Attributes of a great Business Analyst and how do you transform to one?
By Reema Prabhu, Niranjan Chaudhari and Ananya Sahu
Introduction
Most of us who play various roles in the Software Development Life Cycle feel the job of Business Analyst is the easiest, as all they do is get the requirements from customers. One only realises the importance of this role when they land up working on an assignment that does not have a Business Analyst.
How do business analysts contribute while a product is getting developed?
Let’s have a look at the following scenario:
“A company named “ABC Technologies” wishes to provide services to the customers, where the end-users could come to their site and get a printed copy of uploaded photos delivered to the provided location.
So this company reaches out to an implementation team of “XYZ Technologies” and says “Please build this website”. But now the implementation team is not sure of the processes they are expected to follow and if there are any additional services that need to be catered. Implementation team of “XYZ Technologies” spends a lot of effort getting required answers, which could have been easily addressed if there was a business analyst present.”
So in layman’s terms, a Business Analyst is someone who communicates with multiple business stakeholders of an organization to understand their needs and convert them into finalized requirements. They along with the project implementation and quality assurance team plan, design and validate the end outcome of the received requirements.
What does a Business Analyst bring to the table and why is this role so crucial?
The first thing a BA does when they start working on a Project is they make smaller fragments of all the received requirements, such that each team member could own each of these fragments and work on it accordingly. Having these smaller fragments in place the implementation can be done swiftly along with its quality assurance.
As soon as the project activities are initiated, the business analyst ensures to keep track of all the progress made by each team member. This helps them to evaluate if the planned milestones for the project can be met or not. Based on the day-to-day tracking and evaluation, the Business Analyst updates the project manager if there are any risks that they foresee with reference to the project such that together they could work to get it mitigated.
There are multiple roles that work towards getting a product developed but a business analyst is the key point of contact. As with their effective communications skills they speak to the customers to understand their pain areas and highlight them to the development team. Once the development team understands the customers’ pain, they work toward delivering qualitative solutions.
Business Analysts are known for their precise and process-oriented Documentation. The documentation created is always very detailed information, as a business analyst is always aware of all the ongoing activities because they liaise with multiple departments present in an organisation.
Organisations are always keen on expansions or adapting to the latest trends, however, they cannot derive if their vision of expanding or adapting will be successful or not, here a business analyst will do a detailed study and do perform various calculations to define if the expansion or adaption can be profitable or not, based on the research report submitted by Business Analyst the organisation will make its plan for expansion or adaption accordingly.
Let’s understand more in detail how a Business Analyst day looks like:
Eva is a Business Analyst working for a company that develops applications based on customer’s requirements and James is an entrepreneur who wishes to have an e-commerce site built for selling apparel and accessories.
James reaches out to Eva’s company with this ask of building an e-commerce site. Eva speaks to James and assures him that she along with her team will help James to meet the vision that he has.
Eva first updates her project manager Matt about this project and requests him to complete the on boarding formality associated with the project such that she can have further discussions with James to understand his requirements, James agrees to support Eva to capture all the Business Requirements. Without any further delay Eva begins with all the necessary actions that are required to get this project initiated.
Eva performs the following actions:
- She tries understanding the Problem Statement and Business Objective James wishes to achieve by building the e-commerce site. She analyses these details and makes suggestions that would best suit James Business.
- Once they have agreed on all the requirements she documents them and shares it with James for review, this helps her in attaining the confidence that she and James are on the same page.
- Now she alongside the Project Manager plans the effort that is going to get involved in building this project and provides details of the same to James and his partner Luke who will be sponsoring this initiative.
- Once the approvals are in place, she plans the team members (Architects, Developers and Quality Assurance Engineer Team) along with the Project Manager that falls within project budget.
- She starts allocating tasks to the developer and works very closely with them to understand if there are any challenges or concerns.
- She on a regular basis conducts meetings with James to get any open issues resolved.
- For development team to understand the bigger picture of this project, she creates following artefacts: Process flows diagrams and Diagrams of how users would interact with the system
- She alongside the development team works on creating the app layouts that would help all the stakeholders to visualise how the site would look like.
- When the prototype is built, she sets the correct expectations with the testing team to get the product validated against the functional and non-functional requirements.
- Once the testing phase is completed, Eva hands over the prototype to James and his team to get it validated and starts collecting the feedback from them- This helps Eva to determine if James is happy with whatever is built or if he has any suggestions that need to be considered.
- Eva also performs a crucial activity of building reports that would keep all the business stakeholders to be updated.
- Once all the activities are completed, Eva creates documents and presentations that would enclose all the learnings with reference to this project.
Eva now is ready to hand over the Apparel Site to James and James is elated with the product delivered and ensures Eva that he will come back to her firm for any future project requirements.
Right combination of technical and behavioural skills enables the business analysts to emerge as successful at the workplace.
“My model for business is The Beatles. There were four guys who kept each other’s, kind of, negative tendencies in check. They balanced each other, and the total was greater than the sum of its parts. And that’s how I see business. You know, great things in business are never done by one person. They’re done by a team of people.” — Steve Jobs, Founder of Apple
Ever wondered how much the behavioural characteristics really matter for a Business Analyst? Read on.
Most of the research studies/journals published on the internet also indicate that Ethics is one of the most critical behavioural characteristics for business analysts. As per BABOK v3, one of the most important core competencies of Behavioural Characteristics is Ethics. BA’s can help to reduce exposure to risk through the ability to recognize when a proposed solution may present ethical difficulties to an organization. Moreover, if BA’s are aware of ethical issues, then they can identify when ethical dilemmas occur and also recommend resolutions to such dilemmas.
The outcome of an effective ethical behaviour by BA’s not only helps them to build trust and relationships with stakeholders, but also the following -
- Transparent communication
- Decision making without any favouritism and bias
- Honesty and Accountability
Let’s understand the different workplace behaviours by reviewing some of the ethical and unethical behaviours exhibited by “John” and “Michell” at the workplace.
John is a Business Analyst who doesn’t sacrifice on ethics at all and has set an example for everyone on the ethical standards.
Ethical behaviour types
On the other hand, Michell is a Lead Business Analyst who has been showcasing unethical behaviour in the workplace.
Unethical behaviour type # 1
Unethical behaviour type # 2
Who says you are only the business analyst? Guess what you are the leader.
As the role of business analysts has grown, today’s business analysts perform the leadership role, working collaboratively with project managers.
Most of the time it is observed that teams lose interest in their work as they do not have the whole picture of how they and their work is valuable to deliver a successful product. Or having different teams within a project, most of the team is not getting the full picture and they don’t feel connected so they lose interest.
Like in a sprint we ask a developer to develop one user story without giving him the full picture of how that particular user story will play an important role in that particular release and what business benefit we will gain out of that piece of enhancement.
Why this works for Knowledge workers
Being a business analyst who is having the end to end product vision, they should pass on that knowledge of what is the product goal, how a small person’s work will help the entire team to achieve that goal. When you pass on that knowledge to the team, then those knowledge workers become smart. They have an innovative mind. They are independent and self-motivated. They create the environment of minimal politics, and solving the most complex business challenges.
When people feel they are being valued it is often observed that they are working more as a team and do not feel work as their burden. We should achieve that top down vision coming from the business to developer via Business Analyst and bottom up goal achievement approach from Developer to Business via Business Analyst
Give Your Team a Safety Net
We need to eliminate fear within the team and make sure to have proper distribution of opportunities.
Some employees do want to know how you expect them to complete their task. Maybe they are juniors who need to be shaped and guided. Similarly, maybe your knowledge worker is growing into a new capability, such as a long-time web designer embarking on their first mobile app design project. In these cases the most effective leaders recognize how much design freedom to give to their team.
You will be called a successful business analyst, if you can keep this synchronized harmony within the team.
Are you willing to transform?
These are the 10 steps that you will have to take to evolve as a Business Analyst.
Who can transform?
Anyone who has above spoken skill sets can transform to a business analyst role, all it requires is conscious effort and interest to learn and grow.
Every role in the product development life cycle is important and can transform you into a business analyst. However, few identified roles are:
How does Globant support transitioning into a BA role?
Aspiring professionals who are interested in transitioning into a Business Analyst career often struggle on how would they get such an opportunity in this competitive industry. Globant through the Academy program supports the aspirations of such professionals.
Are you now keen to know more about how Globant does it? Read on…Globant supports transitioning to a Business Analyst role through Academy. Through this program, a team of trainers help elevate the skillsets of cross studio globers through a variety of training sessions focussed on strengthening the core business analysis and product management skills. Several Globers from cross studios and different areas like — Quality Assurance, Recruitment, Digital Marketing, Business Development etc have successfully taken up this program and joined the Product studio.
