What is a Business Analyst?
by Al Santucci, Holly James and Debbie Gencarelli
The Search for a Business Analyst
Thoughts from a Recruiting Manager
The Casey Group is a professional services firm specializing in custom software development and outsourcing. Our search for Business Analysts led us to the International Institute of Business Analysis and, subsequently, to the Requirements Networking Group. What we discovered was that, while the Business Analyst function has matured over the years into a specialty discipline, it still means different things to different people, employers and practitioners alike. From the standpoint of a staffing manager for a professional services firm, this is how we see it.
What is a Business Analyst?
This proved to be a more difficult question than we thought it would be. And the answer, as for so many things, is “…it depends.” In our attempt to fully define the requirements of the position in order to locate the most qualified individuals, we spoke to hiring managers, Project Managers and Technical Architects. The problem we ran into was that there is not just one concept of a Business Analyst. And even within the Business Analyst function, there are different sub-functions that can evolve as specialties in and of themselves. There is a continuum from a Lead Analyst to an analysis tool expert technician. Sometimes we look for one person who can perform all the functions, oftentimes we need a team.
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Assumptions in the eye of the beholder
This little discussion seems more appropriate to a human resources specialist.
It seems it is accepted that in the full life cycle of systems development that someone, somehow needs to elicit requirements (by some means), perform analysis and design functions and write and test code (by some means and in whatever order).
In some methodologies these various tasks are identified and assigned to roles within that methodology (be it lose or well defined). One reason for this is to identify the skills and assign responsibility for tasks and artifacts and define workflow (even if it's what whiteboard you use next).
If some companies wish to identify these 'roles' as 'positions' (and having worked on HR systems that word is by no means clear as to what it means) then so be it, it's up to them.
One reason HR identify positions is so they can identify the skills and experience those positions need, so if they want to call a BA a BA and look for and manage people by the skills that role requires it's up to them. It would help greatly if they all had the same definition but sadly that is not going to happen, or maybe it would if it was well defined and certified. Maybe that is the real problem even on this site we cannot agree what a BA is, what they do, how they do it, or anything about it really!
Which leaves certifications? Why are people certified? So that other people can be assured that they have undergone some sort of training and achieved a certain amount of measurable knowledge, the knowledge being appropriate to their job description. i.e. I hope when I see a 'certified' orthopaedic surgeon that (s)he knows something about joints! If they have a certification I can be somewhat assured that that is the case (unless it's from some unidentifiable university where $10 gets the paper!)
One would hope that whomsoever requires this type of certification has done some research into what that certification means in terms of the knowledge area that was studied to attain it. If they do and that’s what they want then that's fine.
As long as noone governmental or otherwise stops uncertifed people from working for those that do not require such certification then I don't really see the problem? It's not as if the government are likely to say if you don't pass the IIBA CBAP or the PMI PMP you can’t work in the business - not yet anyway- whareas they do with doctors.
If you are a big bank and you require people to have a certification then so be it - hopefully you have done your homework. If you are a start up (or a big bank) and you want generalizing specialists and do not require certifications then that's fine too.
We have certifications in many areas of IT at the moment: is a SUN certified Java programmer better than one not so certified - maybe/maybe not. Do people really care about them?
Personally I would love to see our industry, in the requirements/analysis stage standardize on methodology, skills, techniques etc., as it's probably the only way to ever get past the plethora of methods etc., that exist and to improve our current failure rates as people continually argue over how to do things. But it seems we cannot agree on one or even the three best ways to do anything, so instead our failure rates stay the same or get worse and no two people do the same thing the same way or agree on anything in particular. Is it because it's a soft skill area and we find no way to measure soft skills?