Feb
8
On the Direction of the BABOK
February 8, 2007 |
Occasionally, I get approached by people who are interested in shaping the BA profession and want to know why the BABOK doesn’t include more information on topics like strategic planning.
Basically, the BABOK is intended to reflect what business analysts are doing and not what we would like them to be doing. The goal in developing it is to establish a baseline for what people working as business analysts today can be expected to know, given the way the role is defined by the organizations that employ them.
The problem we’re trying to address with the BABOK is that most BAs are people pulled out of the operations of an organization, usually because they’re a little more analytical than the rest of the staff, and asked to take on the job without much if any training. That leads to a lot of people who don’t know what they need to know to do their jobs, a lot of organizations that can’t figure out what skills they need, and a lot of people trying to hire BAs without knowing if that person actually has the basic skills required to do the job. So, we needed to develop a baseline set of knowledge and skills that people can work towards.
Now, for the next release I’m trying to shift away from a pure IT focus and include more emphasis on process improvement and other skills, but I’m still constrained by where BAs are rather than where I’d like them to be. In particular, our surveys have overwhelmingly shown that BAs are not involved in strategic planning, and even the current Enterprise Analysis KA is considered too “advanced” by a definite majority.
The reality is that BAs today are almost always brought in after a project has been launched and all their work is done within the constraints of a previously determined scope. So, unfortunately,
adding material on strategic planning to the BABOK will not really help, at least not yet, because the people it’s aimed at won’t be able to make use of that. All we can really do is to take a baby step in the right direction.
The interesting thing is that while BAs coming up from the IT side generally don’t get involved in strategic planning until they’re well advanced in their careers, that’s not true of BAs in the consulting industry. Those companies throw kids fresh out of school into the planning, or more accurately, into churning out massive reports that are supposed to support a corporate strategy while the partner maybe looks at the executive summary of the report. That’s where I started out, and for years I had the bizarre experience of being considered “too junior” to do strategic planning, even though I was usually the only BA with actual experience in the field working for the organization!
Five or ten years from now, maybe things will be different, or maybe the IIBA will have a substantial membership base in that community, and that material may make its way into a future edition of the BABOK. Personally I’d like to see that happen. However, right now that material won’t serve the needs of the BA community, and so it’s not a priority for us.
Comments
2 Comments so far
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I am a little disappointed that BABOK is not looking into strategic planning. I have found that in recent years, the work of a BA has changed dramatically. As BAs we are being required to approach projects from an “Outside-In” perspective. That is, we are asked to understand what the big picture or overall strategy is in order to map and build the requirements for the business.
As a BA, I do deal with the operational aspects and this may be seen as the “bread and butter” work of a BA. However, the shift towards employing MBA graduates as BAs, means that we find ourselves able to add value from a strategic perspective as well. We are more focused on the client area and understand their business as well as being able to communicate and understand the technical requirements to develop systems.
When the business cannot fully articluate their needs, we workshop to help them create a vision of what the system will look like and make them aware of emerging technologies that may help. We provide protypes along teh way and it is a very collaborative approach between the business, architecture and BA team.
Hi Maria,
What you describe above isn’t “strategic planning” in the sense that I have seen the term used. Strategic planning occurs at the level of the business as a whole and entails setting the overall goal for that business over a multi-year timeframe. It asks what markets we want to be in, what our pricing or branding will be in those markets, what kind of market share we expect to have, what products we will develop, and so forth.
What you’re talking about is at a lower level–once the strategic goals are set, a BA can work with the business to explore various solution options to meet those goals. That is covered in the Enterprise Analysis KA.