It's Business Analyst appreciation month at CIO.com and Forrester - and it's a great time to be a business analyst as they are definitely a HOT commodity according to a recent research report.

Thomas Wailgum of CIO.com wrote an article last week titled "Why Business Analysts Are So Important for IT and CIOs". In the article, Thomas references a new report that came out this month from Forrester analysts Carey Schwaber and Rob Karel which is called "The New Business Analyst".

The Forrester report provides a "better understanding of this crucial yet largely undefined role". One business analyst interviewed for the report said "everyone agrees on the importance of the business analyst role, but few know exactly what it is that business analysts do."

Schwaber and Karel interviewed 338 business analysts and reviewed more than 29,000 business analyst job descriptions. They conclude that there is not a standard definition and that the roles between business-oriented and IT-oriented analysts is blurring. In fact, they coined a new role called the "Business Technology Analyst" or BT Analyst.

The Forrester report also pointed out several things that smart CIOs and IT managers can do today to prepare for the future:

• Look in your own backyard for talent
• Look for BT analysts in untapped parts of your business
• Establish centers of excellence for BT analysts

Check out these links for the complete story:

• Forrester "The New Business Analyst" - $279 unless you are a Forrester client
• CIO.com Article - "Why Business Analysts Are So Important for IT and CIOs" - be sure to check out the comments and feedback at the end of the article

--------------------------------
Tom Humbarger is Senior Manager of Strategic Projects for iRise and is a frequent blogger in RQNG.

In the March 2008 issue of the Harvard Business Review, David Upton and Bradley Staats from the Harvard Business School wrote an article about a radically new approach to developing IT systems called the path-based approach. As the authors state in the opening sentence, “enterprise IT projects continue to be a headache for business leaders.”

The article is a case study of Japan’s Shinsei Bank’s development of a new enterprise IT system using the path-based method of application development. They call it the path-based approach because it focuses on providing a path for the system to be developed instead of attempting to define all of the specifications or requirements for a system before the project is launched. Shinsei succeeded in developing and deploying an entirely new enterprise system in one year at a cost of $55 million. Some of the principles reviewed in this case study are variations on old themes while others are totally unconventional. Masamoto Yashiro, the former chairman of Citibank Japan, was brought in as the new CEO and he hired Jay Dvivedi, who used to run IT operations for Citibank Japan as his Chief Information Officer.

Traditionally, there are two choices for building a major enterprise system - the “big bang” approach of replacing the current system and processes all at once or the incremental method of improving the existing system one piece at a time. Shinsei did not want the risk of the “big bang” method and did not have the time to implement the incremental method.

Here are some things they learned:

Don’t just align business and IT strategies - forge them together — Besides having the CIO report to the CEO, Shinsei business managers spend significant amounts of time in learning about IT. In addition, they focus on understanding “foreseeable business objectives” and the interaction between business and IT groups is iterative and continuous.

Strive for extreme simplicity — There were three keys to their simpler approach, limit the number of standards, create simple re-usable solutions and apply modularity to clearly specify user interfaces

Give (some) power to the people — Many project failures stem from organized resistance to new systems. When Shinsei rolls out a new system, they start by offering an interface that is similar to the old system - and only after users are comfortable with a new system do they turn off the old screens. Shinsei also created a system for including feedback and requests from employees, customers, business users and technical users. Comments have averaged about 100 requests per day which helps Shinsei continually improve systems and processes.

The conclusion is that “businesses must focus on building IT systems that cannot fail to improve…and adopting the path-based approach will provide flexible systems that can change as the business demands and can shift IT from being a simple platform for existing operations to a launchpad for new functions and brand new businesses.”

The complete article is a worthwhile read and is available for free from the Harvard Business Review website.

-------------------------------------------------
Tom Humbarger is Senior Manager of Strategic Projects for iRise and is a frequent blogger in RQNG.

I've spent some time over the last few months pondering the idea of design thinking. Driven by what I see are the key competitive pressures in marketplace. It seems that more companies and organizations are starting to talk about increasing their innovation and improving time-to-market instead of cutting costs and reducing errors in their software development process. But there seems to be a gap in the discussion about how they're going to get there - which brings up design thinking.