Sometimes when you change a couple of words around, you can end up with an entirely new concept. In a conversation with a co-worker around analytic roles and responsibilities, she noted that we shouldn’t be talking about “business intelligence analysts,” but discussing ways to create “intelligent business analysts.” Brilliant!!
One of the challenges is that the term “business analyst” is overused, poorly understood or inconsistent at best. Compounding that challenge is that companies have come up with all kinds of variants of the business analyst role (system analysts, business intelligence analysts, IT business analyst, technical business analyst, and on and on).
Fortunately, the International Institute of Business Analysts (IIBA) has been trying to apply clarity and standard practices to the business analyst discipline. The non-profit organization created a business analyst body of knowledge (the “BABOK”) and offers certifications for business analyst professionals. You can download a copy of the BABOK for $25 – I also recommend springing for the $25 business analyst maturity model, which comes with a nice self-assessment document. Local chapters of the IIBA meet regularly and many offer low cost networking, training, and education opportunities.
What skills lie at the core of the business analyst role? According to the BABOK:
“Business analysis is the set of tasks and techniques used to work as a liaison among stakeholders in order to understand the structure, policies and operations of an organization, and to recommend solutions that enable the organization to achieve its goals...Business analysis involves understanding how organizations function to accomplish their purposes, and defining the capabilities an organization requires to provide products and services to external stakeholders…business analysis is performed to define and validate solutions that meet business needs, goals or objectives…A “business analyst” is any person who performs business analysis activities, no matter what their job title or organizational role may be.”
The business analysis knowledge areas include:
- Business analysis planning and monitoring
- Elicitation
- Requirements management and communication
- Enterprise analysis
- Requirements analysis
- Solution assessment and validation
- Underlying competencies
In simple terms, the business analyst provides the glue that brings all of the business, solution, technical and domain experts together and helps them speak a common language to come up with a common solution. Underlying competencies for a business analyst include strong knowledge of the business or business processes as well as a technical competency.
But what about the “business intelligence analysts” (BI-BA)? In an informal search of available jobs on Monster.com, the majority of role descriptions included developing and creating reports. In my personal experience, and through the companies I’ve worked with in my travels with SAS, the BI-BAs often end up on lonely islands, marooned on either the business or technology side of the house, with little or no understanding of how the information they produce is used (or even if it’s useful or relevant).
Because they’re siloed, BI-BAs often lack the direct exposure to business processes and their internal customers, which reduces their ability to provide truly consultative services to their business partners. Another challenge is that the traditional business analyst domain falls under project management functions – which are typically aligned to operational (not analytic) technology initiatives. So you end up with an unfortunate dichotomy between the BAs within the traditional project delivery organizations and the business intelligence and analytic teams related to the identification and standardization of BA best practices (which is all about helping the business define what it needs).
How do we break through this barrier? First, communication and education are key – if your organization has BA roles sprinkled all over the organization, get some of these resources together and brainstorm - identify similarities, differences and gaps. If it makes sense to pool the resources together, make some organizational changes and standardize. If autonomy is important, create an internal forum for BAs across the organization to learn and share.
Above all, make sure that you are providing consistent activities (try shadowing for a day!) for these analysts to learn about the business or technology or whatever the gap is – turn all of your resources into intelligent business analysts! The more your BAs know - wherever they are - the better impact they'll have on the business.
