From the course: Business Analysis for Project Managers

What is business analysis?

From the course: Business Analysis for Project Managers

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What is business analysis?

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- Now, listen, you're a project manager. You're probably wanting to know exactly how business analysis, or a business analyst, affects you. Sure, I get that. That's why you're here. So, let's cut to the chase. Simply stated, business analysis is a set of activities that are done to identify business needs in order to recommend relevant solutions and to understand the requirements needed to deliver those solutions. A business analyst, or BA, does that work. But you know that there isn't always a BA around. Lots of times, this work is done by the project manager or even a product owner. This is why I always encourage my students to think of project management and business analysis as the work to be done, not the roles to be filled. This mindset allows you and your team, and even your organization, to have some powerful flexibility. In the past, project managers often were business analysts as a career stepping stone. Today, these career tracks are siloed. So, it's no surprise that today coordinating with BA work with project management doesn't come naturally at first. Also, business analysis is usually an invisible set of activities, because when done correctly, everything should go according to plan. Business analysis ensures one group's work doesn't negatively affect another group's work. It ensures the work done will actually fulfill the stakeholder requirements. That is, is the result of the work meeting expectations? Without business analysis, you get inefficiencies, mistakes, rework, all the things that mean you, as the project manager, have to adjust your deadlines and budgets. Now, technically, the BA should be the vanguard against this happening. BAs are trained to question, analyze, and verify their understandings of what they learn. They also have tools and techniques that help them in these areas. They're great at facilitating conversations between groups and stakeholders to make sure nothing falls between the cracks. Not only do they focus on understanding the scope of the product, service, result, or solution, and the implementation, but they also focus on the successful delivery of the project result. Now, all you PMs out there, don't get defensive. Yes, you too are in charge of the successful delivery of the project result. But here's the difference. PMs are in charge of the project scope. They are in charge of managing what is needed to get the project done, to hit that deadline and come in under budget. BAs are in charge of the requirements for the final result. These are the details. They help make sure that what is delivered is actually fulfilling the business need. So, you can see both are working on delivering the project, but each are working on different elements. As a project manager, it's important to have a plan for how you will jointly engage with the stakeholders, and how you will communicate with each other. The activities that a BA will do have to be included in the project management plan. This will only make for a better final result.

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