilities to follow BA learning as well as behavioral, interaction and
communication characteristics.
Input data for indicators application can be taken from different kinds of surveys organized as a part
of experimental researches. It is worth to design experiments by the way which would allow to figure
out some changing of indicators’ value during the time of observation.
Measurement of indicators taken from opinions of graduates or employers is not typical for such
kinds of surveys. However, it is dramatically important to learn both groups of stakeholders since they
are the main consumers of education results. A motivation to includes graduates and employers to
survey is explained as opportunity to understand longtime results of obtained knowledges and skills.
Such information clarifies a real value of educational programs. A correlation between teachers/students
indicators and graduates/employers indicators could be a subject of future research.
Table 2
Taxonomy of learning effectiveness indicators related to Business Analysis
Stakeholder Group Example of indicators
who defines of indicators
indicators
Teachers Students’ knowledge Performance assessment metrics
assessment Analytical thinking assessment
Problem-solving assessment
Knowledge business assessment
Modeling tools application metrics
Requirements management technologies application
metrics
Issue tracking tools application metrics
Prototyping and simulation tools application metrics
Results of the passing of tests and exams
General results of studies at the university
Students’ soft skills Soft skills assessment metrics
assessment Abilities to follow BA learning
Behavioral characteristics assessment
Communication skills assessment
Interaction skills assessment
Self-assessment Abilities to drive BA learning
Satisfaction with BA learning
Process and LMS Process and LMS assessment metrics
assessment
Students Self-assessment Abilities to follow BA learning
Satisfaction with BA learning
Process and LMS Process and LMS assessment metrics
assessment
Teachers’ assessment Abilities to drive BA learning
The influence on the Influence on the theory understanding
development of Influence on the development of hard/soft skills
competencies
Opportunities of The influence on the development of hard/soft skills
applying the
competencies in
practice
Graduates Degree of satisfaction Quality of the working environment
with the former Salary
educational process
Opportunities of The influence on the actual hard/soft skills
applying the
competencies in
practice
Employers Satisfaction with the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)
employees’ results Salary
8. Business Analysis Learning Framework with Case Method and Project-
Based Learning
An integral part of this research joins all outputs in a view of the BA learning framework supported
with the case method and PBL. This framework is presented in Fig. 4. Below we briefly discuss the
main parts of the framework. PBL principles are related to the approach to choose and drive the project
as the core practical activity of the course. We adopt the approach proposed in [26] with the following
principles:
• Projects are the central item of the course and the central teaching strategy because students
learn the course via the project;
• Projects involve students in a special kind of investigation directed to knowledge construction
and transformation;
• Students play the main role in project performance, and projects are realistic.
Figure 4: A structure of the BA learning framework supported with case method and PBL
Principles of case method implementation are closely related to the PBL approach. The main idea is
to propose for students a real software-hardware product and real documents covering the needs and
approaches of BA. Successful case method implementation suggests consideration of all best practices
related to PBL. More support for the case method and PBL can be done with the right organization of
students’ homework [30]. This includes supplying students with all materials and instructions.
Principles of homework are the following: a collection of online materials in the LMS area;
combination, depending on the material being studied, of various forms of homework (such as
classroom individual or group study, extracurricular individual or group study); student-centered
approach with the formation of an individual trajectory of the education and homework depending on
the individual preferences of students and the recommendations of teachers; focus aimed at the
development of creative and research competencies; monitoring by the teacher to analyze the adoption
of learning material by students; analysis of the opportunities to improve the homework process; taking
into account curriculums of other interrelated academic courses.
ICT courses development and improvement bases on using modern design tools and LMS. A modern
approach to e-learning implementation consists of the development of massive open online courses
(MOOCs) [31]. Other MOOCs related issues lay in student feedback monitoring and continuous
improvement. For learning effectiveness monitoring teachers should choose a set of appropriate
effectiveness indicators. An example of taxonomy is presented in Table 2. Results of effectiveness
monitoring are outputs of a case study organized to supply stakeholders with relevant empirical data.
Periodical field review can be a method to implement a case study. Also, other relevant case studies can
be included in data collection to support case meta-analysis. BA exercise base (see Table 1) should be
updated periodically to provide a set of state-of-the-art cases [1].
9. Conclusions
In this paper, we obtain the following results. General issues of the BABOK Guide [1] have been
analyzed. The core content of the BABOK is composed of business analysis tasks organized into six
knowledge areas, including BA planning and monitoring, elicitation and collaboration, requirements
lifecycle management, strategy analysis, requirements analysis and design definition, and solution
evaluation. Business Analysis Core Concept Model (BACCM) defines a conceptual framework for the
business analysis profession. The six core concepts in the BACCM are: Change, Need, Solution,
Stakeholder, Value, and Context.
Reasons for BA learning include its support of the case method approach with PBL as well as the
development of students’ hard and soft skills. BABOK provides evidence that BA learning and training
support the development of such hard skillset as analytical thinking and problem-solving, business
knowledge, and tools and technical knowledge. Concerning soft skills, BABOK presents the following
three categories: behavioral characteristics, communication skills, and interaction skills. So, all these
skills can be trained during BA exercises performed by students. In general, we can conclude, BA
learning supports a design thinking mindset, which is dramatically important for modern software and
computer engineers.
Discovery activity is the most important for BA learning. This stage is relatively independent of the
business environment and can be established for students separately from the full scope of the real
project. If students are involved in the real live project, they can perform discovery activities depending
on their skills and abilities. BA exercises with high priority including personas method, customer
journey mapping, and design of information architecture are the most applicable for ICT education.
Priorities also can be updated depending on specific objectives of the learning course program.
Taxonomy for indicators of BA learning effectiveness is proposed. This taxonomy contains three
the following levels: stakeholder who defines indicators including teachers, students, graduates and
employers, group of indicators and single indicators. Finally, we develop a practical BA learning
framework with the implementation of the case method and PBL, which includes the following entities:
principles of case method implementation, principles of PBL implementation, principles of homework
organization, ICT courses development and improvement, BA learning effectiveness monitoring, BA
exercises, and case study collection. The practical value of the paper is determined by the development
of a framework for effective BA learning implementation based on the principles of PBL and the case
method. A theoretical novelty of the paper lies in a technique of BA learning effectiveness analysis
supported with practical recommendations on how to implement it in ICT education.
However, this is a start point, when we set some hypotheses related to BA learning effectiveness.
To confirm it, we need to organize some case studies to be able to obtain new experimental data.
Appropriate questionnaires design and distribution between teachers involved in ICT education can be
the next step of the research.
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