When is the right time to introduce of Business Analyst to Project team?

The task of recognizing & identifying business change requirements, evaluating the effect of those changes, recording the needs, and supporting with communication and delivery of requirements to concerned stakeholders of the organization is termed as Business Analysis. Business Analyst’s responsibilities include analyzing an organization diligently, documenting its various business processes or systems, and helping the business model integration with appropriate technology according to the context.

Significance of a Business Analyst (BA)

There is immense importance to the role played by a BA in any organization as he is in-charge of handling all aspects of providing solutions, thus enabling it achieve its goals. He acts as a liaison between stakeholders for understanding the structure, principles, and processes of an organization as well as suggesting solutions for all requirements.

The BA leads in managing the solution scope of the projects taken up in the organization, acts as communicator, and consultant for any given project. He not only analyzes and monitors project activities but also elicits business requirements and plans all analysis processes while controlling the solution scope.

The Business Analyst and the Project Team

BAs are placed in position for particular reasons that impact organizational effectiveness. Without the participation of BAs in the project team, projects may take longer time and effort to complete, exceeding allocated budget and schedule. This is often caused by the lack of defining project requirements and documenting them properly for everyone to understand easily. Without support to discern exact requirements, expensive rework may be necessitated, involving loss of time as well.

BAs must be introduced to the Project Team at the beginning itself, in order to create a free workflow and to keep up time and costs under the wraps. They must rather be looked upon as positive investments to facilitate better return on investment of any business project.

How BAs improve the Value of Project & Project Team

• Better Communication Between the Business and IT: Key to project success is transparency and proper communication between team members and managers—this is assured by the involvement of BAs
• Finding New Business requirements: Clear understanding of needs leads to proper design of processes, and correspondingly, projects tend to run on schedule and according to plans—BAs help in discovering the needs
• Needs can be Prioritized: Organizations have numerous processes and tasks pitching for human resources as well as time. BAs exercise cautious and practical implementation of  segregating these tasks according to their precedence

By introducing Business Analyst to the Project Team, the organization stands to lower costs, add value and improve project success, and ultimately enhance the organization’s revenues in the long run.

Should we separate ‘Requirement gathering processes and ‘Design Process’?

Requirements Gathering forms the basic and vital part of any successful project management application development. Each new process, every fresh product, or even, for that matter, any new project created in a business organization is in response to some business requirement. This fact leads to accentuate the importance of aligning the needs with process designs.

Requirement Gathering

It is the collection of facts about why an organization undertakes a project. These requirements explicitly state the benefits to the organization and its stakeholders that may be reaped by undertaking the project. Whereas any useful factors that comprise business requirements are naturally found with stakeholders and their feedback, it is the responsibility of the Business Analyst to capture these using elicitation techniques, in a sensible and productive manner that facilitates building further process designs.

Methods of Gathering Requirements

• Statement of Problem
• Vision and Mission of the Project
• Restrictions and Limitations
• Organizational Goals & Objectives
• Stakeholder Analysis Process
• Business Practice Analysis

Steps in Requirements Gathering

• Interviews with experts and relating requirements
• Transforming technical language into simpler one
• State complex information in understandable format
• Making stakeholders participate in all stages of involvement
• Documentation of requirements in concise form for users
• Specifying Client Business Requirements

Requirements and Design

A lot has got to be conceived, coordinated, and implemented between defining the problem and designing the solution. The success rate of Gathering Business Requirement depends to a wide extent on the Design of the Solution Processes. Business Analysts must have a sound understanding about the application of needs to be able to identify the requirements in the first place. Process Design is in fact a fore runner to collecting information of requirements.

To construct an effective process design, the Business Analyst must either be well-versed in the operations involved in the business, or he must acquire guidance and support from subject matter experts. Business Requirements are indispensable for warranting that the solutions provided are capable of delivering what is expected. They assure that solutions offer business value as well as meet the needs of the business. Stakeholder Requirements facilitate these solutions to be of help to users for getting their activities performed well.

Improper Design and not gathering stakeholder requirements leads to either failed projects or challenging situations. Process Designs based on diligently elicited Business and Stakeholder Requirements on the other hand provide the way to the desired future achievement with minimal hiccups.

Lack of clarity in Business Requirements

When it comes to planning and organizing business processes, ambiguity never pays. A vague or skeptical frame of mind or not being sure of details is the basis for much of the agony faced by employees and managers alike. It is imperative that in any organization, each and every member needs to have a concrete, unambiguous understanding of what the objectives and needs of the organization are.

Significance

Connected as they are by the modern I T oriented communication Devices and technologies, various members of an organization sometimes seem to have been located oceans apart. Although most of us agree to the fact that an organization’s activities are directly linked to its corporate strategy, many people still consider these two vital factors as distant. Boardroom sessions and the strategies formulated there may not directly have considerable impact on an individual participant in a company, but the common goals claim that these be followed by every individual precisely. As in the proverbial Butterfly Effect, a lack of clarity here, and a misunderstanding there, might cause big damages when organizational targets and expectations are concerned.

Barriers to Clarity

• Complex Communication: Technical jargons and complicated methods often result in lack of clarity. Remedy is to adopt stating facts and points in clear and concise manner understandable by everyone.
• Hierarchy: Although for maintaining certain virtues an organization needs a fixed chain of commands, this very fact may at times disrupt the flow of communication, resulting in loss of clarity between the echelons of the organization. This can be avoided by increasing interaction between the various levels of organizational members.
• Insufficient Flow of Information: In some cases, within a company, certain information may be treated confidential, accessible to only those who are privy. This at times causes withholding of necessary messages being passed on to the needy. To maintain clarity of needs, vital information must be made available to each one with easy access.
• Absence of Faith: A lack of trust among different members in an organizations leads to not only unnecessary competition but also impair decision-making as well as target achieving.

How to overcome Lack of Clarity

• Assure that Everyone catches the bus: The purpose and reason behind each action and planning must be known all along the organization. Everyone has to share and exchange ideas.
• Expressive Requirements must be Defined: Rather than giving communications in a tedious manner, short messages of what is most importantly needed must be circulated to the appropriate levels of employees and managers.
• Context Setting: Business processes can be explained using diagrams—thus making it simple to understand and easy to follow by all organizational members.

The role played by business analysts in seeing that business project is executed successfully is vital in the current business situation. There may be cases where despite of sophisticated financial environment and other gimmicks, the organizational goals may not be achieved, due to the prime hurdle of lack of clarity. This can be avoided by adopting methods that enable all the participants to have a clear vision of the objectives, goals, and processes of the organization.