Source: BA Lens — IIBA

Beyond the Traditional Business Analysis

Amanda Kothalawala
Sep 2, 2018 · 3 min read

When you are looking back to the past 10 years, almost all the industries in the world economy ecosystem have been changed a lot. From then until today, most of the industries are in a process of unveiling the Digital Transformation.

Digital Transformation? Sounds familiar?

I believe you have heard this many times, However if you are still wondering what is this digital transformation means actually, here is what Wikipedia says, Digital Transformation is not just related to the digital technology, rather digital technology enables innovative methods to solve traditional problems within a particular domain. Besides, “Digital” is about creating brand new business models by placing the customer at the center of attention, creating processes that offer incredible customer experiences enabled by technology. [1]

Simply, in the digital world, technology businesses are driven by technology while rendering their customers with the better value proposition.

Today, the digital era has challenged over each and every professionals where they need to adapt to digital transformation with competitive, strategic business imperatives. One of them is Business analysis.

From my personal experience, business analysis is one of the challenging professional in the digital world. With the continuous technology evolvement, business analysts cannot stay away from either the digital technology or the digital transformation. Hence, they need to adopt best practices to match with digitally transformed business needs and processes.

Business Analyst role in a Digitally Transforming business?

The biggest challenge in digital transformation is that organizations need to look at the big picture at the early stages of the transformation. This big picture should always be aligned with the organization’s vision and strategy. In this process, to define the successful big picture, Business Analyst (BA) need to act as the trusted advisors to focus on the business values and help organizations achieve their vision with digital transformation.

In order to become trusted advisors and deliver exceptional customer experience in the digital world, BAs need to improve and gain knowledge on innovative technologies as well as domain expertise in different industries within the business world. At the same time, BAs need to keen on understanding various players and need to understand the competition in technology areas. On the other hand, as demanding customer requirements and their experience matter a lot in digital transformation, BAs need to carefully observe the customers and focus on catering the best value proposition for them. Adopting agile practices is a key approach since it enables to deliver business value in an incremental way which allows to get customer feedback within a shorter period and again it helps to understand and improve future increments.

In a nutshell, traditional business analyst role should be changed from traditional project-based, requirement oriented business mind with the emerging digital transformation. Rather than that, “Digital” business analysts should be more business oriented to align with the value proposition and adopt new technology knowledge with the agile approach focusing on product and process management. Eventually, they have to become the trusted advisors who drive the real business vision for both their customers and organization.

References:

[1] Mehta, A. and Udupa, P. (2018). DIGITAL BUSINESS ANALYSIS — CROSSING THE CHASM FROM TRADITIONAL TO DIGITAL WORLD. International Institute of Business Analysis, p.3.

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