Business Analysts: The Unsung Heroes of Organizational Success

Michael R. Wood is a Business Process Improvement & IT Strategist Independent Consultant. He is creator of the business process-improvement methodology called HELIX and founder of The Natural Intelligence Group, a strategy, process improvement and technology consulting company. He is also a CPA, has served as an Adjunct Professor in Pepperdine's Management MBA program, an Associate Professor at California Lutheran University, and on the boards of numerous professional organizations. Mr. Wood is a sought after presenter of HELIX workshops and seminars in both the U.S. and Europe.

  Business Analysis   Organizational Project Management   Requirements Management  

By my way of thinking, business analysts (BAs) should be a much coveted resource in organizations—at least more than they typically are today. So why isn’t that so? I believe it is due to two major things. First, most senior managers don’t understand the value BAs can bring to an organization in helping it drive strategic initiatives into operational reality. The second is that there aren’t that many great Bas, so they don’t deliver the value that can be realized. And that brings me to what this article is all about—what it takes to become a world-class BA. First, it’s important to understand that, by its nature, a BA is a multi-disciplinary professional comprising a number of talents and skills as denoted in the diagram below.

Why are these six areas vital to master to be a world-class business analyst? Consider the following definition of a business analysis provided by businessanalystsolutions.com: "Business analysis is the task of understanding business change needs, assessing the business impact of those changes, capturing, analyzing and documenting requirements and supporting the communication and delivery of requirements with relevant stakeholders."

This definition alone assumes expertise and knowledge in all the disciplines covered within the model provided. The rub is this: How many people with a BA title do…

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