Get to know your Business

Analyst Iavi Rotberg

10th of November 2012

Agenda

The modern Business Analyst (BA)

Why know your BA ?

Demographics from the BA world

A day as a BA

BA challenges & best practices

The modern Business Analyst

Why know your BA? Results of poor requirements:

60%-80% of project failure

Finding and fixing software defects (bugs) 50% of total product costs

25-40% of all spending on projects budget is wasted as a result of rework

40% of the problems are found by end users in production live systems

45% of System Functionality Never Used; 19% Rarely used

The role of the BA

A liaison among stakeholders to elicit, analyze,

communicate and validate requirements for

business changes

The one who ensures that requirements are

visible to and understood by all stakeholders

Investigate the situation

Consider perspectives

Analyze needs

Evaluate options

Define and deliver

requirements

Deliver change

Business analysis model

Demographics from the BA world

Typical BA company size

Greater than 20k employees

25%

5000 - 19999 19%

1000 - 4999 20%

500-999 8%

100-499 12%

Fewer than 100 12%

Don't know 4%

Finance and insurance

27%

Business services

17%

IT Services 14%

Public sector 9%

Manufacturing 8%

Health care 6%

Telecom 6%

Retail 5%

Media 3%

Other 5%

BA preferred industries types

Size of the team and location Size - 58% have less than 25 members.

Virtualization - 64% of the teams have less than 25% virtualization

< 25 58%

25 to 50

27%

50 to 100 10%

100 to 50 4%

> 250 1%

Size of the project team

< 10%

10% to 25%

25% to 50%

50% to 75%

> 75%

Virtualization of the team

A day as a BA

BA typical methodologies

39.9%

25.9%

19.2%

8.4%

4.3%

A mix of processes from below

Waterfall or modified waterfall

Agile

Iterative

Other

The role of the BA on an Agile project has not

yet solidified as a pure role in the team

69 69 68 63 63 59

52 49 47 40

32

20 20

01020304050607080

% of BA are responsible for the following activities

BA typical activities

BA most important techniques

30%

31%

18%

17%

10%

10%

5%

7%

6%

43%

42%

40%

39%

38%

33%

25%

22%

22%

21%

23%

31%

33%

42%

43%

44%

41%

41%

5%

4%

8%

10%

13%

24%

25%

27%

25%

Interviewing

Facilitation

Modelling

Negotiation

Business rule design

Change management

Data modelling

Quality assurance

Project management

Critical Very Important Important Somewhat important

BA most critical soft skills

69%

70%

42%

35%

29%

23%

20%

11%

28%

26%

42%

44%

42%

46%

41%

33%

3%

4%

14%

19%

25%

24%

30%

37%

2%

2%

4%

5%

7%

3%

Communication

Analytical skills

Collaboration

Customer orientation

Planning, organization

Consulting, influencing

Leadership

Strategic

Critical Very Important Important Somewhat important

BA tool kit

Requirements communication

83.2%

42.0%

31.4%

31.1%

21.6%

21.6%

11.3%

6.6%

Spread sheets or documents

Email

Requirements management…

Meetings (daily stand-up)

Requirements modelling…

Write boards, post it notes

Blog or wiki

Other

Spreadsheets, word documents and emails

are the communicating link

BA challenges

Missing or vague business requirements

Infeasible business requirements

Unrealistic timelines driven by real world

pressures (e.g. competition, budget)

Tribal business knowledge

Finding time with business

Business wants to dictate technology

Best practices

Identify the stakeholders and their

perspectives

Understand the area of impact for the change

Look for the alternatives while targeting

tangible results with minimal effort

Requirements traceability (one repository,

multiple ownership)

Speak truth to power

About the presentation resources Various surveys conducted by Forrester, IIBA, Raven Flow, Jama

State of Requirements Management Report 2011

Get to know your BA 2011

Various studies and articles published by

IIBA www.iiba.com

BA times www.BATimes.com

Modern analyst www.modernanalyst.com

Requirements Network www.requirementsnetwork.com

Requirements www.requirements.net

Pictures courtesy of www.freedigitalphotos.net

Thank you!

Business analysts connect the

dots across your project!

Follow us on LinkedIn @ The BA Lounge

Diamond Sponsors

Platinum Sponsors Gold Sponsors

Training Partners Media Partners Other Partners