What is the role of the Business Analyst? and how do they compare to the role of a Project Manager? Watch this discussion video to understand what a Business Analyst can be tasked with and the range of responsibilities that the BA can manage.
Hello and welcome to my video my name is Edward Shehab and I’m certified project manager business analyst program manager portfolio manager Six Sigma green belt and certified in setting up PMO’s today I’d like to talk about the role of the business analyst which I believe is widely misunderstood a lot of people in my trainings ask me about a clear definition of what a BA does now I do my best to empower those aspiring bas but the reality is in most organizations that ba is not getting all the credit that they need to get there are seen as paper pushers they’re seen as admins junior people that work under PMS but my view of a BA is much much different than that and also the view of a IBA the International Institute for business analysis is also different it doesn’t see the business analyst as a low level role the business analyst can have a very wide range of responsibilities all the way from collecting requirements and doing requirements related tasks and submitting it to the PM but at the highest level as a BA you could be achieved solution architect you could be part of the excellence team you can be part of the strategy development team C there’s a clear separation between what a BA does and what a PM does p.m. steak a ready-made scope that has already been defined and they go and figure out related stakeholders collect requirements and they figure out how to implement that scope now the scope that came in and usually gets put into a project charter for the PM to work on must have already been defined it is usually defined by someone that is known as a business analyst but typically an organization somebody else is doing that so the true role of a BA is to define the scope of the project that is going to become the project charter or project manager it shouldn’t be done by somebody else it should be done that scope should be defined by a well qualified business analyst for about 13 years now the IIb a the International Institute for business analysis has been issuing the business analysis body of knowledge and has been certifying people as certified business analysis professional now that role is going to prove a lot more important going into the future and I’ll tell you why we need to innovate we need to make change if we don’t change we become stagnant we become redundant we become outdated without change nothing happens your products become less in demand as time goes by it becomes diluted in the market everybody has a copy of what you have everybody is already caught up to what you have so the only way an organization can remain relevant is by introducing change and we speak of transformational change now bas can support that what a BA does and this is what their role should be in this what their function should be is take a business need a strategic business need from their sponsor CEO director or any senior organizational role they sit with this person understand what that business need is an example of a business need would be we need to increase our market reach in Singapore for example we need to go from 3% to a 10% market share of that market right so what a beer does is they hear out what the business manager is asking for and they try to understand the goals and objectives they try to put in numbers against the goals and objectives they truly understand the problem or the opportunity that we’re trying to achieve and then they go and identify related and relevant stakeholders that they should talk to and understand conditions or may be requirements from their side once they meet with all these stakeholders they go and they will collect the requirements from that and they will take these requirements and conditions and rules and they will analyze them and that’s what a business analyst that’s why we call them business analysts they analyze these requirements they look for consistency they look for overlaps they see they look for whether this requirement coming from a stakeholder is aligned with the strategic need that was given to them and once they do all this analysis and clean up some of the bad requirements they end up with a set of approved requirements which they would review with that boss with the senior manager and if the requirements are approved then they then they go and figure out how those requirements will be satisfied they prepare things such as a business requirement document and that business requirement document clearly lays out the structure of what the solution should include if that is reviewed with management and management approves then they take that business requirement document and they can take it to a tendering and try to find a vendor that would support these requirements now some of these requirement could be passed on to your development team but at this point those requirements have already been clearly defined they’ve been analyzed their specific their measurable they mean something it is not somebody’s guests that went into a project charter so here you see that the role of the BA is super important in making sure that the organization is investing in the right project if the ba role is missing and if the one who defines the requirements for that one project that goes into a project charter the scope right the one who defines it if they don’t do a good job at it then even if the PM succeeds in executing on the project then the PM may succeed at delivering the wrong project right so you do need the role of the BA to understand from the business what exactly it needs and the goals and objectives and figure out all the requirements and conditions and rules and laws and policies and limitations constraints and they would go and define the best possible solution under the given constraints time money you know any other constraint right they will figure the tomoow solution given all these constraints they will get approval from the board from the management and then that becomes the project manager’s job or the development teams job at an even higher level a BA can work on strategic initiatives so a major major transformational change can be assigned to a business analyst who would now take that request that you give to them which is a business need try to also put goals and objectives as I mentioned before and then assess the current state of the organization current state being your manpower your resources your skillset your network your IT infrastructure e of policies your business rules your technology or location your cash your financials they look at your current state and they define the possible future state that this organization can get to and they will put some sort of metrics against that future state they will figure out what are the gaps to take you from your current state to the future state and what would be the risks if I if they have to take you from this current state to the future state and by assessing those risk and analyzing and mitigating those risks they can come up with the best possible change strategy to execute on your organization’s transformational change so hopefully with all these things that I’m describing whether it’s a small change or a big transformational change you can understand how the role of a ba fits in and why it’s critical that every organization has a business analyst that is certified if they’re not certified they need to be heavily informed deeply involved in the role of what a business and of the stars they need to be very good at working with stakeholders and engaging them they need to be able to define the requirements correctly and they need to know how to model the solution afterwards a solution that meets the needs of the organization so PMS execute on projects bas business analysts define what the solution should be so that the PM can execute on it I hope this video clarifies the role of the business analyst and I hope that organizations will adopt this role as a critical role and make sure that they give those bas the credit that is that they deserve or the empowerment that they require so that they can get necessary changes well defined and later on implemented by professional project managers thank you for watching if you like this video please subscribe like it share it with your friends let me know what you think put your comments down below I’d love to hear from you regarding the role of the business analyst I’d like to know how business analysts are treated if you are a ba let me know how your role is where you are and ask me any questions that you have I’ll be happy to help you out in your role as a business analyst until we meet on our next video have a great day and take care you