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What to look for in an IT business analyst

July 5, 2007 @ Atlantic Canada's Small Business Blog » Project Management from CA

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Not too long ago I was talking to a prospect about their business analysis requirements for his clients. I left with the impression that the Business Analyst (BA) is viewed just as an interface between the developer and the client? I get a similar impression when I talk to other prospects about their business analysis requirements. Organizations looking at hiring BAs to just act as go-betweens between the client and developers need to rethink this approach.

Business Analyst and Strategy

I think the BA is more than just an interface. The BA needs to understand why the project is being implemented in the first place and what the long term goals of the company are. S/he needs to identify trends and make an educated guess about the future requirements too. Whenever I have donned the BA hat (most projects were for small businesses), I find that the end users typically do not think strategically. They just want the application to mimic their existing business process. Never mind if those processes may need a change with new technology.

Suggest Efficient Business Processes

I once worked on a project where the use of paper and a pen for record keeping is still a norm. The pen and paper technology needs to follow a different business process than when compared to an IT enterprise system. For example, with the former you will need to file multiple copies of the same paper in physical files while in the latter all you may need to do is to scan it and destroy the physical copy. Same result – different processes.

Hence, BAs need to understand how the project scope fits into the bigger picture of the organization’s strategy. BAs need to correctly identify the scope of the solution, costs and benefits of the proposed features and how important each feature is to the organization’s strategy execution. After all, strategy implementation is the hard part and the BA can make or break that objective.

So the next time you look for a BA, evaluate if s/he also understands business and strategy. Unless you want a glorified programmer, the BA’s IT skills are secondary when considering the big picture.

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