What is a business analyst anyway? And why it’s more important than ever.
After posting my last Reflections of a Business Analyst blog, a business associate said he shared it in his monthly company newsletter. He then commented that he still didn’t actually know what a business analyst does but it sounded really cool. I realised this is actually a question that I am asked every single time I am introduced to new friends and they find out what I do. I even remember asking someone this very question when I first met her and she told me she was a business analyst. When she explained what her job involved, I remember saying, “That sounds really interesting. I’d be really good at that.” Years later with a Bachelor of Commerce-sized HECS debt, I became one and I stand by what I originally said. It is interesting.
With the onset of a global pandemic earlier this year, many businesses have been forced to rapidly adapt and implement change across their organisation as activities moved online. A recent pulse survey conducted by the Australian Institute of management confirmed that 94% of all businesses surveyed have initiated remote working practices. Now more than ever, it is an imperative for businesses to understand why business analysis is essential to helping your business manage these global changes.
Why is it so hard to understand what a business analyst does?
There are a number of reasons why it confuses people when a business analyst explains their job.
• The role of business analyst has changed over the years
• The word business in the ‘business analyst’ title is ambiguous
• A business analyst wears many hats
The evolution of a business analyst role
In the old days, actually not that long, before Agile was the word of the century, the role of a business analyst was partly a conduit between a business (the users of a system) and the developers of a system.
Essentially a business analyst was the meat between the sandwich involving business operations people on one side and IT people on the other. A business analyst played the role of interpreter.
Nowadays in the agile world there is a lot more interaction between these two parties and a business analyst is no longer there to just interpret.
The role of business analyst is fluid and responsive by nature. Their daily activities will also greatly vary depending on the type of project (technology project or merely process improvement on its own), what stage of the project they’re in (planning, design, requirements gathering, build, testing, training, implementation), the stakeholders involved or even the how the organisation wants to utilise the capabilities of the business analyst (making them business analyst, product owner and project manager all in one).
What does a business analyst actually do?
People ask me, so you analyse businesses? Yes that’s exactly what we do. Well partly. But which parts? All parts!
There are many specialisations within the title of business analyst and those could be relating to finance, data, systems, reporting or just about anything. For the purposes of this article, I will be describing the life and times of a generic business analyst who dabbles in all these specialisations.
A CEO, CIO or COO will generally engage a business analyst because they want to embark on business improvement initiatives…essentially they want to implement some sort of change.
As we know recently change has been forced upon us in the way of lockdowns and working remotely and so the improvement initiatives have moved from nice to have to essential.
The role of a business analyst these days is one of facilitation. Through an objective position, a business analyst will ensure:
• Identification of key stakeholders = The right people are involved in the design of any changes to a business
• The right questions are being asked and answered = This will ensure the right solutions are being sought to the business issues at hand
• Elicitation and comprehension of business requirements = The needs of the business are extracted from and understood universally by members of a business and technology vendors
• The needs of a business are being met in the design of any new processes and/or technology
• Measurement of crucial performance factors and suggestion adjustments where necessary
The life and times of a business analyst
Once engaged on these business improvement initiatives, a business analyst would typically perform the following end to end project activities:
• Confirm scope of the business improvement initiatives
• Conduct a review of all documented policies, processes and procedures that relate to the scope
• Define the business processes at a high level (process framework) so project size and timelines can be better understood and refined
• Document the current processes and elicit the issues with each current process from discussions with key stakeholders
• Facilitate the design of a future process with key stakeholders that will solve the current issues
• Document business requirements based on the needs of the business
• Get agreement on those future processes and requirements and ensure they are fully understood by all key stakeholders
• Gather existing templates and facilitate the creation of new ones based on the future requirements and processes (reference data)
• Facilitate and/or personally test a new process or technology solution
• Facilitate the creation of procedural documentation
• Conduct or facilitate training of users in the new processes or technology solution
• Facilitate the implementation of the new processes or technology solution into business as usual (BAU)
Getting into the detail
Even if the size of the project is large enough to have a full-time project manager, that project manager will never be getting into the detail. A project manager has an overarching view of the project at a high level and will keep everyone on track with timelines, budget, scope etc but they will rely on the business analyst to raise project issues and risks, and let them know when decisions need to be made.
A business analyst is expected to be able to explain any part of a process, requirement, issue, risk or decision in detail at any point in time to any stakeholder. A business analyst has all their fingers in all the pies!
Are you getting more of a picture now of what a business analyst does?
Business analysts are smooth operators
So, although the role of business analyst is fluid and responsive by nature, their key function is one of facilitation. Successful business analysts tend to be clear communicators, facilitators, negotiators, team players and they have a strategic and analytical mindset. And they need to be. I couldn’t imagine how a project would not fall down without the business analyst having these qualities. As I said in my previous blog, a business analyst will bring all the information about a business together, analyse that information and create insights to assist the CEO in making great business decisions in the current project and in the future.
I shall leave you with this quote by the International Institute of Business Analysis (IIBA), a non-profit professional association, “A business analyst is an agent of change.” They are the future.
