14 Gap Analysis (and GAAP)

So far, just about everything talked about has been for projects involving entirely new work. But in many circumstances, you’ll be working on changes to existing systems, including replacing systems, and tying existing systems together. When there is an existing system, you generally want to know (and specify) “where do we want to go from here?” and “how do we get there?”. That’s where the Gap Analysis comes in.

The “gap” is the gap between where you are and where you want to be. A very common form of gap analysis is to first document the entire state of the current system, and then to document the entire state of the new or modified system, and to then show the gap as a list of things that need to be added, things that need to be modified, and how, and things that need to be removed. Sometimes, you can just directly gather the list of things to add, change, and remove.

When prioritizing work to be done (after the Gap Analysis), you’ll almost always want to put deletions as last priority, since the deletions don’t tend to add value. If the changes can be made without the additions, those will generally be prioritized first, since changes tend to be the “low hanging fruit”, meaning that that work has a better return on investment than does new implementation. But, if the new implementation is required to make the other changes, then obviously the new implementation needs to be done first.

Another thing that’s pronounced “gap” is GAAP, which stands for Generally Accepted Accounting principles. Whenever you’re doing anything with accounting, follow GAAP unless directed otherwise. Check with the firm’s accountant if in doubt. These often occur together, as in “The Gap Analysis shows that the system doesn’t follow GAAP.”. The two most common GAAP violations are not balancing each credit with a debit, and not tracking where money is coming from or where it’s going to.