Business Analysts (BAs) are workhorses, unsung heroes, with no glory but a lot of the pain! Their job is to smooth the path to ensure the success of our projects, working closely with the project and product managers and the developers and QA team. Essentially they are the glue that makes it all stick together.
At Ballast Lane Applications we are very proud of our BAs, and I’m here to explain why they are exceptional. There are 2 big things that can be highlighted:
- At the beginning of the project they take time to understand the business problem they are solving.
- Throughout the project they challenge the decisions and directions being dictated from the client and product development team, ask questions, encourage pivots and adjustments to ensure that the end result is the best it can be.
How do our Business Analysts gain an understanding of the business problem?
This is where the upfront work comes into play. Our BA’s understand the business problem by:
- Acknowledging that every business is different and one-size-fits-all solutions rarely, if ever, work.
- Taking time up front to understand the big picture, rather than just the piece that is the focus of the project at hand.
- Considering process bottlenecks and inefficiencies that could be avoided - this comes partly with experience, but also by always thinking about alternatives, challenging the path being initially presented.
- Asking questions like:
- What is the effort required for the feature we are proposing?
- Does the effort require a function that is not available within the software framework?
- Are there alternatives, and what are they? Could they be better? These questions are asked continuously throughout the project, not just at the beginning.
- Challenging whether certain features are even needed - this is a big one when it comes to MVPs, which are supposed to be a proof of concept, the minimum set of features required to get something out the door.
- Anticipating risks and challenges that could come with a particular feature, or by choosing certain technologies to be used, and discussing them up front to ensure that issues don’t arise later in the process.
How do our Business Analysts ensure the success of a project?
During the life of the project, the BAs continue to focus their attention on some key areas:
- Ensuring that we are solving the customers’ actual problems, not just addressing immediate symptoms or short term issues.
- Making sure the clear, measurable goals and objectives that were set at the beginning and are tied to the business problem being solved are being communicated to the team, and checking our work against them to ensure that we are staying on track.
- Following an agile philosophy - we view the initial release as just the beginning. Regular feedback loops allow us to refine, pivot and adjust in order to ensure that the product is what the client and their customers want and need.! We know that things change, and we are ready for it.
Our BAs are the glue that holds everyone together, and they have the detailed knowledge of the project, and therefore a voice that’s worth hearing!