What is Business Analysis?
Hi, my name is Yves and I’m a Business Analyst, … hum so you are doing business intelligence things, nope I’m a business analyst … hum so you like a data analyst but for the business … nope I think you know where I want to go with those example. I’m a business analyst and every time I try to explain my job, I end up with a comparison to another one. So before telling you what a business analyst does let’s first try to understand what business analysis is.
According to the Babok (Business Analysis Body Of Knowledge) from the IIBA (International Institute of Business Analysis), business analysis is “ The practice of enabling change in an enterprise by defining needs and recommending solutions that deliver value to stakeholders”. This definition is the perfect summary of my work. The IIBA definition can be divided into four parts, defining needs, enabling change, recommending solutions, deliver value to stakeholders. Don Hussey the managing director of Norwalk Aberdeen analyzes that definition as follow.
Enabling Change: Most of the Business analyst work is on projects and regardless of their size, they change an organization.
Defining Needs: someone determines that the organization has a need. The Business Analyst defines that need in detail and the organization addresses that need (trough a project).
Recommending solutions: Solutions can be systems, policies, training, business processes, or a system feature.
deliver value to stakeholders: The stakeholders can be the Management, regulators, customers, logistics, any department within the company, etc.
Now that you have a broader view of what business analysis is, maybe in the past you’ve done similar things for your company without having the title of Business Analyst. You are right because a Business Analyst is any person who performs business analysis tasks described in the Babok. The Business Analyst elicits the needs of the stakeholders with many activities like understanding the company problems, analyzing the needs, recommending solutions, driving the change, etc. Within an enterprise, several people can therefore perform business analysis. From the system analyst to the product manager, thought the data analyst, the product owner, the management consultant, to name but a few.
The value proposition of business analysis resides in the definition of the IIBA. Let’s say we are Company X and Company X does not enable change to stay ahead of the competition, the company will lose market share, customers, revenues. Company X does not define its needs. How the company will know what direction to take if the company does not know what its needs are? Every decision can be the wrong decision if there is no clear direction. If the solution recommended does not meet the needs define, well the solution can be incomplete or a wrong solution. And finally, if the solution delivers no value to the stakeholders, Company X has lost time, money, and resources designing a solution with no value for the stakeholders. The value of Business Analysis is to make sure that Company X or any other company do not end up that way. Business analysis is the safeguard of changes for company in the era we live in.
