Module 11 · Business Analysis Fundamentals
"Final project: Harbourline's tracking request"
Plan your final project, a complete business analysis pack for a freight company whose operations director wants a customer tracking app, and start with the data.
About 20 minutes
The problem
Your final project moves to a new organisation. Harbourline Freight moves containers and air cargo into West Africa. Its operations director, Mr Emeka Nwosu, sends this:
"Customers keep complaining that they don't know where their shipments are. We need a tracking app with GPS, like the courier companies have. Can you write the requirements so we can get quotes?"
You've seen this shape of request before: a solution, arriving first. Your job is to produce the business analysis pack that should come before any quotes: the real problem and its size, who's involved, how the process works now, what should change, what the solution must do, how you'll know it worked, and whether it's worth the money.
The concept
The pack, and where each part comes from
| Part | What it contains | Lesson |
|---|---|---|
| Problem statement | who, what, the cost, the measure, with no solution named | 1 |
| Stakeholder register and RACI | power, interest, approach | 2 |
| Elicitation plan | techniques, interviewees, key questions | 3 |
| Baseline | on-time rate and lateness from the data, by mode and route | 4 |
| As-is and to-be process | swimlanes, with the problems marked | 5 |
| Requirements | functional, non-functional and business rules, prioritised with MoSCoW | 6 |
| User stories | with Given/When/Then acceptance criteria | 7 |
| KPI cards | definition, baseline, target, owner | 8 |
| Business case | options including do nothing, payback, risks, a recommendation | 9 |
| UAT and adoption | test cases, traceability, adoption plan | 10 |
Start from the data, then ask why
Customers complain about not knowing where shipments are, but why do they need to know? Usually because a shipment is late and nobody told them. If deliveries were reliable, or customers were told in advance when one would be late, would they still want GPS? That's the question your analysis has to answer before anyone gets a quote.
Example
A first look at Harbourline's delivery data, for delivered shipments:
| Route target | Delivered | On time |
|---|---|---|
| 1 day | 200 | 70.5% |
| 2–7 days | 755 | 77.2% |
| 16 days or more | 1,456 | 77.2% |
About a quarter of deliveries are late on every kind of route, and the one-day routes are the worst. A tracking app would show customers their shipment is late; it wouldn't make it on time. The pack you write may well recommend something different from what Mr Nwosu asked for, such as proactive delay notifications, realistic targets or fixing the causes of lateness, and that's exactly what a BA is for.
Walkthrough
- Download the logistics dataset and calculate the on-time rate overall, by mode and by route.
- Write the problem statement without naming a solution.
- List the stakeholders: operations, customer service, account managers, customers, drivers and shipping lines, IT.
- Map the as-is process from booking to delivery, including how (and whether) customers are told about delays today.
- Open the project brief on the course page and plan which part of the pack you'll write each day.
Practice
Practice
How many delivered shipments arrived late (transit days greater than the route's target) with a delivery date in 2026?
Practice
What is the on-time rate for delivered Air shipments? One decimal place.
Task
6 minWrite the problem statement for Harbourline in 2 to 4 sentences: who's affected, what's happening, what it costs or risks, and how success would be measured. Use at least two numbers from the data, and don't name a solution (no app, tracking system, GPS or platform).
Your work is checked for
- Says who's affected (customers)
- At least two numbers from the data
- Says how success would be measured
- Doesn't name a solution: no app, GPS, tracking system, software or platform
- Between 30 and 110 words
Check your understanding
Answer every question to check.