As BAs remain in high demand for complex projects, one of the key parts they play in is ensuring the business understands what outcomes they are aiming to deliver and how ready they are to get started.

As organisations embark on often increasingly complex projects to transform, having a quality business analyst (BA) in onboard is key to project success. It’s little wonder that BAs are among Australia’s most in-demand occupations, ranked in the top 20 most-needed roles across the economy in 2023.

As transformations increasingly rely on technology, data and process automation, it would perhaps come as no surprise that organisations need experienced, data-literate BAs who can analyse vast amounts of information, understand critical processes, and translate both into defining needs and requirements for solutions that aim to deliver value to stakeholders.

Finding a good BA is hard enough; finding a great BA is like hitting paydirt.

The role of the BA

The BA role is not always easy to define. While many IT jobs have a clear job description, the role of a BA tends to vary, as do the specific tasks from project to project and organisation to organisation. Business analysts help organisations define project scope, identify stakeholders, and meet business objectives through projects in several important ways:

• Gather and analyse requirements: By working with stakeholders to understand their needs and objectives, BAs help establish a clear understanding of what the project should achieve.  By understanding requirements in detail a project can better refine the scope boundaries and prepare for building a solid business case.
• Identify project constraints: Through their work, BAs will identify challenges and constraints that may impact the project target scope, which may include but not limited to, unforeseen complexity, resource availability or capability etc. The earlier these risks are identified the better the project can plan and mitigate to stay on track.
• Conduct stakeholder analysis: BAs can help identify stakeholder needs/expectations and who will be impacted by the project. In some cases, thismight be done by a change manager; however, BAs often work closely with stakeholders on requirements and process analysis to define what needs to change, build relationships and influence processes which can help to align expectations and vision.
• Contribute to Project Charters: BAs can make valuable contributions to the project charters early in the project by helping more clearly define the project’s scope, objectives, and expected deliverables through curated consultation and workshops with stakeholders. This type of collaboration with stakeholders, facilitated by the BA, can help ensure that all stakeholders clearly understand the project’s purpose and aims.
• Define business benefits: BAs will work with the project manager and stakeholders to determine the benefits for the project. They will apply their analytical craft to defining and measuring the baseline, how the benefit will be quantified, and the return on investment.

Incorporating a BA into the project teams can be critical in ensuring a project is set up for success, as the role brings valuable skills and expertise into ensuring the business is ready, defining the business case and supporting organisations in defining project scope requirements, identify stakeholders, and the business benefits that need to be realised.

A case study: How a BA delivers value

A BA’s role varies depending on needs. Let’s explore a concrete example – implementing a new CRM System for a regional Australian insurance company.

The company had been experiencing challenges with its customer relationship management (CRM) system and was struggling to manage its customer data effectively, which was impacting its ability to provide a high level of customer service. The company hired a business analyst to help implement a new CRM system that would address these challenges.

The BA’s first step was to define the project scope by identifying the key requirements of the new system within the context of the organisational benefits that it had to deliver. This involved working with stakeholders to understand their needs and concerns. Next, the business analyst supported the creation of a project charter by clearly defining the project’s scope, objectives, and expected deliverables.

From there, the BA conducted workshops with stakeholders and product owners to break down user stories and customer experiences required to informthe change required.  The BA worked in a scrum team and helped the product owner curate the backlog of stories and refine the detail for development and testing teams in sprints.

The BA also worked closely with Change Management by providing insights from process maps and stakeholder workshops to help develop effective change plans to drive adoption.

The BA also assisted the project manager with benefits modelling and helped define a set of adoption KPIs that supported the theory of change, which are the changes that need to occur for the benefits to be realised.

This enabled the PM and Sponsor to track how effectively change was being adopted and help the team refactor or adjust plans to boost successful adoption rates.

The X Factor

The ability to engage with project teams and stakeholders effectively and the ability to ask the right questions is one of the ‘x’ factors that we see in exceptional BAs.

Whilst having relevant technical or specific project experience is an advantage, the best BAs we have worked with over the years have the ability to bring strong soft skills into their engagements.

This enables them to ask probing questions and discern the real requirements with as little bias as possible to help the business yield the benefits they seek.

In practice, one of the most common challenges in terms of leveraging BAs is linking them to business knowledge – however, it’s not only the industry knowledge or organisational knowledge that’s important.  It’s the technical expertise and experience that has taken years to refine that can help navigate the ambiguity and complexity required to scope and define and complex project.

For more information about how Quay Consulting can support your team with BA capability, contact us here or call 1300 841 048.

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