Effective BA Practice Day 14: Nurture Stakeholder Collaboration

Manage stakeholder relationships for business analysis success

Photo by Danielle Barnes on Unsplash

An effective business analysis practice does not exist in a vacuum. Business analysis requires intense collaboration between diverse groups of people with different interests and approaches.

Business analysts are responsible for making this collaboration. They facilitate — make the communication easier.

To make a BA practice successful, we should discard the narrative that business analysis is part of IT organization, that the BA’s are on the IT side. Business analysis should never be “on the other side of the table” from the business.

Business analysis capability must serve business, first and foremost. Information technology is an enabler required to support required business capabilities.

When a company starts a new initiative, it will have business goals. To make the change successful, business analysts must work alongside business stakeholders, being their listening ear, advisors and apprentices. And they must earn stakeholders’ trust.

Through immersion and job shadowing activities, BA’s can learn about the real business process — not the one that’s been recorded in standard operating procedures a few…