Reflections of a Business Analyst
I’m starting to understand how integral the role of the business analyst will be in the shaping of this new world saturated with technology and choices and I thought I’d share a few little nuggets of my insights from client projects and conferences in 2019.
I also think it’s a testament to how important business analysts are in the current climate that they have their own convention across the world, the IIBA Business Analysts Professionals Day, which I was lucky enough to attend late last year.
The influential role of a Business Analyst
As it turns out the role of a Business Analyst is extremely important to the business itself, not just to the project team. A Business Analysts sole purpose if you had to whittle it down to just one thing, is to assist the CEO in making great decisions. Without a good Business Analyst to provide insights, the CEO is unable to do their job well. Until I heard this I never really thought about it that way, but now that I reflect, that is exactly how it plays out in businesses I’ve worked with.
What to look for in a future Business Analyst
The standard skillset of a Business Analyst includes human centred skills like:
• Problem solving
• Critical thinking
• Professional ethics
• Teamwork
• Digital literacy
New Business Analyst skills that will be required more and more in the future are:
• Global citizenship
• Innovation
• Leadership skills such as empowering others
Although really cool, robots are not creative. Humans are. That’s why technology will never replace a Business Analyst and they will always be in high demand. If you are looking to build on some of these Business Analyst skills a great place to explore would be Sprint Agile.
Creating an agile environment
Did you know technology projects are taking 30% longer to implement than they did 10 years ago? How can that be, you ask? The Agile wave claimed to streamline projects. Agile has become such a buzz word to throw around in projects these days, but the effectiveness of Agile when you aren’t creating the environment around your Business Analyst that supports agility will guarantee failure.
Making a hive for creativity and agility to flourish
Physical space is really important if you want your agility to thrive. Open plan offices and hot desking are killers of agility, if I may make such a controversial statement. I have often encountered this problem in the organisations that I work with. In order to have an agile team you need a hive, a space you can own and meet for stand-ups and backlog refinement at any time, that has walls and a door, away from everyone else who is not in your agile team. You cannot be agile if you are fighting an entire office for a shared meeting room every single day.
Focus on a process that makes things easier for your customer
In a not-so-good agile execution, customer stories are not tested because they don’t have time. Phillip Owens, agile business coach, tells us how important it is to think about how the experience has changed for the customer in everything you change about your business. Too often organisations create a solution that aims to reduce the friction from within their organisation and this has a flow on effect of causing friction in the customer experience. A good process should strive to take the pain out of the customer experience, not the other way around.
I have seen this happen often in projects and I believe it is the result of only engaging with internal staff when designing a solution, and not the clients themselves. If you are writing client user stories on behalf of clients you never even asked, you’re probably doing it wrong.
Innovators that help CEO’s make great decisions!
If you are a CEO reading this, you now know what to look for in the Business Analysts you engage to work on your projects and how to effectively facilitate an agile environment to help you make great decisions!