Comments on: Guide to Business Analyst Performance Metrics and KPIs

By: Measuring the analyst | karlblum.net

Measuring the analyst | karlblum.net — Fri, 01 Oct 2010 17:37:34 +0000

[…] [2] http://www.bridging-the-gap.com/how-do-you-measure-the-success-of-a-business-analyst/ […]

By: Laura Brandenburg

Laura Brandenburg — Thu, 13 May 2010 14:32:13 +0000

Hi Marcelo,
Great question. I think the answer to your question starts with how the measures itself and how success is evaluated. There can be conflicting expectations from these various groups, but if they have bought in on some initial measures then they may be in a position to provide more objective feedback. At the end of the day, it’s the leader of the BA group that makes the final call, whether that’s the CIO, COO, or CEO.

Laura

By: Marcelo Marques (Jango)

Marcelo Marques (Jango) — Wed, 12 May 2010 22:08:01 +0000

I agree with almost all statements here but run surveys or quantify BA results require to know WHO will provide data for that: PMs? Developers? Business? Customers? Partners? Stakeholders?

I see here possible conflicts that can make this more and more difficult to measure.

By: Laura Brandau

Laura Brandau — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 22:37:58 +0000

In reply to Annie McGlade.

Hi Annie,

Thank you for your comment. It is a good one. I completely understand the perspective of picking some very quantitative measurements such as number of changes and defects found due to missing requirements and my original thinking went down that path. However, as I kept on thinking I found that it would be possible to have a business analyst who excelled at those measures but did not deliver on a successful project. You can have well-analyzed requirements that end up in the delivery of software that absolutely fails to solve a business problem!

So while I agree these are useful statistics, I don’t think they go far enough to measure the BA’s success. I am trying, albeit with a bit of a stumble, to reach beyond these internal metrics of success to how we, as business analysts, actually help our organizations create value.

By: Annie McGlade

Annie McGlade — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 05:35:44 +0000

I think it might help to go back to the basic question here: how do we measure the success of the BA? All the discussion thus far provides categories but no way of measuring success within those categories. If we were to apply a QA process to this as we do (or should) to our requirements, are these ‘measures’ measurable and/or testable and in the long term are they repeatable? For years it has been cited that the primary cause for project failure is the requirements, so presumably there has been a way to measure when we as BAs get it wrong. Can we apply the same sort of criteria to measuring how we got it right? I am talking about a reduction in the amount of rework during development, the number of defects found in testing due to missing, incomplete or ambiguous requirements; the number of change requests due to similar requirements issues (i.e. not a change of requirements due to an outside issue). Admittedly this is micro level stuff and you need to have process and tools in place to ensure that the information can be captured but it is measureable and can be used to track improvements (hopefully) over time. And this is regardless of the complexity of the project, the unpredictability of the stakeholders or how unrealisteic their expectations.

Just a thought.