While great facilitation, communication, workshops, and stakeholder engagement are important, there’s a lot more to business analysis.  We need to focus on the key fundamentals that drive value to our organizations.

At the end of the day, all roads lead to money.  A Business Analyst drives outcomes that have a financial impact.  Whether it’s revenue growth or avoiding fines and lost revenue, a BA can ensure successful outcomes that have positive impact on an organization’s finances.

The Business Analysis Value Spectrum

The Guide to the Business Analysis Body of Knowledge (BABOK v3.0) includes the concept of the Business Analysis Value Spectrum.  Interestingly, planning and monitoring, requirements lifecycle management, elicitation, and collaboration aren’t part of the value spectrum.

While those skills and techniques are critically important in the world of business analysis, they’re not at the heart of it.

The three knowledge areas that are at the heart of the Business Analysis Value Spectrum are Strategy Analysis, Requirements Analysis, and Design Definition and Solution Evaluation.

Through those three knowledge areas, we’re looking at the current state, creating efficiencies, and developing valuable solutions.  That translates to money for the organization.

As Business Analysts, we need to pay attention to the quality of requirements and the quality of process models, business rules, and data models.  Without quality, we can’t achieve the positive financial outcomes our organizations expect and need to survive.

Don’t Take on Everything Alone

You need to avoid taking the weight of the world on your shoulders when it comes to projects.  If you try to do everything on your own, you’ll fail every time.

We can’t be experts in everything.  The expectation is that you’re an expert in business analysis.

If you’re not working with your subject matter experts, the business units, designers, and the development team, you’re going to miss some of the critical requirements, business rules, or other necessary pieces of information to create the desired outcome.

Don’t sit at your desk writing requirements on your own.  Instead, use collaborative and iterative approaches to ensure the quality of what you produce.

Don’t stand in front of a room of stakeholders and act as a scribe.  Engage your stakeholders and get them to do some of the heavy lifting related to requirements.  Engage them in a manner that empowers them to uncover some of the problems or opportunities that we can then craft into great models and requirements.

Listen to the full episode to hear all of Glenn’s tips and advice on providing more value to your organization and find out what to do when stakeholders are disengaged or you’re given a solution to implement instead of a problem to solve.

http://traffic.libsyn.com/masteringbusinessanalysis/MBA162.mp3

1. Look closely at your set of tools and techniques you use on a regular basis and ask yourself if you’re efficient in using those tools.  Is there a better tool you can use to identify efficiencies in your organization?  Do you understand what you are trying to accomplish and is there a tool for that?

2. Muster up the courage and find ways to engage stakeholders to the extent that they’re doing the heavy lifting when it comes to requirements.

3. Remember that the weight of the world doesn’t rest on your shoulders.  Tap into other subject matter experts in your organization to help with gaining efficiencies and getting clarity around relevant data points.

4. Don’t do everything at once; do things incrementally.  Start with different levels of abstraction by starting at a high level and going deep where needed iteratively.

Glenn Brûlé has more than two decades of focused business analysis experience and works directly with his clients to build and mature their business analysis capabilities.  As a founding board member of the IIBA® and former Vice President, Chapters, Glenn drives the advancement of the BA profession globally.   Glenn is also an author, speaker, and he’s a regular contributor to Modern Analyst and BA Times as well as other industry publications.

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