[Become a BA #1] What everybody ought to know about business analyst roles

This is your first lesson in the Become a BA e-course. You’ll receive a new lesson every couple of days. Be sure to set aside some time today or tomorrow to read through the entire lesson and take the suggested action step.

We’re starting by exploring what exactly is business analysis and what is a business analyst.

You’d think a professional role would have one clear definition that is consistently used across industries, organizations, and professional websites. Well, there is one clear definition, but it is not consistently used. And this can cause a lot of unnecessary confusion.

When we start to look more carefully at different business analysis roles, we will discover the BA within each of them.

Defining Business Analysis

Let’s start with the definition of business analysis, as provided by IIBA in the Business Analysis Body of Knowledge^® (BABOK^®), the primary text defining the collection of activities part of formal business analysis.

Business analysis is:

…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.

I’d summarize this as follows:

Business analysts solve problems for organizations.

Professionals become business analysts partly to unleash their passion for solving problems and making things better.  They find in business analysis a challenging career that leverages their natural talents.

Where the confusion starts, is that the BABOK does not define the BA role (or a BA job). It defines a “set of tasks and techniques.” The BABOK goes on to define a business analyst as:

“any person who performs business analysis activities, no matter what their job title or organizational role may be… ”

Many job roles contain only some of the business analysis activities. Still other roles include business analysis activities and activities from other professional domains. For example, many project management positions include a fair amount of business analysis.

Most business analysts use elicitation, analysis, and validation techniques to discover and solve these problems. They rely on their core strengths in communication and problem-solving for success.

Finding the Source of the Confusion

There are many approaches to the BA role. There are professionals who work on IT changes, business process changes, logistics, or ensuring compliance with regulations. The role includes professionals who work on projects focused on integrating multiple software systems, building new software systems, and modifying existing software systems, or migrating from one software system to another. Pick any attribute of a project, organization, or stakeholder group and often you’ll find that the business analyst role is shaped around that context.

The well-intentioned advice you find in the online forums is often a bit obscured by that individual’s experience in the business analyst role and the approach that they are most familiar with. Although we might share the same title, we can be a bit of a grab bag of professionals.

The IIBA takes a broad view of the role of the business analysis professional, encompassing all of these approaches into a single discipline. It’s likely that your organization takes a more limited view. Or, if you are out looking for business analyst jobs, the recruiters and hiring managers you are speaking with take a more limited view. They’ve just carved a job role from within the business analysis discipline that best meets the needs of their organization. There’s nothing inherently wrong with this. But it does cause confusion and it wreaks havoc for job seekers and career changes.

Looking for the Real BA in the Shadows of Business Analysis

A story from our freshmen philosophy class can help us see the problem more clearly here. In The Allegory of the Cave, Plato shares a story about a group of men who throughout their entire lives have only seen shadows of real objects against the wall of the cave. They falsely believe the shadows are reality. Plato likens an intellectual awakening to these men turning around and seeing the actual objects that created the shadows against the wall. Because the shadows are all they have ever known, it is difficult for them to come to terms with the fact that the shadows were a mere representation of reality. In the same way, we might think of each job role as a shadow against the wall and the pure definition of business analysis as the actual object.

But the analogy breaks down for us. In our case, the shadows came first. Before there was a profession of business analysis, there were many BA-related job roles. Only in the last 5-10 years are we beginning to group these together into a single discipline.

Going Beyond Job Titles

The root of confusions about “what is a business analyst?” stems from the false assumption that all the places we see the title business analyst will (or should) be the same. Given that the job roles came first and that organizations have no inherent reason to align their job roles, the current state of business analyst job roles is quite messy.

While there is one clear answer to “what is business analysis?” there are several, often conflicting answers to any of the following questions:

• What is a business analyst role?
• What does a business analyst do?
• What qualifications are required to become a business analyst?

Remember, most simply put, business analysts solve problems for organizations. While activities, responsibilities, and qualifications might vary between jobs, this essential definition remains at the root.

And those activities, responsibilities, and qualifications will vary depending on the organization’s approach to the role and the types of projects to which BAs contribute.

Part of building a fulfilling business analysis career is finding your focus amidst all of these opportunities. New BAs tend to leverage their strengths and prior experiences in their first role and expand out from there.

Your next step

Your homework for today is to go out and find 3 job postings in business analysis. Consider what’s the same about each role and what’s different. By looking at different job roles (or “shadows”) you’ll begin to see for yourself what lies underneath each business analyst job role. Share what you learned and read what other course participants discovered in the Starting a BA Career LinkedIn group.

Additional Bridging the Gap Resources

• Laura’s Business Analyst Manifesto
• What is a Business Analyst Role, Anyway?
• What’s the difference between a business analyst and a systems analyst?
• The complexity of business analyst roles

As always, wishing you the best in business analysis.

Best,

Laura Brandenburg, CBAP

• Your Host, Bridging the Gap
• Your Instructor, My Business Analysis Career

**Interested in learning more? Check out My Business Analysis Career Choice, a virtual, instructor-led course designed to help you map out your business analysis career change.

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