Jun

12

Defining the BA Role

June 12, 2006 |

As I’ve been working on the next version of the BABoK, I’ve been giving a lot of thought to the issue of exactly what is a business analyst, and what uniquely identifies a BA in a way that fits the scope of our body of knowledge? 

Here’s what the IIBA currently uses as its official definition:

Business Analysts are responsible for identifying the business needs of their clients and stakeholders to help determine solutions to business problems.

The Business Analyst is responsible for requirements development and requirements management.  Specifically, the Business Analyst elicits, analyzes, validates and documents business, organizational and/or operational requirements.  Solutions are not predetermined by the Business Analyst, but are driven solely by the requirements of the business.  Solutions often include a systems development component, but may also consist of process improvement or organizational change.

The Business Analyst is a key facilitator within an organization, acting as a bridge between the client, stakeholders and the solution team.

Business analysis is distinct from financial analysis, project management, quality assurance, organizational development, testing, training and documentation development.  However, depending on an organization, an individual Business Analyst may perform some or all of these related functions.

I have a few concerns with this definition, and I think something shorter might be better.

So what’s wrong with the IIBA definition?

  • First of all, the terminology in the definition predates the BABoK. We don’t have any mention of our KAs in there. There are terms that are found nowhere in the BoK (requirements development, for instance)
  • It identifies three types of requirements–business, organizational, and operational. Only one of those actually appears in the BoK and most of the types that actually do appear in the current draft are nowhere to be found.
  • About half of the definition is negative–talking about what a BA doesn’t do rather than what we actually do do.
  • It only talks about solving business problems (negative failures) rather than making things better.
  • No mention of the BA role in strategy
  • It potentially limits the BA to the role of “order taker” for the stakeholders–something that I’ve had complaints about from executives, who seem to want the BA to add value to the effort.
  • It’s really long. Because it’s so long, it doesn’t really provide a unifying theme. It mixes up prescriptive statements about how a BA should do their job with the actual purpose of the job with various statements meant to constrain the IIBA’s scope of interest.

So, for all those reasons I think it’s time for us to think about revising the definition.

For comparison, the British Computer Society (BCS) uses the following definition in their BA text:

An internal consultancy role that has the responsibility for investigating business systems, identifying options for improving business systems, and bridging the needs of the business with the use of IT.

This doesn’t seem quite right to me either. It’s a little too IT-centric, for one, and it implies that BAs must be employed by the organizations they’re assisting. By that definition I haven’t been a BA for the last six years. However, it’s a lot more succinct.

Naturally, I have a proposal. Here’s my suggested definition, with the rationale for the various parts of it below.

A Business Analyst is responsible for acting as a bridge between stakeholders in an organization in order to identify, define, and validate the internal changes, particularly the creation or improvement of processes, policies, and information technology systems, that are required for that organization to achieve its goals.

Here are a few of the points I’m trying to include in this definition:

  • “Bridging” seems to be one of those universals in descriptions of the BA role and I felt I had to specifically include it
  • “Internal changes” is in there to help make it clear that BAs are not marketing experts, or focused on how to define requirements for products that will primarily be sold to third parties. That’s the Product Manager role. I could see the IIBA at some point choosing to target that group, to be sure, but I think a Product Management BoK would have to include some things not in the BABoK and leave others out (for example, requirements elicitation looks very different and we’d need a whole KA for Market Analysis). The Business Analyst is supposed to focus on the internals of the organization.
  • “Identifying, defining and validating” means that the BA must figure out what the change is, come up with a detailed description, and make sure that it is the correct change. It leaves out “execution” and “verification” intentionally. This excludes project management, development, testing, training, etc. “Validating” is very important here–it means that the BA must make sure that the right changes are being made. It’s “validation” of the change, both that it’s the right one and that it can be implemented, that causes a BA to act as a bridge between various groups.
  • “processes, policies, and information technology systems” discusses the kinds of changes we get involved in. For instance, I have yet to see BAs asked to revamp the org structure, job descriptions, or other HR type stuff. Being somewhat specific helps us align the BoK with it.
  • “Achieve its goals” is intended to suggest that the BA is not responsible for the development of strategy, but rather its implementation. However, it also should make clear that the BA is supposed to understand that strategy.

What do you think? Are there important points that this definition misses (understanding, of course, that the BoK itself will provide supporting detail??


Comments

1 Comment so far

  1. Business Analyst « BA Gyan on May 23, 2008 7:01 am

    [...] Kevin Brennan: “A Business Analyst is responsible for acting as a bridge between stakeholders in an organization in order to identify, define, and validate the internal changes, particularly the creation or improvement of processes, policies, and information technology systems, that are required for that organization to achieve its goals.” [...]

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