What do Business Analysts do?
If you are curious about the role of a Business Analyst (also known as BA), and what they do, this is a good place to start.
Let’s jump right in!
Stakeholder Collaboration
A stakeholder is an individual, group of individuals or organization with an interest in the change. Stakeholders can be external or internal. For example — customers, employees, managers, partners, regulators, owners, suppliers, and competitors.
A Business Analyst will spend a good portion of their day engaging with stakeholders with the purpose of working towards achieving a common goal. To elaborate further, a BA will work with internal and external stakeholders to identify needs and required changes, to recommend solutions that will deliver value.
Requirements Elicitation
A requirement is a representation of a need. Elicitation is the process of withdrawing information from stakeholders or artifacts. Elicitation is an ongoing activity and involves probing, drawing out, and clarifying information.
A BA will work with the stakeholders to identify needs and transform them into requirements. In general, these requirements will be used as references by the internal team to bring about the change or implement a solution that will deliver value.
Requirements Analysis
Requirements analysis activities are incremental and iterative. Requirements analysis involves ensuring that all of the requirements identified during requirements elicitation are clear, organized, and well-documented.
A Business Analyst will examine the potential value of requirements elicited from stakeholders and artifacts, by structuring and organizing requirements, specifying and modeling requirements, and validating and verifying information.
Requirements Life Cycle Management
Requirements life cycle management is to track and maintain requirements and design information from inception to implementation (or retirement) through all the changes that have been applied to them.
A Business Analyst will work towards establishing meaningful relationships between related requirements, ensuring requirements are accurate throughout the lifecycle, and evaluating changing requirements. A BA will also assess the value, urgency, and risks associated with requirements to ensure the most important ones are delivered at a given time and work with stakeholders to gain approval on requirements.
Planning and Monitoring
Business analysis planning and monitoring include activities to organize and coordinate the efforts of business analysts and other stakeholders.
A Business Analyst will plan out the business analysis work, stakeholder engagement, governance, and information management. The best-suited approach will be documented and a plan will be created. A BA will also monitor the business analysis work to ensure potential improvements are identified and carried out.
Solution Evaluation
Solution evaluation is the process of ensuring the implemented solution (or component of solution) delivers the expected value.
A Business Analyst will perform a variety of tasks to assess the performance of and value delivered by a solution. Solution evaluation activities will begin with the prototyping stage. A Business Analyst will collaborate with stakeholders to recommend actions to improve the value of the solution.
Strategy Analysis
Strategy analysis includes understanding the business direction and applying organizational capabilities to reach the desired set of goals and objectives. Strategies exist at different levels in an organization — top-level corporate strategies, middle-level business unit strategies, lower-level operational strategies.
A Business Analyst will perform a variety of tasks to analyze the current state, define the future state, assess risks and then define the change strategy.
A Business Analyst may not be involved in all of the activities mentioned above, in a given project or change initiative. Depending on how the organization defines the BA role, and the level of experience the BA has, they may perform only certain tasks out of the above list.
To the fellow Business Analysts reading this article — which areas have you worked on and what did you enjoy the most? 😊
References
- BABOK v3, IIBA.
- Business Analysis, 3rd ed, BCS
