Six Secrets of Top-Notch Business Analysts

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Six Secrets of Top-Notch Business Analysts

– Thomas Wailgum , CIO

May 23, 2008

Most line-of-business execs, projectmanagers and software developers whohave worked on application developmentteams can attest to the importance of good

business analysts.

MORE ON CIO.comWhat Do Business Analysts Actually Do for Software Implementation Projects? Why Business Analysts Are So Importantfor IT and CIOs Hot Jobs: Business Analyst

In many instances, in fact, today's businessanalyst can affect the outcome (good or bad) of a software project. "When businessanalysts aren't able to carry their weight, it'sevident to everybody on the project. Theyusually know something is going on," says

Carey Schwaber, a senior analyst of application development at Forrester Research "I've seen projects where a bad business analyst was thecritical failure factor."

Sure, executive boardroom support is key at the kickoff, but the CEO or CIO isn't down in the trenchesevery day, hammering out compromises, grinding out specs and pushing all involved toward the finishline. "It's funny," Schwaber adds, "we have a lot of prerequisites for success with software projects, andit's not just executive support. It's also good business analysts."

While most employees might have a sense of what a traditional business analyst does, not everyoneknows how BAs do their jobs' effectively. "It's easy to understand what their role is," Schwaber says, "butit's hard to understand what makes them good at it or bad at it."

So what do the best business analysts do so well? Here are six critical skillsets and professionalcharacteristics that make business analysts invaluable.

They understand the specific business problem that software aims to solve. To Ron Bonig, CIO of the George Washington University, the best business analysts have an ability to determine the actualbusiness problem and then help figure out a solution.

"The ability to properly frame and structure a problem is 75 percent of the effort to discern a solution,"Bonig says. "I see people attempting to solve the wrong problem every day, and it usually stems from aninadequate problem statement that either leaves them floundering among irrelevant details or confidentlydetermining a solution that bears no relationship to the core issue."

Good business analysts should fall back on what Bonig calls the "old list of questions taught in

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Journalism 101"—who, what, where, when, why and how. "If one can describe the problem using theseattributes," Bonig says, "a solution is generally well within reach." Business analysts who answer thesequestions at the outset of software projects (Bonig says he uses this method all the time) will have abetter chance of success.

"So, bottom line, the best business analysts know how to structure the problem," Bonig says. "Someskills and common sense and a knowledge of the subject matter, if it is technical, are the majority of whatis needed."

They are diplomats, translators and negotiators. Forrester's Schwaber says the best businessanalysts are corporate diplomats, savvy negotiators and skilled peacemakers. "They are good at findingcommon ground; they are good at being objective," she says. "They are really looking at oftentimesconflicting needs from the business and from IT. So, to be able to understand where each party iscoming from is essential."

In addition, good business analysts are aware of the language and terminology differences between thebusiness and IT, and they provide "translation services" between the two.

Jim Shepherd, senior vice president of research at AMR Research, says this liaison skill is whatseparates the good from the not-so-good. "You're looking for someone who can translate between thetechnology folks within IT—and sometimes the external consultants and software vendors—and thebusinesspeople," Shepherd says. "They often don't speak the same language. They both have their ownargon."

They can see the forest through the trees. Even though business analysts may often find themselvesdown in the weeds of a software implementation, the best ones are able to view their roles both from30,000 feet and 3 feet.

"You want people who have a somewhat higher level view of the business, and they understand how thepieces fit together," Shepherd says. "They don't just understand the specific tasks in accounts payable,but they also understand how that's connected to the receiving department and purchasing and financialaccounts departments. They have that kind of a perspective."

In addition, business analysts need to keep all parties and departments involved focused on the bigger picture and long-range benefits of the new software. They also need to be a go-to resource whenever it'sneeded by the users.

Business analysts, Shepherd contends, need a sort of a "genial personality" because they are often the"first line of support during the implementation and after the implementation, when the business isstruggling with: How do I do this task using this software? Why doesn't it do it this way? Shepherd says."This is the person they're most likely to talk to first."

They understand technology's potential and its limitations. The best business analysts know thattechnology is not a panacea for an organization and that there is a certain amount of a "reality check"that big technology-based ideas and initiatives must go through. In other words, IT has its limitations.

"You just can't assume that IT can do anything that the business wants them to. There are some thingsthat are technologically impossible," Schwaber. "And even if something is possible, it's not always costeffective." Business analysts should be able to explain these constraints in terms that both IT and thebusiness can understand, using business terminology, such as cost-benefit equations, total cost of ownership (TCO) and return on investment (ROI), as well describing the IT challenges.

For example, a business analyst will know that IT is not going to be rewriting the company's legacyapplications to deliver a new Web application, Schwaber points out. "They may know what theconstraints are for that application—how fast it can change, when it can change—in ways that thebusiness can never understand," she says. "But they can help them understand the impact of all theserequirements."

They have credibility with business colleagues, often gained through previous work experience. For business analysts coming out of IT, gaining the business's trust and equal status can be tough. "Ingeneral, what we find is that someone who has worked in a business role tends to have more credibilityas a business analyst than somebody who has worked in IT," Shepherd says.

Shepherd says that many organizations are finding that the best business analysts have worked in


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departments such as accounting, production planning or procurement, and along the way developed aninterest in the business's applications and IT. "Maybe they've been assigned to an implementation or selection project, and discovered that they found [the business analyst role] really interesting," he notes.

For these BAs, the quest to gain the business's respect and credibility will most often be easier than for those technical IT staffers trying to broaden their BA chops. "Convincing people in the business that thisperson, who started life as a programmer, understands what they do, empathizes with them and cansuggest a better way to do it, is much more difficult," Shepherd says.

Forrester's Schwaber is finding that those business analysts who "own some part of the business" andare engaged with IT as well have the most chance for success. (Forrester calls this evolved staffer abusiness technology analyst.)

"The business technology analyst owns a business function or business process and actuallyimplements changes to how that process is automated using tools like BPM solutions and rulesengines," Schwaber says. "Their job is to simultaneously know how the business should best operateand to optimize business processes, business information and business experiences and actually makesure those change are implemented in the software."

They are "people persons." The best BA's prefer to be mixing it up with the troops, rather than hiding intheir cubes during software project crunch times. They are, quite simply, adept communicators.

"Communication and collaboration skills are vital for business system analysts to be successful," says

Scott Ambler, the practice leader of agile development for the IBM Methods Group and author of severalbooks on software project management and agile development. "Therefore they must be peoplepersons."

Ambler says that good business analysts help other people on the project teams "to grow their businessanalysis skills, thereby sharing the wealth," he says. "BAs that do that are quite valuable."

Of course, a business analyst's level of success will largely depend on the individual, which can be hardfor managers and organizations to determine.

"I've had people say, I've hired computer science graduates who have been completely unable tocommunicate with the development team but English majors who knew how to do it perfectly," Schwaber says. "So it's really hard to predict who are the right people to bring into the job and how you can makethem successful. It's mostly trial and error at this point."

© 2008 CXO Media Inc.


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