Is Personality A Requirement, Too?

  Career Development   New Practitioners   ProjectsAtWork  

There can be negative consequences on a project that asks a “BA personality” to serve as the project manager or a “PM personality” to act as the business analyst. When filling these roles, personality is often as important to consider as skillset.

It should be well established that projects benefit greatly from project managers and business analysts working closely together. Indeed, in many companies where there is a resource crunch, the same person may perform the two roles. Indeed, I’ve been wearing dual hats — indeed, even a third, as oftentimes I am responsible for quality assurance. In wearing these various hats, and also observing others in action, certain themes have emerged, one of which I'd like to explore here: that the nature of the role is tied to the personality types of people who are best suited for the job.

But first, let’s give a brief description of the PM and BA roles:

> Project Managers are always looking at the big picture and driving tasks forward to meet milestones and delivery dates. Meetings that don’t result in action items are a waste of time. PMs look down the road and navigate around the ditches that are risks. They prod and poke to get things moving and take satisfaction in leading a project to completion.

> Business Analysts represent the client’s interests. …

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