Business Analysis is a discipline that has been around for many years helping businesses to successfully deliver their change programmes, enabling them to respond to customer and market demand, new regulations or legal requirements, or exploit digital technologies through innovation.
Yet still, among the reasons often quoted for project failure are unclear goals and objectives, changing priorities, poorly defined scope, or poorly defined requirements. Or to put it another way, it wasn’t clear what the project was supposed to be achieving or at the very least they took their eye off the ball.
A good Business Analyst should be able to de-risk projects failing for these reasons; a great Business Analyst almost certainly will. But what differentiates a good Business Analyst from a great one? Is it just experience or does it require a change in mindset?
What is the role of a Business Analyst?
A good question. The role of a Business Analyst can vary from one organisation to another, and can range from the strategic (analysing external factors, business objectives, and internal structures), the pure business analysis (establishing and evaluating business needs for one or more change initiatives), to the more solution focussed (defining business requirements to develop specific IT and process solutions).
What do you need to become a Great Business Analyst?
Whatever part the Business Analyst plays within an organisation, there are a number of common characteristics that you need to be effective in the role; some you need to learn, some you develop as you gain more experience, and others you need to work at. The primary skills for a Business Analyst are communication (verbal, written and visual), the use of tools, techniques, frameworks and models, and the ways of thinking i.e. the mindset. A great Business Analyst should be pushing the boundaries on all of these skills.
Communication
One of the fundamental skills of a good Business Analyst is the ability to communicate effectively with people.
- Verbal Communication: engaging people in conversation, building a rapport and actively listening (and being aware of Non-Verbal Communication i.e. body language)
- Written Communication: the art of being clear, concise and to the point
- Visual Communication: communicating thought using a variety of models, diagrams, graphs and tables (a picture paints a thousand words)
The great Business Analyst will be empathetic, able to understand a stakeholder’s perspective or view point, and be able to gain consensus from two or more opposing views. They will be able to adapt their written and visual communication as appropriate to suit the intended audience and the culture of the organisation.
Use of Tools, Techniques, Frameworks and Models
There are numerous tools, techniques, models and frameworks available that support a Business Analyst in performing their role. Whether you are experienced or inexperienced these provide excellent starting points, providing a leg-up to aid and guide the analysis challenge ahead.
Many of them are well worn, tried and tested approaches. Tools such as McKinsey 7S, PESTLE, and Porter’s 5 Forces are focussed on Strategic Analysis, whereas Requirements Engineering, Business Process Modelling, Use Cases, and User Stories have their place in both Business and Solution Analysis.
Whereas the good Business Analyst may be familiar and comfortable with using many of these tools, the great Business Analyst will know how to use and adapt these models as appropriate to suit the organisation culture, and the specific business situation being investigated.
The Mindset
The one thing that really differentiates one Business Analyst from another is the way in which they think and the way they approach that thinking. There are many scholarly articles discussing the different types of thinking but it is perhaps unlikely that the majority of people consciously chooses one approach over another. It tends to be instinctive.
The focus for a Business Analyst is usually on the information they need to elicit, the processes they need to follow and the outputs they need to produce. Less focus (if any) is given to helping Business Analysts develop their thinking, an opportunity missed for many to advance in the role.
Whilst logical reasoning and analytical thinking are the essential cornerstone skills to possess, other approaches may not come as naturally and need to be developed. It is possible that some Business Analysts will be taken out of their comfort zone, and find the approaches alien to them as they are required to turn their current way of thinking on its head.
However, being aware of different thought processes, and being able to identify any that are currently used, is a first good step for a Business Analyst to take. Some of the most important approaches for a Business Analyst to master are:
- Outcome Thinking – this encourages you to think in terms of the outcomes that the business wants to achieve, and assesses both the intended and unintended outcomes resulting from any change initiative. Thinking in terms of outcomes requires solution indifference, and a focus on consequence as opposed to sequence of events.
- Holistic Thinking: this is about taking a step back and looking at the bigger picture i.e. the business situation as a whole. This is a recognition that things rarely change in isolation; a change in one part of an organisation can have an impact elsewhere.
- Critical Thinking: the subject of considerable scholarly debate, this is a rigorous, systematic, non-biased and open-minded approach to bring clarity to a situation. An individual thinking critically will be constantly questioning, challenging and seeking evidence. They will use logic to evaluate and interpret information obtained, differentiating between facts, assumptions and opinions.
- Abstract Thinking: which can be alluded to “thinking outside of the box”, is about conceptualising situations and looking at the relationship between things that are not specifically or physically obvious.
- Divergent and Convergent Thinking: divergent thinking is about expanding and building on a single idea into a number of ideas, whereas convergent thinking conversely brings together different ideas into a single one.
- Logical Reasoning: is the approach of drawing sound conclusions from the information available.
- Analytical thinking: deconstructing a given problem or situation, and systematically assessing it to identify potential solutions.
The bottom line
A good Business Analyst is an essential asset to have in any organisation, capable of working with stakeholders to understand and analyse business needs, thinking through problems or situations, and proposing and evaluating alternative solutions.
A great Business Analyst ultimately thinks in a broader, more holistic way, examining and questioning a business situation from different angles to ensure it is thoroughly explored. Ultimately the great Business Analyst will ensure that any project or programme is established and remains focussed on delivering the outcomes that successfully integrate with and support an organisation’s strategy and/or programme objectives.