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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| What is a Business Analyst.pdf | 124.21 KB |
BA Resources
There are several resources that one can access to determine what a requirement is, how it is gathered, what is documented as a requirement and how it is documented. Two authors that offer methodology in these areas are Karl Wiegers, and the Volare Methology by Robertson & Robertson. You should find these authors provide information about current techniques and trends. I agree there some great references from the 70's and 80s, but outdated for enterprise analysis, object oriented analysis and more.
Documenting requirements is a critical part of the someones role, and there is a skill related to writing requirements, but I believe the emphasis in many cases is overstated in some cases. The tasks that lead to documenting requirements is the softer skills you mentioned needed to complete the process collecting and negotiating requirements between IT and Business, just to name a few, that are the critical to the end product, refering to the document.
I agree that these soft skills are played by other roles outside of the BA, including where BAs exist but are either underutilized or do not have the skill set to perform the skills that are softer in nature.
Pat Perry
IIBA Member