Where’s the BA?

Adriana Beal has spent the last 15 years helping Fortune 100 companies, innovation companies and startups build better software that solves the right problem and aligns with business strategy. Her current focus of work is customer development and product strategy for tech startups.

  Requirements Management   ProjectsAtWork  

Project leaders and sponsors would rather be involved in projects that will effectively solve business problems, and for this reason, they should be the first to recognize the importance of having a skilled business analyst on their teams. Tapping the power of business analysis minimizes the risk of project failure.

As a business analyst consultant, I am often surprised by the lack of coverage of the business analysis work in IT project management books. To illustrate my point, let's take a look at the book "97 Things Every Project Manager Should Know” published by O'Reilly Media in 2009. The book is a collection of practical suggestions from "project managers, software developers, and a wide range of other occupation holders from all around the world who are successful in managing their teams to success.” Reading the book, I spotted at least two dangerous pieces of advice for project managers due to lack of consideration for the business analysis work.

Dangerous advice #1: "As a project manager, you should get the users talking to the software developers early and often."

This advice is found in Chapter 1, titled “Get Users Involved As Early As Possible.” Undoubtedly, user involvement is a project success factor. If users are not asked about requirements, nor involved in usability and …

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