The Importance of Business Analysis in 2024

Business Analysis is more important than it’s ever been!

Business Analysts (BAs) aren’t as “trendy” or as “glamorised” as Product Managers, but there are significant skill overlaps. BAs tend to get their hands dirty, keep things moving and ensure there’s a cohesive bridge between business and tech.

If you’re a business owner, decision maker, run a department or have some influence over who is hired then this piece is for you. Any tech upgrade, product build or project work requires consistency and cohesion between business and technology.

If developers can be assimilated into the business, then great. However, this isn’t always the case. In fact, developers can often feel marginalized due to a disjointed approach, cultural differences, or lack of clarity; this is where a good business analyst comes in, a pro who ensures that the critical bond between business and tech remains in tact. Check out this Quota post where some software developers lament how they are treated.

There’s one profession that is agnostic of industry, domain, and department and that is business analysis.

Whether you’re a small business owner looking to scale, or you’re a CEO of a large corporation, understanding business analysis as a profession could help your business substantially. Not necessarily to embark on a hiring spree but understanding the value business analysts can provide could help you make better decisions when delegating tasks, hiring correct personnel for project work, and producing a more streamlined, more effective project team. Without streamlined teams, business change is more difficult that it must be.

‍‍Background

The fluidity, flexibility, and pragmatism of the workplace in 2024 means more and more people benefit from having transferrable skills, adopting a flexible approach in the workplace and employment transparency between employer and employee is more important than ever; things like being clear on career goals, hobbies, aspirations and so on are increasing in importance.

Whilst job titles will always have a place in the labor market, skills, experience, and adaptability is becoming more important than ever.

In the advent of hybrid working, the fusion of home working with semi-regular office trips symbolizes the revolution that has taken the world by storm since 2020. Moreover, employers now know to keep hold of talent and to ensure they remain competitive in terms of attracting talent they must be flexible.

The same goes with employees.

Whilst being a jack of all trades, master of none is not advisable, there are some professions that lend itself to this new employment wave and one of these professions is business analysis.

In short, a business analyst is a conduit that usually sits between business and technology. A business has a problem they seek to solve with technology, so to remain cohesive, a business analyst creates a bridge between the disparate teams to ensure transparency, productivity, and organization.

Product Enhancements and Project Work

As we all know, we all rely on technology for so much today and that reliance means products must be maintained and enhanced consistently to provide customers with continued value and to increase revenue for the service provider.

This means that all businesses must ensure they have an in depth understanding on the software development lifecycle, the product lifecycle and what it means to consistently maintain and improve software solutions.

In the recent past, a product solution might start off small during the MVP phase, where the main business and technology people ratify, analyze, and conduct most of the work themselves; this was quite normal. This kind of work however is not sustainable if a business wishes to scale.

A specialist whose entire profession is focused on gathering, analysing, documenting, and presenting information will eventually be required; this will make your internal processes more efficient and focused, which should free up SME resource so they can focus on more refined, specialist tasks and not get bogged down with essential, but time-consuming project work.

Here are some common signs that your company may lack a specialist analyst:

- Many unknowns with regards to understanding the product, industry, project, or market

- Requirements missed, causing delays in solution development

- Project scope unclear, leading to confusion and inefficiency

- Scope creep, too many requirements and a general misunderstanding of what requirements

- Lack of project/product structure

There are more reasons, but the list above is a snapshot as these are the most common shortcomings in projects today.

Having business analysts’ part of any software endeavor tends to add value in the areas listed and having professional specialists, whose sole role is to ensure there is consistency between business and technology means SMEs can spend their time in their areas without having to compromise their time, effort, and energy.

Ask yourself, have you been part of a failed project that failed because of one of the reasons listed above?

The heavy dependence and reliance on technology means businesses cannot afford to allow the above list to strain their resources for too long; market share losses, lower workplace morale and a dip in performance could be the result if projects don’t succeed and this could be sustained if the correct personnel are part of the team.

Moreover, any senior decision maker would bode well by understanding the basics of business analysis so that if hiring becomes an option they know what to look for, how to assess candidate credibility and how best to deploy them in the team should they join.

Industry Agnostic

From marketing, to finance, from HR to sales, business analysis as a discipline permeates and penetrates many departments and industries.

All businesses have some form of finance, sales, marketing and HR functions, business analysis lends itself to almost all industries of all sizes due to the specifics a business analyst is expected to do.

Whilst domain knowledge is essential for any business analyst to be effective, the raw, fundamental skills remain the same regardless of industry.

For example, a business analyst who has worked on banking projects might not be able to transfer to an insurance project due to the specialization in one domain, the same is true of a person who has worked in FMCG and wishes to work in fashion for example.

Domain knowledge is essential. However, a professional with good domain knowledge in one area who is seeking a career change may consider a career as a business analyst due to the rewards and responsibility business analysts tend to get.

Certain tasks such as business process modelling will require a good understanding of the said domain, the nuanced aspects of that industry will provide the framework in which the analysis will be built upon.

So, the more you know about the domain you work in, the better the analysis and the richer the results provided by the business analyst.

So, whilst business analysis is an essential part of the modern workplace, without the business analyst possessing good domain knowledge their skills and analysis will be lacking.

Salaries

According to Glassdoor the average UK salary is £63,746 with a “Very High” rating for job security. In the US, according to Indeed the average salary is $75,145.

Both figures suggest good salaries for modest levels of experience. Also, many business analysts have gone onto higher paying roles such as management consultancy due to the skills cultivated whilst they operated as a business analyst.

Types of Business Analysts

As a conduit resource positioned acutely between business and technology, the expectations and business needs will not only differ between organizations, industries and even departments, but the increased need for specialization ensures a more efficient way of utilizing business analysis resource.

This means that the roles listed below are all types of business analyst roles, but they are more focused on specific parts of the solution:

Requirements Analyst

If a role is explicitly asking for a Requirements Analyst, they usually want the business analyst to spend most of their time focused on the requirements.

Requirements Analysts would typically spend their time analyzing, documenting, and presenting requirements positioned between the business and development teams respectfully.

It’s likely to find requirements analysts usually in an “Agile” CI/CD environment where requirements are dynamic and there is a continual need to ratify, explain, improve upon, and define many requirements with considerable complexity attached.

The requirements analyst should know:

- Software development lifecycle (especially requirements gathering and testing)

- Technical writing for documentation

- Classification of requirements

- Presentation of requirements

- Requirements management

Furthermore, these tasks are part of the business analysis framework, but a requirements analyst tends to be more focused on requirements.

Data Analyst

We all know that data is gold dust today and our workplaces have more emphasis on analytics than ever before. In truth, a data analyst is also a bridge resource between business and development teams.

A good data analyst must be able to collect, store, structure and transform vast amounts of data. The presentation of this to stakeholders must then be understandable in a clear, well presented, and cohesive way.

Business analytics, business intelligence and a focus on data in general is the strategic focus from many companies and teams in today’s world. You can read about the similarities and differences between business analysis and business analytics right here.

Other Related Roles

Business analysts may also have a particular preference, where they could be more business leaning or development leaning, either way, they join teams together. Other roles include:

- System Analysts

- Technical Business Analysts

- Configuration Analysts

- Business Enterprise Analysts

Conclusion

As a business owner, SME, department head and so on it certainly pays to understand the value business analysis can provide to you and your business.

Focused, specialized resource that allows SMEs to focus on their solution drives efficiency throughout the business and ensures your team can focus on what they are good at.

Business analysts add most value when they are understood and have clear mandates.

Whilst their role involves providing clarity to complexity, being able to paint the picture at interview stage will inspire confidence in the aspirant. Also, it always bodes well if you know what you want, so that time is not wasted.

Ensure you have a good grasp on what business analysis is, what value it can have and why you might benefit from incorporating these skills, personnel, and resource into your team.

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