Many people find it difficult to understand what a business analyst does. Much like how the role of a project manager can vary greatly from one project to another so too the role of a business analyst can vary greatly from one project to another. In this article we will describe some of the common scenarios where we find business analysts can help our customers.

Business processes. When it comes time to improve business processes or improve how technology streamlines your business processes you need a business analyst (“BA”). The BA will begin by interviewing everyone involved from the beginning to the end of the process and reviewing all of the systems and documentation used to deliver the process. The BA may do some research on how other organisations do similar processes and engage vendors to discover solutions that are available in marketplace. The BA will then bring together all the required parties to perform an options analysis. The BA will ultimately document the proposed new business process such that project planning can be performed to plan the implementation of the new processes and supporting technology solutions. The BA will then be a key resource in performing the implementation.

Technology upgrade or replacement projects. What if your project does not involve process change but just a technology upgrade or replacement? In this situation a BA with strong technical and project administration skills (often BA’s are multi-skilled) can perform the following activities:

• Business requirements gathering and documentation
• Technical current state information gathering and analysis, for example, if you needed to replace all your outdated Windows 2003 servers, how many servers are there what are the upgrade and consolidation options
• Project resource and finance administration
• Project schedule management
• Management reporting
• Monitoring interdependencies with other projects
• Support procurement processes
• Support team member on-boarding processes

As you can tell from the list above a BA can be of vital assistance to the project manager. Like the project manager the BA has a good view of the big-picture. So when the project manager is not available often the BA can assist team members, project stakeholders and the project sponsor with urgent issues. With this help the project manager has much more time to focus on delivering outcomes.

Talk to us today about how one of our highly skilled business analysts can help your project on 07 3251 9333.