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.

I’ve been involved in some interesting and spirited discussions over the years as to whether a Business Analyst (BA) is most effective when also a subject matter expert (SME) in the technology and systems in use, or whether the BA need only be disciplined in the general principles of business analysis; chiefly, how to identify customer need, and be an effective facilitator of knowledge transfer.