Super Powers of a BA

Why a Business Analyst Is Crucial to Your Project

Some roles that contribute to the successful creation and maintenance of applications are obvious. Every project needs a project manager, software developers/engineers (front-end and back-end) and quality assurance. Other roles are project and size specific, such as system architect, DBA, and UI/UX designer. Often overlooked is the critical role of a business analyst.

A business analyst is the liaison between the stakeholders and the technical team and is often the “glue” that is critical to project success. They facilitate communication to ensure that everyone is aligned on projects goals and requirements. They are the owners of business rules, functional specifications, and help define project deliverables. At Avantia, they are communication and documentation experts. The sponge that takes in all the details and articulates them in language understandable by both the business and the technical experts.

Essential Qualities

1. Deep IT Acumen: As the ombudsman between the business and IT, the BA must have strong IT knowledge and skills. This does not mean that they should be developers, in fact, just the opposite. Having a strong foundation of how systems are built and function allows the BA to ask insightful questions without being clouded by perceived limitations. Questions carefully posed like “Is it possible to use a token to pass through login credentials to the 3rd party system?” can bring the team to finding solutions where there seemed to be none.
    
2. Experienced Curiosity: A good business analyst is inquisitive and enjoys understanding the business. They delve into current business processes, inquire about connecting to the right people to expand their knowledge, and have a breadth of experience from various industries to know the right questions to ask. The big picture is important, and understanding it quite often leads to asking visioning questions to explore how things could be done more efficiently.
    
3. Collaboration Enthusiasts: In their quest to elicit requirements, a business analyst has the soft skills to build a relationship with users and gain their trust. Because of this relationship, a business analyst naturally finds it important to advocate for users' needs and design solutions that resonate with them. They are active listeners, understanding the users needs, concerns, and feedback. They understand the perspectives and emotions of stakeholders and users and quite often need to negotiate between the two, requiring a balance of assertiveness and empathy.
    
4. Illustrative: Besides written documentation, business analysts use a variety of visual tools to communicate ideas, analyze data, and facilitate collaboration. Wireframes provide a visual representation of user interfaces, illustrating layout, navigation, and functionality without focusing on design aesthetics. They are the ultimate communication tool that is understood by stakeholders and used by the technical team to provide clarity, guidance, and a reference point throughout the development process. Other visual tools are data flow diagrams, flowcharts, and swimlane and use case diagrams.

Bringing the Whole Team Together

A business analyst is the perfect complement to the project manager with their problem-solving expertise, change management facilitation, and documentation skills. They work with project managers to know priorities of features and manage multiple tasks and deadlines. Their requirement gathering goal is to get ahead of the development process, allowing the project manager and technical lead to keep the development team moving and on track.

Avantia’s business analysts quite often take on a multi-faceted role. They are the ultimate utility player, often writing user manuals and even training users.  They can take on a QA role as well;  who knows system features better than the one who heard the requirements from the stakeholders?  Post-implementation they also can evaluate effectiveness of solutions, gather user feedback, and help prioritize enhancements.

A business analyst knows the big picture and the details.  They are critical thinkers, problem solvers, and communication experts.  All roles are important in the software development life cycle, but a business analyst can quite often be the secret sauce in moving your project forward.