Yellerdog

Are you a business analyst? Do you perform business analyst activities? You may do BA stuff and not know it. If you...

• Gather requirements
• Interview users
• Run workshops
• Create specifications
• Perform prototyping or JAD sessions with users
• Participate in or facilitate brainstorming sessions
• Design test plans

...then you are performing BA tasks. Most software developers, whether they know it or not, perform some BA tasks at least part of the time. It's pretty hard to get anywhere as a developer without understanding business requirements, after all.

So what is a Business Analyst?

A business analyst works as a liaison among stakeholders in order to elicit, analyze, communicate and validate requirements for changes to business processes, policies and information systems. The business analyst understands business problems and opportunities in the context of the requirements and recommends solutions that enable the organization to achieve its goals.

 

The role of the BA differs from the role of the Project Manager in that the BA is responsible for defining and managing the scope of a business solution, while the PM is responsible for the work necessary to implement that solution.

Last year the International Institute of Business Analysis (IIBA) founded a chapter here, and I have been a member since. As someone who has been doing BA activities for over 15 years, I think the establishment of a BA professional organization like the IIBA is long overdue.

If you do BA work, or check out http://www.theiiba.org ASAP!