There are several ways that you can get information about the current system that a business has. One of the first things that you would want to do is interview the key stakeholders and subject matter experts in the various areas around the organization. These would be the people that would know the system better and that can provide more detailed responses to what the current system is capable of doing. Joint Application Development or JAD is another great way to find out the ins and outs of the current system that is in place. You would gather those individuals that you have interviewed as well as others such as the general users, managers and system analysts. Gathering them to perform workshops and brainstorm ideas about the current and possibly new system that would come into place. You will want to categorize the different requirements that were taken from the interviews or the JAD. They would be either functional, operational, technical or even transitional requirements.
You need to be very clear in how you interpret and define what you have gathered. You do not want to have your analytical report to be too vague where the company doesn't have a clear picture of what has happened and what needs to be done. You need to define how the system will fit the needs of the business as well as try to fit the needs of the individual stakeholders. This will increase the buy-in from around the organization for the possible implementation to come into effect.
Mapping out the process of doing something that is simpler than one might believe. You have your end goal, something that you will have when you are done. You would start out by going down a list of things that need to be completed. From that list, you prioritize what needs to be accomplished before moving forward. You then review, attempt, correct and then have someone else try to follow the steps. You would only want to map out things that will be an improvement to what you are doing or have a basic set of standard operating procedures.
