by Gareth Jones, General Manager (Service and Practice)

Business Analysis is a broad subject that can cover anything to do with innovation, people, process, technology, and data — and this is on top of supporting the six knowledge areas that underpin all delivery approaches. It stands to reason that, given the complexity and growing streams within business analysis, no single individual can be an expert in all areas.

So, what can an organisation expect when it goes to market for a business analyst? What capabilities do you need to look for? Where will the applicant’s strengths lie? Will their weaknesses be in areas critical to your initiatives’s success? How will you know? At what point might you find out?

More often these days, BAs specialise in a particular aspect of business analysis. They might be an Agile BA, Digital BA, Technical BA, Strategic BA, Finance BA, a software-specific BA (e.g SAP, Oracle, or MS Dynamics BA). But your organisation has budget only for a single business analyst, even though you might need assistance in strategic alignment, benefits identification and initiative justification via business case – all the way  through to implementation, for a CRM to be delivered in an DevOps environment.

When you need different areas of business analysis expertise but can’t afford to engage several BAs, which areas should you compromise in? The answer is none.

Why working with a Business Analysis Practice is your next right move.

Although no individual can be an expert in all areas of business analysis, a business analysis practice can foster expertise. A practice supports a number of business analysts with capability and experience across all the business analysis knowledge areas. By engaging a specialised practice, not only do you get a capable practitioner, you get the sum of experience from all the other members of the practice, and service delivery team in the background. One person’s experience will complement another’s, and a practice can provide expert business analysis services and deliver expert business analysis outcomes because of the people and experience it can draw upon. As an organisation you may interact daily with a single BA consultant, but you can have confidence in the support they have behind them. A strong practice fosters intellectual property, not just in the delivery of business analysis, but in your organisational domain, or in your area of solution focus. They draw from their experience to keep your initiative ahead of the curve, because they have seen and done this before.

Finding the right practice

For an individual business analyst, if they want to develop in their career, they need variety and they need support.  A supportive practice whether internal, external or a blend provides the breadth of experience and the support mechanisms that propels business analysts to perform at their best. It helps clarify the approach, method, estimates and necessary detail required to achieve the desired outcome.  Individuals may over-document and complicate business analysis, while a supportive practice encourages just enough analysis delivered with agility, speed, and to quality. Because of its breadth of knowledge and experience, a practice can also be proactive in providing support (i.e. the support is provided without affecting any initiative delivery timeframes) because it can foresee where challenges may lie. A strong practice is structured so that all BAs experiences are continuously fed back into the practice, so all consultants are constantly developing which in turn provides additional benefit to your BAs and your initiatives.

A BA practice should always have the following key elements to be successful:

• Approaches, methods, techniques, templates, and tools—the ability to adapt to different delivery approaches, customised methods depending on the selected approach, a wide range of techniques to suit a variety of stakeholders and situations, and customisable templates and tools for the requirements of analysis and estimation.
• Service and quality—services are defined and a review process is managed so the quality of business analysis is consistent across all initiatives.
• Career development—there is a career pathway for this role within the organisation.
• Training and development—business analysts should be continually developing so they can achieve excellence in business analysis – a field that is continuously evolving.
• Organisation—across the organisation business analysis maturity is developed and any external BA sourcing strategy supports both organisational needs and the internal practice evolution. So there is growth in business outcomes.

When you engage a practice it should bring with it a standard, a way of delivering continuous and successful outcomes. From this you set a new standard within your organisation, one that you can leverage and learn from and embed over time in your own ways of working. Ultimately, this leaves your organisation in a more successful and sustainable place, whilst achieving your organisations much needed and ever-present current initiative outcomes.

So, why risk your initiative by putting all your eggs in one BAsket? Engage a practice and share the risk. Work with a specialised business analysis practice and enjoy the outcomes.

Remember: It is impossible for an individual to know everything about business analysis, but a specialist BA practice can cover all areas.

Want to know more about engaging a BA practice? Contact: info@business-analysis.com.au