Re: What is a Business Analyst?

[Lauren <lauren -at- writeco -dot- net>]

A Functional Analyst, according to the Google Doc, analyzes a system 
while it is being built so it can be documented.  A Business Analyst 
analyzes some part of the business that is used but not documented (if 
it was documented, then people could just read about it), whether that 
part of the business is in the business systems, processes, procedures, 
operations, or any other facet of the business.   Essentially, a 
business analyst is an analyst after a system is in place, while other 
types of analysts work before or during system development.

Just like there are technical writers for different parts of technology 
(or wherever the technical writer happens to be) from design through 
development through operations and to the end user, there are business 
analysts for different parts of the business.

Business analysts differ from other types of analysts in that they must 
often become SMEs for the part of the business being analyzed rather 
than work with SMEs.  Business analysts typically do not have much to go on.

What happens too often in a business is that a system (processes, 
procedures, technology, operations, or anything else that a business 
uses to function) is put in place with specific directions for how to 
use it and over time, the application and use of the system changes so 
that it does not reflect its original design.  Business analysts figure 
out what is really happening and communicate that for either continued 
use as the system is being used or for re-engineering the system.

I think that more business analysts are necessary now for the 
predictions that I have made over the past couple of years. Businesses 
have pared down their documentation and communication efforts to cut 
costs and have made ad hoc changes to their systems to respond to 
financial and other needs.  Without anyone available to effectively 
document these changes as the business progressed, businesses now need 
to analysts to derive the various components of the business that the 
business is using to function and to determine what the business has 
abandoned.

This has happened before, where businesses quit documenting their 
systems during economic downturns, but had to hire expensive consultants 
to help them understand their own systems after they had enough income 
again.  Some of my best contracts were in doing this job, although 
clients often did not have an accurate name for the job.

One of my favorite contracts was in 1998 where I was hired to be a 
technical editor but the actual job wound up being business analysis.  
The "technical writers" were essentially SME consultants with varied 
writing skills who did not bother to analyze the client's business and 
only related how they would do things.  Suffice it to say, I had a lot 
of interviews with the client's SMEs to compile the "as-is" environment 
of the client's system, the "how it should be" from the consultants, the 
management requirements, the gaps everywhere, and what needed to be in 
place so the system could be integrated into a larger system.  I had fun.


On 11/4/2012 9:45 AM, sphilip wrote: