Personally, I feel that stakeholders don’t always appreciate the value that a business analyst adds. This is why they struggle to accept them into a role.

I feel that one contributor to this, is that the role of the BA has been ill-defined in the past. As a result, their value has come under scrutiny. I admit that this is only one factor, but it seems that any specialist-type role, where a deep understanding of a subject matter has been developed, has been dubbed ‘business analyst’. Consequently, the BA role has been bench-marked against the skills, capabilities and outputs of a pseudo-BA role, rather than that of a fully skilled one.

The two roles are assumed to serve the same purpose, but this is simply not the case. BAs need to be kitted with the requisite skills and knowledge to perform a job effectively. These are not skills that naturally come with a specialist-type role. That’s not so say that specialists make bad BAs. They only make bad BAs when they don’t acknowledge, understand and apply the correct BA skillset.

I’d appreciate your thoughts on this.

Regards,
Nik

Since this article was published, I am noticing more and more IT consulting companies creating BA positions, and clients of such firms *demanding* that BAs are assigned to their projects. I actually started to think that the title of this article, “The Tough Truth: Your Stakeholders Don’t Want a BA” is wrong (even if the article’s content is correct).

I think a better title would be “The Tough Truth: You May Meet With Resistance if Joining an Organization Who never Experienced Solid Business Analysis Work Before”.

I see project managers and product owners in the companies I consult for look at the projects that have a solid BA assigned to them, realize how much smoother things are in these projects, and immediately put a request for a BA for their initiatives as well.

More and more I get convinced that the only stakeholders who don’t want a BA are the ones who never had a solid BA help with their projects. The first time they have this experience, they immediately see the value, and don’t want to go back to the old ways of projects without a BA.

In my experience, stakeholders can be tough and demand that an underperforming BA is replaced in a matter of weeks (especially they are using a third-party provider and thus have the prerogative to ask for team changes any time). But I get weekly calls from recruiters, consulting firms, and large companies, asking if I have a BA to recommend for one of their openings. Getting a talented BA allocated to projects has become one of the top priorities of executives and delivery managers I speak to, which is good news for BAs who put effort into developing their analytical and communication skills.

Thank you Adrian!
As always, most valuable feedback. Greatly appreciate it!

I concur with your view on apprenticeships as a needed professional development. Perhaps the IIBA will take up a lead role in that regard.

So, it looks like many of us in transition have quite the challenge ahead of us, indeed.

Best Regards,

~Ron

You raise a good question about apprenticeships. The short answer is no, I’ve not seen this model very much in the BA world. In fact, I meet a lot of people who want to make the transition into a BA role, but are finding this difficult (as even ‘entry level’ BA jobs tend to ask for prior experience). It’s a bit of a cliche, but many BAs “fall into” the role — i.e. they do business analysis before they *know* what business analysis is! I am one of those BAs — I was working in a business doing BA work long before I knew what the role was. Then, as part of an organisational restructure, this new & exciting role “BA” was created!!

Some organisations do employ ‘Junior BAs’ — and there is an element of “apprenticeship” behind this — however these tend to be the exception. My view is this has to change — purely from a succession management perspective. I predict more JBA roles in the future. However, this is a personal opinion, based on nothing more than “gut feel” 🙂

I have seen an “apprenticeship” type scheme in some organisations as part of their graduate programme — e.g. the grads from university tend to “rotate”, and then perhaps choose business analysis after getting exposure to the whole organisation, at which time they’ll start to gain more experience and exposure.

Kind regards,

Adrian.

PS – No, I’m not near Scarborough — I’m about 300 miles South, down on the South coast 🙂

Thank you Adrian for this insight, and for the reference to the book!
In the context of prevalence, I wonder if there is a difference between the UK (or mainland western Europe for that matter) and North America in the proportionality of consultancy firms in comparison to corporations that purposely staff BAs.

Knowing such information would be particularly helpful for those professionals domiciled in North America, who are of European extraction, can speak one or more languages beyond English, and are open to good opportunities abroad.

I know I get quizzical looks and shrugs of shoulders whenever I have asked North American BAs whether any among them knows of any apprenticeship practice opportunities (not unpaid internship) ever being offered. Since the apprenticeship-journeyman-master system is still very much a European model, are you aware of BA apprenticeships in the UK and/or in western Europe?

Thank you for your time invested in contemplating and responding to these topics (it would be nice to hear from others too, to take some of the load off your shoulders, my friend).

Cheers,

Ron Werda
P.S.- Are you near Scarborough by chance?