Dec
30
Written by:
Michael Wilkes
12/30/2007
So you think you need a Business Analyst (BA) for your small business. Or perhaps you just hired one! Here are some thoughts on how to get the most from your investment in this type of professional resource.
Mission
Each person on your team ought to have a clear reason for being there. Can they articulate it? Years ago, I read the story of how Word Perfect made the leap from DOS to Windows. All I remember about the article is the mission statement of the quality control director. It was brilliantly simple: "Prevent the product from shipping."
Ask your new BA about this during the interview. What will be your personal mission, should you join our team? If they give you a blank stare, don't be dismayed. They could be a great analyst but perhaps never exposed to the idea of having a personal mission or brand.
If you have to coach them on their mission statement, I hope that you end up with something along this line:
- Maximize team confidence by providing clear project communications
This covers all aspects of team life from verbal meetings to emails and design documents. It also highlights the purpose of adding this person to the team: Confidence. Complex projects require attention to confidence and confidence comes from clarity -- clear definitions, directions and the knowledge that you are playing a winnable game.
Early Tasks
Here are some things that your lead BA should be immediately concerned with.
- Safeguard existing documents (document management)
- Establish document authoring/publishing process
- Define the audiences that your product/solution serves
- Define the feature set that serves each audience
- Define the overall flow of the system
- Publish core communication documents
Ongoing Tasks
These tasks will be part of the BA's weekly routine.
- Facilitate requirements/design meetings
- Author new documents
- Revise existing documents
- Control document versioning
- Publish documents to appropriate audiences
- Safeguard documents
- Advocate needs-based features
- Create test cases
Important: Do not confuse the Business Analyst role (sometimes called a Business Systems Analyst) with that of a Technical Writer. You depend on your analytical staff to review, define, evaluate, make judgements, and communicate -- to facilitate new understandings of complex systems.
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