Why a Business Analyst is needed?
It is a matter of prime importance that we establish a clarity over the need of a business analyst in an IT project.
Business analysis was included as a domain responsible for analysing requirements where the activities were restricted within the frame of the organisation.
Though system analysis had been an important part of the development process in an IT project , the issues cropped because of the lack of understanding of system analysts regarding the things beyond the IT system.
System analysts weren’t much able to understand the view from the business perspective of the requirement.
System analysts were criticised for only focussing on the requirements from a system’s standpoint and failing to consider the actual needs of the organisation from a business’ standpoint.
For example, there were times when organisations were specifically looking out for a solution at a business level than a system level , but this was not under the purview of a system analyst.
Accordingly, a more wider role of business analyst came into picture that had the focus of both the business and system needs.
Techniques like requirement engineering were devised to make sure that both the business and solution requirements were firstly identified in depth , thereafter given the right priority and finally be allowed to deliver to client.
BA Maturity Model
The rising scope of business analysis over the past couple of decades has paved the way for the creation of a BA maturity model.
The stages shown in the diagram below reflect the different components of a business analyst role :
- the prime focus remains on defining the requirements clearly as a base for the whole development or change.
- the focus beyond this extends to process improvement along with the the attendant impacts on people and organisational structure;
- the progression into the shoes of a trusted advisor for undertaking business improvement plans, with an emphasis on seeking the answer to the question that ‘What problem are we trying to solve?’ and showing the best ideal way to solve the problem.
Many change requests and projects start with a mere thought/idea. This thought/idea is given a fomal shape by defining the objectives of the projects , its desired deliverables and the overall timescale.
However, it is possible that this thought/idea could be weak and might not be of much benefit to the organisation
An appropriate example to quote here could be the the purchase of a software product (or an enterprise-level suite of software products) because it will believed that it will help the organisation in optimizing its processes and improving its revenue.
Without analyzing the ways it would benefit the organisation as a whole , there is a high risk involved in buying the software product.
We must chart out a clear picture and understand the problems we could overcome through the use of that software product . If we don’t do this , there is surely a high possibility that our desired business objectives might suffer a miss and the project gets fail.
In a worst case, such a step would eat away a lot of money from the project budget and our organisation will have to bear the consequences.
The maturity model lays forward an important aspect of overall business analysis . It is that the initial idea or thought must be identified clearly to make sure that it addresses the problem effectively.
Not only the initial idea but also the options available at hand should be evaluated properly before proceeding further where it might get difficult to pull back everything.
Business analysts have the right mix of skills and approaches to handle the obscure and uncertain business requirements like ‘we need to be optimize our resources’, ‘the processes are a bit too old fashioned and inefficient’, ‘we intend to raise our capability standards’.
Therefore, business analysts are well positioned to identify the underlying causes of the issues being faced by the clients and presenting clearly what all needs to be resolved.
One of the key components of the overall business analysis process is to understand that there are different viewpoints of any business scenario.
In absence of mutual understanding and general agreement , it is next to impossible to lay down a solution that is agreed upon by the key stakeholders.
Business analysis is a well rounded activity that takes everything associated with the business situation in its purview and presents the solution of the problem in a clear manner after thorough investigation.
Although IT system could be considered as the core of the proposed solution to improve the business and make it effective, we cannot deliver the true benefits without examining the other related factors like people , process , structure of company, their culture etc.
