Business analysts taking larger role in projects

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By Jeff Feinman

August 22, 2008 — Business analysts are becoming a more visible and important part of software projects because executives realize failed business requirements can be costly, according to analyst firm Voke.

Voke released a survey last week on the role of business analysts called the “Market Snapshot Report.” The survey included over 100 participants from Fortune 500 companies, according to Voke.

The survey found that 64% of participating analysts have been involved in requirements for more than three years. Sixteen percent of those participating analysts said they’ve had a hand in requirements for more than 10 years. Voke founder Theresa Lanowitz interprets that to mean the role is increasing.

“Until recently, the business analyst was not viewed as part of the critical path to success,” Lanowitz said. “The idea of a linear life cycle with most emphasis placed on development and testing automatically overlooked or discounted the important work being done by the analyst. As more mature and optimized enterprises move from a linear life cycle to that of a global life cycle, which focuses on the elimination of barriers between IT and the line of business, the business analyst becomes crucial in delivering an optimized business outcome. Without the business analyst gathering and delivering requirements from and to the appropriate stakeholders, the life cycle becomes heavily focused on development, with rework done during the testing phase.”

Ideally, the business analyst will act as a conduit of communication between the business subject matter expert and the IT organization. However, the survey finds that 35% of analysts are now involved in requirements and project management, and 30% handle part of requirements and testing. Seventy-six percent of survey participants said they manually translate requirements to test cases, and Lanowitz said this shows that business analysts spend a significant amount of time in testing.

The enterprise needs to evolve the role of the business analyst into something similar to a product manager in commercial software companies, Lanowitz said, since enterprises rarely invest in proper tools and training for business analysts. This would make sure intended business results are delivered and help the traditional problems of aligning the business with IT.

“The Market Snapshot showed that 91% of [business analysts] use tools that are ineffective and static, the most common tool being Word,” Lanowitz said. “Business analysts are clear in the types of dynamic functionality they need in their tools and how the tools need to work together at key intersection points in the life cycle, such as requirements definition and test.”

Other findings in the report were the average large enterprise software project costs US$3.2 million, and one-third of all projects are abandoned or don’t meet business needs.

Related Search Term(s): professional development, Voke

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