The Business Analysis market is changing! The role of a business analyst is changing from what we read in textbooks and understood from classroom walls. Charles Darwin once said it is not the strongest of the species that will survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.
In a fast paced business environment with massive pace for change, the responsibilities of a business analysis have shifted beyond problem identification, requirement engineering, solution design, and solution testing and benefit realization. It is now more of how all these activities can be delivered continuously with outcomes (not output) in mind.
This new sets of mindset will distinguish Today’s BAs and Future BAs.
These are core mindset shift of future BAs:
Outcome oriented BAs
The days are gone where artefacts such as process maps, use case, customer journey map are key deliverables of a BA. The future BA will be able to track the impact of every task, activity and work to a greater business objective of the firm. The focus will be around understanding what success looks like from the perspective of leaders, users and process owners, agree design principles and anchoring all effort towards attaining the SMART goals of the firm using the tools and techniques.
No-box thinking mindset
The market has shifted from a one legged BA to a generalist BA. Businesses are actively seeking Future BAs that have end-to-end understanding of their current processes, data, and information, technology and people requirement. Thinking outside the box mentality limits you to believing there is a box, in the future there is no box, and everything is interconnected. Processes are now related to data, data is linked to security which is in turn can impact profit levels which ultimately connects to the survival of an enterprise. The future BA is a box to box team player with deep understanding of strategic, translating tactical goals and operational outcomes.
Experimentation
Proof of concept is the way Future and brilliant BAs will justify innovative ideas. Building this fail fast mentality requires Future BAs to proceed at risk, assess the risk; identify the impact, document mitigating measures to reduce the impact when they occur. A case for change is one of the best ways to reduce fear of change. This can be supported with phased implementation, readiness assessment among other strategies to fail forward.
Continuous improvement
The concept of continuous improvement is not new. What is new is the way this concept will be applied. Who takes ownership of improvement? How close is the BA to the operational team? I once instituted a weekly brainstorming session with a team code name Bring Your Own Idea (BYOI). I noticed that participants thought about their business areas before they came for the meeting, it also conditioned people to think of giving not receiving at meetings – This worked like wild fire! The Future BA will be more than a liaison, but a trusted connection between operational, tactical and strategic managers of the firm; responsible for translating strategic vision and policy to quantifiable and value driven task and activities targeted at identifying and implementing quick wins, communicating and decomposing critical success factors and crafting Key Performance Indicators and metrics in definitive terms.
Technology driven
It has been said that all businesses will eventually become technology business or go out of business. It is not news that with the advent of new technologies such as artificial intelligence, machine learning and block chain etc will change ways of working of the Future BA will change. I conducted a proof of concept with a FDD document for an e commerce business where ChatGPT was able to extract requirements, create user stories, test scenarios, cases and data in less than an hour, a task that could take weeks or months for today’s BA. It is equally evident that technology will deliver better, faster and quality products where human cognition is least required. The future BA is the professional who knows how and which technology will best streamline and optimize repetitive process, save FTEs and reduce operational cost.
Product-driven BA
I once reviewed a product for a global hospitality and leisure business and observed that the solution was project rather than product driven. The product had one set of user in mind rather than diverse archetypes. A product driven solution is designed as Software as a Service, considers different groups of users, considers user centered design and delivery. The future BA is customer facing, market driven; data guided, value oriented and loves to socialize solution upstream with real or perceived users. Tomorrow’s BA is test driven and takes initiatives to design technology spec that takes into account current and future clients’ ways of working, pain points, problems, gaps, expectations and customer journey to increase usability and ultimately value to the organisation.