Current-state discovery from real usage evidence
How a business analyst establishes the current state from evidence rather than opinion: usage and login data, observation, product and license inventory, cross-product hand-offs and spreadsheet workarounds, and how to scope that review when time is short.
Discover how a customer is leveraging existing products to establish the current state.
~8 min read · 9 practice questions ·
What the exam expects
- Explain why current-state analysis is worth the time, and answer a sponsor who wants to skip it.
- Pick the sources that show how products are really used: login and usage data, record activity, and observation of people at work.
- Reconcile a gap between what stakeholders say and what the org shows, by confirming with the people who do the work.
- Inventory products and licenses by team and process, and document how data moves between products, including manual hand-offs.
- Treat workarounds such as spreadsheets as part of the current state and find out why they exist.
- Scope the depth of the review by goal impact when time is short.
Key terms: current state (how the business works today, documented before scoping change); adoption metrics (login rates, record creation and updates); job shadowing or observation (watching people do the work); workaround or shadow system (work done outside the intended process, such as a spreadsheet); hand-off (where work or data passes between people or systems).
Key facts
- Detail
- Login rates, record creation, record updates
- Detail
- Up to 20,000 records for the past 6 months; download for more
- Detail
- Monitor Login History or Manage Users
- Detail
- Active users, most-viewed pages, active user, feature and permission set licenses
- Detail
- Company Information (point in time) or Digital Wallet License Utilization (real time, by product)
- Detail
- Spreadsheets users maintain may signal adoption blockers
- Detail
- Before scoping, when the current process isn't well understood
- Detail
- Start from existing documentation, then complete it with the workers
Sources for this section (6)
- Measure Salesforce Usagetrailhead.salesforce.com (opens in a new tab)
- Monitor Login Historyhelp.salesforce.com (opens in a new tab)
- Lightning Usage Apphelp.salesforce.com (opens in a new tab)
- View Your Org's User Licenseshelp.salesforce.com (opens in a new tab)
- Explore Documentation Typestrailhead.salesforce.com (opens in a new tab)
- Learn the Customs of Your Customertrailhead.salesforce.com (opens in a new tab)
- Why is job shadowing needed when login and usage data are already available?
- When should a BA analyse and document the current state?
- How far back does the Login History page go?
- Why record a spreadsheet workaround instead of excluding it?
The questions are free to read. Answers with their sources and self-grading are included with the pack.
Keep reading with the Business Analyst pack
- Core concepts
- Exam traps
- Worked scenario
The pack includes:
- All 22 lessons of the Business Analyst guide, with reading progress
- Interactive decision walks and step-by-step sequence steppers
- Inline practice questions and one-click topic practice (9 questions for this lesson)
- An official source cited for every claim
- An AI tutor that answers from the guide
- Unlimited timed practice exams