Business Analyst Manifesto

Out of chaos, we create order.

Out of disagreement, we create alignment.

Out of ambiguity, we create clarity.

But most of all, we create positive change for the organizations we serve.

Business analysts lead teams from the inside out. We create positive change for our organizations. We inspire others to follow us on our path toward positive change. We help everyone understand exactly what that change is and how they can contribute to it. We help teams discover what the change should be.

Ask yourself, are you focused on:

• Leading a team toward the best possible solution to the problem we’ve been tasked with solving?
• Leading a team to balance our goals with our constraints to achieve a valuable result?
• Developing a shared understanding of what needs to be accomplished?
• Helping the business own the solution?

On every successful project you’ll find a business analyst. Their title might be director of technology, product owner, product manager, requirements analyst, business process engineer, VP of operations, development lead, team lead, project manager, or CTO. The title is rather irrelevant. The activities of creating alignment around a clear understanding of “done” that creates positive change is what it means to be a business analyst.

Not everyone with the title “business analyst” holds themselves to these principles. Many people who consider themselves part of our profession are more focused on documents, activities, and sign-offs, than clarity and alignment. They are more focused on filling a specific set of responsibilities than defining a role that helps drive change in their organization. Some are even more focused on getting by day-to-day than on continuous improvement of their abilities.

It will take an inter-connected group of self-motivated people doing excellent business analysis to build a great profession.

We build our profession one BA at a time.

Let us go forward together and discover what it is to do business analysis at its best. Let us come together as professionals who care about doing our best work and help each other take more confident steps forward.

And as a business analyst, I wholeheartedly support Alistair Cockburn’s Oath of Non-Allegiance:

I promise not to exclude from consideration any idea based on its source, but to consider ideas across schools and heritages in order to find the ones that best suit the current situation.