What is the difference between business analysis and business development?

Michelle’s answer:

Business development is just that; the growth of new or existing business.  It is usually associated with the sales team within an organization.  Sales and marketing are responsible for growing existing business – so finding areas of customers that have not purchased a product.  They are also responsible for meeting their targets in growing new business by introducing new products or services.  Wikipedia’s definition is:

“New business development concerns all the activities involved in realizing new business opportunities, including product or service design, business model design, and marketing.”  (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_business_development)

Business analysis is defined by the International Institute of Business Analysis as:

“…the set of tasks and techniques used to work as a liaison among stakeholders in order to understand the structure, policies, and operations of an organization, and to recommend solutions to enable the organization to achieve its goals.”

Click here to learn more about the business analyst role

The business analyst works with the defined set of tasks in the BABOK (Business Analysis Body of Knowledge, IIBA) and utilizes tools such as:

• Stakeholder analysis
• Business requirement elicitation and validation
• Gap analysis
• Documentation such as mapping and training
• Use cases

Development of new products will often include the business analyst due to the impact on the business stakeholders and the business process.  While Sales is looking after the external analysis for a new product, the BA is looking after the internal analysis of the impact of the new product on the business.

On a personal note, I have been involved in new product introductions as a BA and it is quite exciting.  I wish they would involve us earlier in the process so I could do the business intelligence research.

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It is critical that business process owners be involved with this process and can work with the actual script to validate the requirements.  You as a BA cannot sign off for the business owner – the risk if you do the sign off can be high if a critical requirement was interpreted incorrectly.  The business owner would then have every right to put a halt to any roll out of the process or system.

Currently, I am writing UAT scripts with the business owners for our team.  Three other BAs are writing UAT scripts for this large and complex project.  So how do we keep this fun, keep the motivation high and keep smiles on people’s faces?

I have employed the following tools throughout the process:

1. The rapport I have developed with the business process owners is critical here and I have talked about this before.  The relationships require trust and understanding.
2. Laugh – when you are through a difficult negotiation or a tough patch of scripting – joke!  Make people laugh.  Find a way to inject humour into this tense time.
3. Feed them – lunch is a good start, but snacks are important too.  When you are locked in a room for 5 days from 8 am to 4 pm – treat people as you would want to be treated!  What’s a little sugar or salt to keep people moving forward…
4. Take breaks – my team looked at me in amazement when I forced them to take a 20 minutes break.  We went outside, for a walk, answered some email – whatever worked but we all came back fresh and with less tension in our shoulders.
5. Thank them very much for their ideas along the way, for their contribution at the end of each day, for all that.
6. Have some jokes – email jokes work well – handy to share.  Even the cute ones will work depending on the audience.

For something as serious as UAT scripting – keep it light where you can and you will be successful!

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Michelle’s Response:

After reading this question, I found myself thinking that yes I have been through this before and I have also been able to make this work and have successful sessions with my stakeholders.  The most critical difference that I can see is the stakeholder who can see the value of fixing or changing the process.  Most stakeholders want to be there; they want to be able to help.

However, two thought processes might be happening here:

First, what does a BA do and how can she help me?

Second, how does this change affect me and my team?

Recently I had several business owners miss my meetings or show up late.  When I talked with them, they did not see the value in a business analyst.  They had the understanding that I was an administrative resource who was to be utilized as they wanted – mostly for note taking and for setting up meetings.

Now this is just fine if that was the role I was hired to do, but I was hired to move forward on a business process change.  I talked with them about the change, what I could do to help them and the value I could provide.  Understanding what their process is and being able to represent it during full team sessions is critical.  In addition, bringing back updates to proposed thoughts and ideas becomes valuable to the process owners if they cannot always attend every meeting.  But I could and I would be able to represent their team on their behalf.

Change is such a difficult process to go through whether it is in your personal life or business life.  I always come into a project fully appreciating the change that the business owners will be managing.  I sit down with them, usually one on one (or by conference call, again one on one) first to talk about that change and start building a relationship.  What does it mean for them?   What does it mean for their team?  How does this change affect their process coming into their team and leaving their team?  How do they view this process, and can they find the value in the change?

Then I talk about how I can help with this.  How I can support them with understanding the change, making it work for them, documentation, training, and whatever else they need.  If they see the value then you become part of their team too, and the trust that you build is the most important part of the developing relationship. They start attending your meetings because they trust you and see your role in helping them achieve their goals.

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Here is how the walkthrough works.

• Each of the departments will work independently, as they will in the new process.
• The project manager puts together a customer package of a closed project – this is the full construction package that gives us the details we need to do our jobs as we walk this through the process.  (This would include maps, drawings, requirements, customer information, approval documents).
• We also have the new process maps, the documentation and an idea of how we want the tools to perform.  This is difficult at this stage as the new systems do not have requirements yet and everyone is wondering what they will look like.

The first team starts out with the customer and gathers information.  As we all wait for the order to arrive in our work queue, we realize how much time is actually spent with the customer – gathering information, using tools to detail maps.  We have a conference bridge set up – and we hear ‘ customer group calling design’ and design answering.

The business analysts are looking for gaps in the process.

• What has stopped the workflow?
• Can we move it again?
• What system trigger do we need?
• Do we need the CRM system to tell us that all customer information is complete and the quote can be created?

Once the status changes to quote accepted by the customer, then the next team is engaged.  They receive their detailed package from the Customer group but once they examine it they are missing key maps of the customer site.  At this point, the run through grinds to a halt and phone conversations start and questions are recorded by the BAs.  This gap is highlighted and logged and the team moves the process on to the next team.

Conversations ebb and flow on the conference bridge.   We find that it is very easy to slip back into current process as the pressure to deliver your piece increases.  Some team members realize that the process is now in current state and try to bring everyone into the future state but it is difficult.  There are a lot of variables and no systems to work with.

The entire day works like this.  We start and stop as gaps are identified.  What really works is having the business owners discuss their handoff process between each other.  They discuss and negotiate to determine what they both need to see.  This becomes the most valuable part of the entire exercise – and what proves to bring the teams together to start understanding each other’s process and have a vested interest in the entire process.  At the end we gather together and talk about the day and what went well and what could be done better. You can feel the positive energy in the room and the beginnings of understanding.

The gaps include the lack of systems, the lack of documents and information to work with, and staying in the future state.  The most successful part of the walk through is the conversations started with each business owner as they look at the hand off documents to the next team and realize the impact they have on each other.  Do their inputs and outputs flow and match?  What would be more effective?  The greatest value is seeing the teams working together and reasoning out how the new process would and should work.  Those conversations are the gems from the day.

>>Learn About Other Requirements Validation Techniques

There are many ways to validate requirements. Read these articles for some variations:

• How to Conduct a Requirements Review
• Have You Experienced Your Customer’s Perspective on Your Business Process?
• How to Get Meaningful Sign-Off on Requirements Without a Walk-Through