Jul
12
Consultants and BAs
July 12, 2007 |
Services Safari has a post up on what makes a good consultant. The first three points apply to good business analysts as well.
My ‘consultant’:
- challenges me as to the appropriateness of certain business decisions. He/She has even questioned the need to pursue the project that he/she would be staffed. You need consultants who put your firm’s interests first and not theirs. This is the number one test question because it is the one question that far too many ‘consultants’ fail. They see the continuation of their chargeable work at your firm as their number one priority. These ‘consultants’ are self-interested and unprofessional. Get rid of them now!
- recommends faster, less expensive alternatives to getting the work completed. A great consultant wants you to look good and wants your firm to be richer for the experience of having him/her being there. A ‘consultant’ that accepts the project scope and approach you give him/her, is either frightfully unimaginative or scared of losing short-term fees. What these ‘consultants’ fail to recognize is that clients appreciate and reward professionals. They reward them with more work, more referrals and great references.
- does more than install software or hardware. As I’ve said before, anyone can call themselves a consultant but just saying that doesn’t mean they really are. A person is not a ‘consultant’ if they are a technician masquerading as a consultant. I may get flak for this, but minor process change suggestions as part of a systems implementation do not qualify one to be a ‘consultant’. Nope. No way. No how. If a ‘consultant’ can’t determine the impact of a variety of business decisions on the client’s share price, EVA, free cash flow or other measure of import, they aren’t really ‘consultants’. No, a consultant need not possess a MBA from Wharton to take the name ‘consultant’, but, they do need to connect their actions, proposals, etc. to the broader business context of their work.
On the last point…there’s a reason the BABOK contains the Enterprise Analysis and Solution Assessment and Validation KAs. Business analysis requires that you understand why a solution is correct for the business.
There’s a lot of people who seem to think that a BA just sits down and records the desires of a group of stakeholders, then hands that off to the developers to implement. I often get the feeling when I read complaints from the Agile community about BAs that that’s what they think it is. Just so we’re clear, if that’s all someone does then they’re only completing tasks in one of the KAs in the BABOK (Elicitation, to be precise)–so you can forget getting certified!
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