One thing that I think we, as business analysts, occasionally forget is that the downstream delivery teams are our customers, too - and in a very real way. We need to make sure that they have an opportunity to develop a true sense of ownership for the project early on and that they understand what the requirements are all about.

For some reason, last week I picked up and began reading from Benjamin Franklin’s autobiography. In it, he mentions a mutual improvement society that he and several of his acquaintances founded in colonial Philadelphia to compare ideas, to critique each other’s publications, and to gather sociably. They called it “Junto.” The idea behind Junto was that in gathering like-minded individuals with a common cause for civil discourse, all participants stood to benefit.

I love reading Thomas Sowell’s articles on economics and its social and political ramifications. His “Basic Economics” book broke down the basics of supply and demand as well as other economic principles in a way even I could understand! Today, however, his article was a rant on how hard today’s electronic gadgets are to use.

Successful business analysts have an ability to draw ideas to their logical conclusions. An analyst’s work typically requires assessment of concepts following a progression from the general to the specific, and other times from specific to general.

Welcome! This site specializes in providing tips and tools for Business Analysts and systems development in general. If you’re new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. If you’d prefer, you can also receive my posts directly to your e-mail. Thanks for visiting!Sometimes project stakeholders I work for or with aren’t familiar with the role or the value of the business analyst. I’ve posted about Karl Wiegers’ Bills of Rights previously, and think those are a great way to introduce the role to a new business stakeholder …

Is the role of business analyst an IT role, a business role, or both? How can the BA role be used to the greatest benefit of the organization?

When you think of an engineer, hard skills such as the various science and technology disciplines come first to mind. It’s easy to see where one could question whether the BA has a place in the engineering tent, and I actually see that as a positive. In fact, I think that anything that chips away at the conception of business analysis as exclusively IT work is probably a good thing for the future of the BA role.