The evolution of a digital BA

Three crucial skills a business analyst needs to add value at the enterprise level

Hello, my name is Igor and I am a business analyst.

I have been a business analyst by trade for the last 12 years, give or take. I was certified as a CBAP in 2013, and was fortunate enough to work in many industries and companies — from the smallest start-ups to huge multinational corporations. For the last 5 years, I’ve been part of an agency that does all sorts of stuff in digital: eCommerce, Content Management Systems (CMS), marketing, training and capability uplift. What working in such an environment gives you is a great exposure to a lot of businesses, and, in particular, to how they perform business analysis.

A not-so-surprising truth about being a Business Analyst is that there is no single answer in the industry for who that person is.

There are, of course, official definitions by IIBA, BCSc, and so on, but if you look at job descriptions on the market, you will get a completely different profile of a person acting under the same title.

When you ask people who are the BAs in their business, one company may say:

“A BA is our documentation and data flow girl or boy.”

Another will reply:

“BAs? Those are our process people.”

The third one will declare:

“That’s what we used to call product owners before THE TRANSFORMATION”.

Because everybody has a transformation on their hands today, right?

There is a huge diversity in what people with the title BA do. And there is a reason for that. Now, it is amusing how many people don’t want to know this reason. Often, a recent graduate or career changer will land their first job as a business analyst in a particular company and learn on the job. They will absorb one way of working, and stick to it, and they will think that this is business analysis incarnate. They often fail to ask themselves one important question — why do they do the things they do? People like that form the majority of pretty average BAs on the market, and they are stuck in their careers working for the same businesses or on the same types of projects. Forever.

But those BAs who ask this question and find an answer to it? They eventually become the gun BAs making a difference.

* * *

So, if we look at the essence of the profession, business analysis is all about enabling change in the business context (yes, this is adapted from IIBA’s BABOK Guide[1]). To do so, BAs need to understand which value is sought, which solutions are going to deliver that value, who the stakeholders are, and whose needs are satisfied. Their job is to ensure the need is satisfied through the solutions built for the people involved. One day it means scoping a software product and defining requirements for it. Another day it means scoping a business process change and defining the new process flows. And the next day they’re running a training program.

Business analysis helps businesses do their job better. Well, not exactly like this but you get the point :)

At its essence, business analysis helps businesses do whatever they are doing better.

This role is supportive in nature, so a typical outcome is not a product on its own, but rather the fact that the rest of the business is doing their things more efficiently; and eventually ensuring that valuable changes occur.

This makes me wonder: at the end of the day, what is the difference between a project with a good BA, and a project without one? And my answer? Quality. Business analysis is naturally and organically a big part of proper quality management.

It is funny how they turned things upside down in the IT world. If you take some more traditional industries like manufacturing or services and speak about quality within them, they will confirm that quality assurance is integral to their processes: it is all about making sure the product meets expectations and is built to the specification before it is actually released. Because when you have 10,000 million motorcycle engines coming off the assembly line you can’t just throw in a tester, ask them to poke around and report some bugs afterwards… but we do it all the time in IT! This reduces the grand role of Quality Assurance to trivial testing.

Smart analysts understand it, and play the role of proper proactive quality assurance, making huge impacts on their businesses.

Let’s have a closer look. Quality management consists of Quality Assurance and Quality Control — that at least is what ISO 9000 [2] teaches us and I don’t see any reasons to object.

• Assurance is all about knowing who your stakeholders are and which needs they have, designing the solutions fit for their needs, and designing the business process that would eventually deliver those solutions.

• Control is about verification that the solution is built according to the design, and validation that it still solves the original problem.

The way I see it, good Business Analysis is always a part of Quality Management — at least in the assurance part if not control. It can’t be any other way.

Assurance and control — the two parts of quality — have to be balanced. Otherwise, who knows what may happen?

* * *

What is needed to deliver good quality? First of all, you need to know the stakeholder. The term “Stakeholder” here is used in a broad sense and includes business users and sponsors, as well as end users and customers. For each stakeholder group, you need to understand what is valuable for them and how the value can be delivered so that you can recommend suitable solutions.

This is where it becomes tricky. I have the word “digital” in the title of this story, mostly because it is a buzz word and increases the chances people read the article. ;) Jokes aside, if we think about it — there is no such thing as a “non-digital” business analyst these days. A BA needs to be digital to be a business analyst. These lines are blurred: what is and is not digital these days?

Do androids still dream of electric sheep after the point of technological singularity?

Take a phone for example. 10–20 years ago it was a purely physical object, with some electronics in it, of course, but still. Today, it is hard to say whether a mobile phone is a physical or digital product in the first place. Everything is blended; we are on our way to singularity and nothing can stop this process so we have to tag along ^.^

Technology is developing fast. Freakishly fast.

It is much easier for businesses to get more calculational power when needed, and there is only one way to compete with it — by learning. Getting a single extra FLOPs is much cheaper than gaining a single extra point of IQ in an organisation. When specialising in one single tool or technology, you increase your chances of being automated out of the industry.

Following a famous quote by Robert Heinlein: specialisation is for insects.

A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyse a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.

— Robert Heinlein, Time Enough for Love

Disruptive thinking, systems thinking, design thinking and diversity are for humans; that’s what you need to spend your investment on so that you leverage your broad knowledge and emergent system effects to recommend the solutions and keep the focus on delivering the right things.

Scope management for technology solutions is one of the things businesses are paying you for. But it has to be “smart scope management”. A BA knows the product scope, but more importantly, they know why something is or is not in scope at any moment in time, what the justification for it is, and why this decision makes everybody’s lives better.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying you shouldn’t learn technology. On the contrary, you need to know your tools and be fluent with multiple tech solutions; but don’t make this your only competitive advantage. Once you are on this path, you are at risk of being replaced by another professional or a piece of automation. Make blending your technical skills with your human skills your priority — knowing just exactly how to cook this or that piece of tech to serve it to different businesses.

* * *

But technology is not the only driver for successful projects. Organisational culture and the way the projects are delivered is another. Everybody is talking about agile these days as if agile is a panacea. The thing is, Scrum was invented in 1995, six years before the agile manifesto which, for the record, is 20 years old! I was still in school when it was written. Agile is not new. Agile is not the solution to all your projects. Agile is a solution — one of the solutions that you need to master. And just like a good kung-fu master, you need to know when to apply it and when not to.

Which brings me to the next related topic. Any project, any initiative, is associated with change.

A project is a single, temporary endeavor that happens in a much bigger organisational environment. Regardless of how efficient it is, this environment is already a formed structure with its own habits and ways of working, tools and processes. Introducing a change to it will always result in resilience.

Have a look at this fun picture that can be found on the internet — it is as old as the internet itself if not older; and there are so many versions of it so I’m not too sure who the credit belongs to. It is hilarious on its own, but think about it: this salesman was most likely going to get the knight killed. A person who’s never used a gun is likely to miss, break the gun, lose ammunition and eventually be in trouble.

It is not enough to bring new technology to the table: you need to ensure the business can use it and get the expected benefits out of it… or your knights are doomed.

In other words, you need to know your stakeholders, know their needs, and know just how the solution is going to address those needs.

People are likely to be confused. It is our job to help them get through this confusion and start realising the benefits of the new solutions we are building. Elements of change management become crucial for a business analyst’s success. I am personally a huge fan of the Prosci ADKAR® Model for change management[4]; it is both powerful and easy to comprehend for an absolute beginner.

It summarises the activities needed for a successful change into 5 stages:

1. Awareness — Making sure people know the change is coming. More importantly, they know why it is happening.

2. Desire — The fact people know the change is coming doesn’t mean they welcome it. Translate the reasons for change to personal and organisational motivation to build desire for it.

3. Knowledge — People need to know what to do during the transition as well as how to perform effectively in the future state.

4. Ability — People will never learn how to use the new system after one session; they need to try it to get confidence to use it and gain ability.

5. Reinforcement — Reinforce the change by acknowledging the effort and rewarding the desired behaviours.

As business analysts, our job is not to define the scope of a solution or make sure it is delivered. Our main job is to see that the business is using the solution in the most efficient way to solve its problems — this can’t be done without helping the organisation embrace the change. I find ADKAR a great starting point for it, although you may find your own.

* * *

Summing it all up, the image of a modern BA is digital in nature. A big part of it is about managing the scope of recommended solutions in a smart way. It is not about writing down what other people tell you and calling it scope. It is about understanding which problems you are trying to solve, why it is important to get them solved, and what the justification is for having certain elements of the solution in or out of scope. You need to know how your particular solution is going to do it and why it is better than the alternatives.

Another part of it is managing the quality of the output in a proactive manner. Quality assurance is your biggest friend and ally in this task. Show them that when you do your job well they have less issues and bugs in the final product — and you will become one of the most valuable assets in the team. Remember that QA is not about testing, it is about the end-to-end quality that starts and ends with business analysis.

Finally, it’s about managing the organisational change efforts to get the solution live. It is not enough to build the product, you need to ensure that the business can effectively use it, otherwise all the efforts can be considered waste.

The three pillars of a digital BA.

* * *

I’ve seen behavioural characteristics that make certain BAs stand out. They have the courage to take an end-to-end ownership of the solution. They care about the end result — so there is nothing that is considered “not my job”. Their attitude is “if there is an issue, I’ll fix it or find someone who can fix it under my guidance”.

They think beyond the immediate project with a focus on the why’s of it. This allows them to see the bigger picture and find creative ways of solving problems.

They build a strong bond between disciplines, focusing the power of the whole enterprise architecture to deliver an improvement. This allows us to build holistic solutions which are sound from any viewpoint in the organisation.

In my view, modern business analysts are change drivers who help businesses be in full control over projects via smart scope management and focus on end-to-end quality of the delivery.

This is my vision for the profession; something that I see is emerging as a new type of digital BA. BAs who care. BAs who bring together the human and digital parts of the system to deliver high quality, fit-for-purpose solutions.

References:

1. A Guide to the Business Analysis Body of Knowledge® (BABOK® Guide)

2. ISO 9000:2015(en) Quality management systems — Fundamentals and vocabulary. https://www.iso.org/obp/ui/#iso:std:iso:9000:ed-4:v1:en

3. Robert Heinlein, Time Enough for Love / ISBN-13 : 978–0441810765

4. The Prosci ADKAR® Model / https://www.prosci.com/adkar/adkar-model