Building the Foundation: The BOK on BA

As Laura mentioned in last week’s post, the community voiced strong interest in a foundational standard in business analysis and PMI listened.  This post will explore the value that this foundational standard will provide for anyone performing business analysis including PMs, hybrid PMs and anyone striving toward successful delivery of projects, programs and portfolios.

The problem space

Reality is, there are still too many people and organizations that do not understand business analysis and its value.  The standard will help start the conversation about ‘what is business analysis and how does it relate to what I do?’ Business analysts (BAs) are sometimes seen as the annoying siblings who ask a lot of silly questions that hinder progress on projects.  Organizations are sometimes unsure on how to leverage business analysis in order to deliver successful outcomes. 

Once upon a time, BAs feared that the introduction of agile practices meant the death of their role.  Those days are thankfully long gone, but as organizations strive for agility, many are also struggling on how to perform business analysis activities in more agile project life cycles.

What is business analysis and why is it valuable?

Business Analysis for Practitioners: A Practice Guide, defines business analysis as “the set of activities performed to identify business needs and recommend relevant solutions; and to elicit, document, and manage requirements.”

PMI’s Pulse of the Profession In-Depth Report: Requirements Management: A Core Competency for Project and Program Success, shows that the #2 reason why projects fail is poor requirements. Thus, business analysis is an important ingredient to delivering successful projects.  Business analysis is still something that is misunderstood and undervalued within organizations. But PMI’s research has demonstrated that this is changing, as a whopping 87 percent of organizations now recognize that improvements in business analysis activities are necessary.  Knowing is half the battle!  Implementing concepts within the foundational standard in business analysis will be the other half.

As a practitioner of business analysis, this makes me very excited for the future, and while many organizations have very strong project management practices, they are seriously lacking on the business analysis front.  Having business analysis and project management under one roof, within the PMI family, means we can speak a common language and use common terminology allowing for better integration, thus making concepts more digestible and collaboration more productive.

Better role collaboration equates to more successful projects, programs and portfolios

This foundational standard in business analysis will carry forward all the stuff we LOVED about the BA practice guide, like the collaboration points. It will also introduce new concepts in order to further integrate project management with business analysis. 

The first time I saw the collaboration points, I thought, “Hallelujah!  Finally, some of the role confusion between PMs and BAs can be resolved.”   The Pulse® report on requirements states that over half of organizations reported wanting higher collaboration between PMs and BAs.  In addition, more than twice as many high performing organizations (67 percent) vs. low performers (37 percent) report strong BA/PM collaboration.  If there isn’t strong collaboration happening between BAs and PMs in your organization, now’s the time to start!

In addition to the collaboration points, the foundational standard will frame the business analysis processes within process groups that you may already be familiar with from A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK® Guide).  To reinforce the alignment across all professions, business analysis processes will be aligned to project management processes in the PMBOK® Guide, as well as to portfolio and program management concepts.

Performing better business analysis across all project life cycles

The foundational standard will also provide a more standardized approach to performing business analysis and provide guidelines on how to tailor the activities for the different project life cycles.  There was careful thought put into naming business analysis processes to ensure they would make sense regardless of which project life cycle your project team uses.  Something I’m sure we will discuss further in a future post.

Closing thoughts

PMI’s foundational standard in business analysis will be useful to anyone who performs business analysis, whether they wear that hat 100 percent of the time, they’re a hybrid PM/BA, or they work with someone who performs business analysis activities.  As more organizations begin to recognize the value of business analysis, the value of business analysis practitioners increases.  This is something Sue Burk will explore further in the next post, where she will discuss why it’s important for folks to become advocates for business analysis. 

PMs, BAs, or any project resource for that matter, need to understand the value each role brings to the table and how to leverage their appropriate skills, which enables the ability to deliver more successful projects, programs and portfolios.  This foundational standard will help bridge that gap.

We look forward to hearing your thoughts and collaborating with you as we embark on this journey.  Within your organization, do you feel that people understand the BA role and the value of business analysis? Let us know what you think!

Part 1: Meet the Team

Hello and thanks for visiting our new blog. My name is Laura Paton, chair and contributing author of PMI’s Business Analysis for Practitioners: A Practice Guide. Working on that project with an amazing team of authors and subject matter experts was one of the most rewarding experiences in my career. I continue to hear from members of the community how much the practice guide is helping them understand and apply business analysis.  I have received such great feedback about how easy the guide is to use, how comprehensive it is and it is no surprise that practitioners just love the examples!

After its publication, we kept hearing how the community wanted more. I am privileged to be asked back once again, and this time to lead the development of PMI’s foundational standard in business analysis. This publication—which we hope to launch in  2017—will take a lot of what you loved about  the practice guide to the next level. It will answer your requests for a foundational standard that supports the knowledge and practices of the profession. It will also be a body of knowledge reference for the PMI Professional in Business Analysis (PMI-PBA)^®  certification.

If you missed the announcement, you can check it out here.

A global development project such as this requires a core team to help oversee the effort and to get things kicked off. To ensure we can deliver the standard quickly, we decided to make the core team small.  But, small in number certainly does not mean small in experience! It is with great pleasure that I introduce to you the core team for PMI’s foundational standard in business analysis. You can even check out their linked profiles for more information.  

• First off is Joy Beatty PMI-PBA, CBAP - Vice President, Research and Development for Seilevel in Austin, TX.   Joy has published so much in the field of business analysis and has been a frequent speaker at many PMI events.  She has a ton of practical experience and has even authored several standards. All of this and her enthusiasm makes her an important asset to the team.
• Sue Burk CSM is Principal at Top Five to Seven, LLC based in Wilbraham, MA. Not only does Sue have lots of experience in requirements, business analysis, and project management she is a certified Scrum Master and brings an agile perspective to the team—an essential component in today’s business world. Sue also has extensive standards experience.
• Cheryl Lee PMP, PMI-PBA, CBAP is President of a Toronto based consulting firm. Much of her work is devoted to the harmonization of the PM and BA roles and has authored a book on the topic. It is also vital to project success so you’ll see that theme in the upcoming standard.
• And finally, yours truly, Laura Paton PMP, PMI-PBA, CBAP , Founder/Principal of BA Academy, Windermere, FL. I’ve been working in business analysis and project management for over 30 years and, when I’m not writing standards for PMI, I work as a BA coach/mentor, trainer and developer.

Remember this standard is being built by the community, for the community so think of this team as an extension of you!

What’s Next?

Now back to the blog!  Why are we here? Well, for starters, we want to provide you key insights into the development efforts to ensure you remain engaged and informed during this journey. We encourage you to be a part of the process by collaborating with us and among yourselves; by sharing ideas, needs, likes; and yes, letting us know when there are things that need to change.

Our first step is to build off the success of the Business Analysis for Practitioners: A Practice Guide and leverage the extensive PMI research on the topic of business analysis. From this we will assemble an initial outline and then provide the rough draft content through two review processes. Business analysis thought leaders will partake in a subject matter expert review process later this year. And in early 2017, the global community will partake in a public exposure draft review process. Stay tuned for more information about these key reviews.

We have a lot to share, so this is just the start.  In next week’s blog, Cheryl Lee will share her insights about the foundational standard and how it will help support anyone performing business analysis, including PMs and BAs.   Future postings will provide you more insights about the project, stuff about us and maybe even a bit of trivia. And if there’s something you want us to talk about, let us know!