| Articles » 2005 Survey of Business Analysts |
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2005 Survey: The Top Challenges Facing Business Analysts |
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| Business Improvement Architect’s research survey
of Business Analysts attending Project World/Business Analyst World
2005 in Toronto, Canada, identified that ‘Lack of Clarity in
the Scope of the Business Functions’ and ‘Business Requirements
Not Well-Defined” are the top two challenges facing their organizations
in managing business requirements. |
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| Our research with Business Analysts provides a snapshot of the
issues facing organizations in the management of business requirements.
The next top challenges were ‘Conflict Between Business Groups’
and ‘Not Bringing in Business Analysts in Sufficient Time’. |
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The research also showed the following major issues
increasing in importance over prior years that are facing organizations
when identifying and managing business requirements: |
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| When asked what they felt would improve their ability
to manage customer requirements, Business Analyst survey respondents
identified ‘Business Requirements Well-Documented’ most
often followed by ‘Having a Good Process to Determine Customer
Requirements’. |
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| Business Improvement Architect’s findings clearly
indicate the need for organizations to understand the importance of
the Business Analyst role in helping to ensure the successful execution
of projects. Projects often suffer because the project does not understand
and manage the on-going needs of both the customer and the business.
This can negatively impact the results of the project. Strategies
for the Business Analyst which will help ensure greater success in
their role and for their organizations are: |
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| Challenge #1 – Lack of Clarity in
the Scope of the Business Functions |
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| In the translation of the customer’s needs into the delivered
product or service, vague requirements may not be properly understood.
The subsequent design documents may, therefore, be poorly defined
and documented. |
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| Business Analysts recognize their role as one of defining
the business solution boundaries– i.e., ensure the project scope
definition aligns with the proposed solution to support the business
needs. This is then translated into the Business Requirements Document.
This BRD is approved and signed off by the customer as an agreement
on the requirements. |
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Additional challenges are:
- Requirements that have not been well documented due to assumptions
being made that the requirement is obvious.
- That detailed documentation is not required because the solution
is temporary – i.e., it will work for now.
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| The challenge here is for the Business Analyst to fully
integrate the costs associated with satisfying the requirements with
the investment to clarify the Business Function Scope right up front. |
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Organizational issues add another layer of complexity
in the BA’s ability to manage requirements. The pace of change
in organizations is indicative of market pressures. Senior management
pushes project teams to deliver projects quickly and more efficiently.
Changing technology and the complexity of projects are other ongoing
challenges. |
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The BA must work with the Project Manager to reduce
the impact of these challenges during the Business Requirements
Analysis process. An effective way to do so is to capture challenges
and document them in the Project Scope Statement. The resulting
document will articulate the full scope requirements as reflected
in the BRD and there will be a much greater understanding and clarity
of the project’s scope among all stakeholders and business
functions. |
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| Challenge #2– Business Requirements
Not Well-Managed |
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| The customer may not fully understand all of the project’s
requirements at the beginning of the project. The customer may use
imprecise language such as “ I guess, I want” or “Maybe
we should consider” or may not fully articulate what is required.
Requirements may be vague, incomplete and may not be specific enough
to be measurable. |
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This ambiguity often leads to products or services
delivered to the customer that:
- May be technically sound but fall short by not improving the
business process.
- Does not meet customer expectations
- Results in increased cost—does not address the needs,
so there will be another initiative, and another. (Misunderstandings
regarding requirements must be revealed and cleared up as early
as possible because the cost of fixing them goes up exponentially
as the project progresses.)
- Result in credibility erosion of the team or the organization.
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Requirements can be better managed by:
- Investing enough time at the beginning of the project to ensure
the requirements are understood and documented, in a Business
Requirements Document (BRD). The customer group must then sign
off the BRD.
- Creating a checklist template to collect customer requirements.
This approach helps the requirements gathering process and reduces
the possibility of things being missed during the interview process.
- Ensuring that the “requirements gathering process”
is separated from the “design process.” Understanding
the requirements is not the same as determining how to design
a solution to address the requirements. The “design process”
comes after the requirements gathering process.
- Involving a customer representative from all of the affected
departments or business functions. This involvement should exist
throughout the project to increase understanding of the project’s
goal and ensure any changes to the requirements are in the best
interest of the product or service design requirements.May be
technically sound but fall short by not improving the business
process.
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| Challenge #3– Conflict Between Business
Groups |
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| The BA role can often be referred to as: Systems
Analyst, User Support Analyst, Business Systems Specialist, Project
Manager, Business Leader, IT Specialist, etc. The BA’s
key responsibility is to perform a sequence of analysis techniques
in order to obtain customer requirements. |
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| For a BA to be effective, the reporting relationships
should be clear across various levels within the organization. For
example, the BA may be working with administrative staff, examining
their requirements for increased productivity and then later in
the day working with senior management, analyzing their need for
more detailed reports. |
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| The BA’s primary role is to elicit, structure,
validate and communicate business and user requirements. Essentially,
the BA role “bridges the gap” between the customer/user
community (high level requirements) and the technical community
(technical requirements). As a result, customer acceptance of a
final product or service is highly dependant on the BA’s ability
to translate those needs into a proposed business solution. The
BA must remain sensitive to all customer/user needs and not judge
these needs. It therefore becomes apparent that a BA must establish
rapport and trust with the customer and with the various business
units directly impacted by the project. |
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| Challenge #4– Not Bringing in Business
Analysts in Sufficient Time |
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| It is important that the roles of Business Analyst and Project
Manager are recognized as separate and distinct. However, their ability
to work effectively as a team for the sole purpose of ensuring customer
satisfaction brings about overall project success. |
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| Project Teams work within the framework of a Project
Management process, using a methodology for managing projects. This
process ultimately defines how the proposed solution will be delivered. |
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| The deliverables from the Business Requirements Document
are further defined in the Project Scope Statement document. This
is approved by the Sponsor and then used for project planning purposes.
The Project Team breaks down the deliverables into tasks/activities
and documents them into a Work Breakdown Structure (WBS). |
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| For this to all work in harmony, the Business Analyst
must be brought onto the project team at the very beginning of the
project and remain as an integral part of the team until the project
is completed and closed. During the Business Requirement Analysis
process the BA will help develop the scope statement by identifying
the customer requirements. The requirements may have already been
identified in a BRD. Then the BA must remain with the team, ensuring
that the ever-changing needs of customers are heard and managed. |
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| Conclusion |
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Since the role of Business Analysts is an invaluable
asset, there is a real need for organizations to invest in training
and development of this role. |
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The results of the survey strongly suggest the need
to train Business Analysts on the Business Requirements Analysis Process.
This includes how to:
- Determine, collect, analyze and document the business requirements.
- Manage on-going stakeholder expectations and business requirements
changes.
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| The Business Analyst role is important for most
projects. Business Analysts ensure that the stakeholder needs are
identified and fully met throughout the project. This translates
into more successful projects because their customer’s expectations
are realized. The need for training BAs led BIA to develop and offer
a full certificate curriculum for Business Analysts that provides
the basics plus more advanced and soft skills training including:
Communications Skills, Project Management and Business Process Improvement
as well Testing Methodologies for Business Analysts. |
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| For more information about this article, please contact bia™ at info@bia.ca. |
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| © Business Improvement Architects |
