Business Analysis Competency

Requirements play a vital role in engineering IT systems. It is well known, for example, that the top reasons for project failure are tied directly to poor requirements. It is through the leadership of the business analyst that requirements are captured from the business subject matter experts and communicated to the technical team so that solutions can be designed and implemented that the meet the business needs. As projects become larger, cross-functional, global and more complex, the role of the business analyst becomes even more challenging and more critical.

A Business Analyst Competency Center (BACC) can serve to directly improve the skills of business analysts, increasing the quality of requirements and, ultimately, the quality of delivered solutions. The purpose of the BACC is to enable business analysts to do their job effectively, serving as the liaison between the business and IT.

Doreen Evans Associates has worked with a number of clients to establish a BACC. Our approach has several components, illustrated in the figure below.

Step One: Business Analysis Competency Assessment

The place to begin is to understand the current state of requirements and business analysis. Our assessment is a packaged service, with deliverables that include findings and recommendations as well as a roadmap for what to do when. A typical assessment takes 6 weeks. It includes interviews and investigation of:

• People:
  • How many BAs are there and where do they report in the organization?
  • Is there a business analyst job family with job descriptions and a career path?
  • What skills and competencies are required?
  • How are BAs recruited?
  • What training is available?
  • How is performance management handled?
  • How formal is professional development for the business analysts?
• Process
  • Is there an established requirements life cycle methodology?
  • How is the methodology documented and at what level of detail?
  • Are industry best practices documented and being followed?
  • What templates are provided for deliverables?
  • What guidelines and quality checklists are available?
  • How is quality control handled?
  • Are the handoffs across organizations clearly understood?
  • Are “lessons learned” sessions conducted after each project? Are improvements made to the process going forward?
• Technology
  • Are modeling tools used during the requirements life cycle?
  • Are tools used for collaboration and review of requirements?
  • How are requirements managed?
• Organization
  • What is in place to provide on-going support to the BA community?
  • How are best practices communicated to BAs?
  • To whom do the BAs report?

Step Two: Business Analysis Pilot Project

A pilot project provides help from highly experienced business analysts working with your in-house business analysts to improve their competencies. DEA consultants can serve as mentors or work beside your team as business analysts, demonstrating what needs to be accomplished when, and how to use best practices – all the while helping the team achieve success. Pilot projects provide a test bed for the techniques, and help to prove the concept and demonstrate the value of a robust, integrated requirements life cycle solution. During a pilot project engagement, DEA would:

• Provide a tested methodology to guide the project phases
• Conduct just-in-time training for project team members
• Assist in tailoring templates to satisfy company standards
• Work with the overall project manager to manage the requirements aspects of the project life cycle
• Mentor on best practice approaches and on use of tools
• Serve in project roles such as facilitator, requirements manager and/or business analyst

Step Three: Business Analysis Improvement

At the same time as carrying out pilot projects, work on improving the business analysis environment itself should begin. This means focusing attention on the process being used, on the tools that will support success, and on the business analyst role. The work you do here feeds back to pilot projects, and vice versa. During this portion of the engagement, DEA would:

• Document the types of projects being carried out at the client site and detail how the methodology should be tailored depending on project type, length, and complexity
• Build out detailed process flow maps to document the methodology
• Develop a training curriculum for business analysts
• Build and deliver courses and seminars
• Develop templates for deliverables
• Create guidelines and quality checklists
• Create standards for business analyst performance management and skills assessment
• Assist in creating a business analyst career path and in writing job descriptions
• Develop requirements for requirements life cycle tools and requirements management tools
• Assist in tool selection

Step Four: Business Analysis Competency Institutionalization

Institutionalizing a business analysis competency center means building an organization that can:

• Grow and share business analysis capabilities, including education, templates and guidelines, to all business analysts
• Centralize and standardize methodology deliverables and common BA project activities
• Provide governance of and a framework for leveraging requirements best practices
• Provide governance for the quality of business analysis project deliverables

In order to create such an organization, an infrastructure must be established. DEA can help guide the work to:

• Form a leadership team to guide decisions and advocate for the organization
• Assist in determining where the organization should report and how it should interact with other groups, in particular project management
• Define roles within the organization, for example, a process manager or a project quality manager, and write job descriptions
• Define the internal processes and procedures that the organization needs to carry out, for example, participating in project planning, managing requirements publication, or maintaining project archives
• Build an infrastructure to house templates, samples, and guidelines
• Purchase and install tools for BA use
• Build a web site as a single resource center for BAs
• Define the metrics that will be used to measure success for the organization as well as for the requirements life cycle process
• Build and maintain project artifacts for documentation and reuse
• Develop an enterprise business architecture to act as a guide for future projects

Step Five: Business Analysis Competency Maintenance

Once the processes, organization, tools and people have been established, the work is not done. You need an ongoing program that will provide continuing improvement in order to foster the highest level of competencies. Our clients have used DEA to operate their business analyst practice while they build their internal staff to bring the work in-house. There are two models which can be implemented:

1. DEA operates the BACC. During this period of time, DEA will:

• Provide training to BAs
• Manage requirements for active projects
• Provide a web service to host requirements for review, collaboration and tracking
• Continually improve the requirements life cycle process
• Build enterprise business architectures
• Provide tool expertise
• Lead and/or participate on requirements projects
• Manage the asset library

2. The client operates the BACC and retains DEA to:

• Provide workshops to serve as “refreshers” or to introduce new techniques
• Describe key developments in the requirements life cycle
• Recommend new tools and techniques
• Serve as mentors