One question I often get asked is what’s the line between the role of the business analyst and the systems analyst?

The official answer is simple: there isn’t one.

We’ve been wrestling with the definition of the business analysis profession for four years now, and in those four years I have yet to hear a description of the systems analyst role that did not make it one of three things:

a) a different job title held by a business analyst;
b) a hybrid business analyst/developer position;
c) a specialist in certain aspects of business analysis.

The first is simple to dispose of.

The second isn’t much different from a BA/PM or a BA/QA person (two other common hybrid roles that don’t happen to have a distinct job title)–we address the business analysis half of the job but as far as certification and standards go, we generally defer to other organizations that specialize in those disciplines.

The third case is where I think the confusion starts. Many larger organizations split the BA role between a number of job functions, usually because their business is large and complex enough to make it difficult for one person to do everything. Quite often, they create a “business analyst” position that focuses on the operational ends of the business and on the development of stakeholder requirements (in BABOK terms). These stakeholder requirements are then handed off to a systems analyst, who has in-depth expertise in the technology that organization uses, and who will develop the solution requirements. Quite often, the business requirements are developed by yet a third person, who may be known as a “business consultant” or “business architect”.

From our perspective, all these people are business analysts in the sense the IIBA uses the term. They perform the same tasks and use much the same tools and techniques. All three are working in the same profession. They’re just specializing in different aspects of that profession.

Because of that, it’s unlikely that the IIBA will ever have an “official” position on the dividing line, since there’s no natural boundary between the roles.

UPDATE: In comments Joe Newbert says:

In my experience I have found that Systems Analysis is focused on the technical implementation aspects of a software application – transforming functional requirements into a workable solution design.

(Yes, I am sure that System Analysis overlaps with Architecture overlaps with Developer across organisations)

That Developer/Architect role would be a fourth category in the list above.

Kevin Brennan, CBAP
VP, Body of Knowledge