Business Analyst - RoadAhead

Business Analyst – Road Ahead…..

Amol Parkhe

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Introduction

Amol Parkhe

Worked both on Business and Technology areas

Business Analyst experience of 9 years

Speaker

Challenges that are faced today by a

Business Analyst

Looking ahead what is store for a Business

Analyst to succeed

Business Analyst – Road Ahead

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Business Analyst – Who is he ?

Challenges Faced Today

Looking ahead – The New Business Analyst

Business Analysis: Tools to Succeed

Agenda

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Agenda

4

Who is a Business Analyst

Business analysts play a critical role as the key liaison between the business

and the technology that supports it. The problem is that few people, including

business analysts, can pin down just who and what a “standard” business

analyst does

Process

Analysts

Rqt

Engineer

Systems

Analyst

Mgt

consultants

Business

Architects

Enterprise

Analysts

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and where does a Business Analyst want to grow

Whether IT- Or

Business-Oriented, BAs

Want To Grow Their

Career In The Business

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Agenda

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Today Business Analyst tend to follow the regular old school BA s which

include

“Gather” requirements instead of

eliciting and analyzing.

Use prescriptive processes and templates,

regardless of the project context.

Don’t know that they should do things a

different way.

Michael Gladstone, CIO (IIBA)

“One of the biggest challenges is that BAs don’t understand what is

expected of them and how they should be executing because

of the new nature of the role”

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The dynamics of the continuous changing market and customer needs has

added to the growing challenges for a Business Analyst

• placing greater responsibility to

do more

• to slow down hiring and many

others to continue the rounds of

layoffs

• increasingly sophisticated

customers

Economic slowdown

• increasing mercurial shifts along

socioeconomic, political, legal,

and environmental lines

• markets once defended

domestically now face threats

from anywhere on the planet

• thriving organizations hungry for

change continue to push into

new markets

• Increasing focus on visibility and

knowledge of end-to-end

processes

A global, competitive

environment

• choice of different technologies

many times raise question of

which one to use

• the process time to adapt the

use of the new technology adds

to the delivery time

New Technologies

The compression of process cycle times and increasing interdependencies between processes require

BAs to develop solutions that span the full process life cycle.

For example, one large bank shared its need for a business analyst who not only could analyze a loan application process

but who also understood (or was willing to explore) the upstream opportunity identification, the downstream loan servicing,

and the risk management at all stages.

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Agenda

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Looking Ahead – The New Business Analyst

The new business imperatives call for a holistic approach

The lines between different types of business analysts are already beginning to blur.

Business-oriented business analysts increasingly need to be conversant in IT, and IT-

oriented business analysts are successful only when they’re well versed in the

business

The ultimate product of this blurring is

New business technology analysts who translate policy directly into technology

change.

A new breed of business analyst that Forrester calls business technology (BT) analysts

are the key to making dynamic business applications a reality by both accelerating the

speed at which business applications can be changed and assuring the engagement of

the business customer in these changes.

Business technology analysts are like business-oriented business analysts in that

they understand and are responsible for how the business works. But they’re also

sufficiently technology savvy to be comfortable implementing changes to business

processes, information, and experience when equipped with the right tools.

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The New Business Analyst

More cross-functional and cross-domain business analysts.

Even as new types of business analysts emerge, the traditional business-oriented

business analyst and IT-oriented business analyst roles will persist.

The different breeds of business analyst within the business and IT

domains, however, will slowly dissolve as projects increasingly demand knowledge that

spans business functions like marketing and sales and IT domains like process,

information, and experience.

As time passes, fewer and fewer business analysts will have the luxury of working

only in a single business function or IT domain

Finance

Sales

Operations

Human

Resource

Business IT

Database

SaaS

SOAAjax

Business Technology

Analyst

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Will need to use a broad range of capabilities, skills, and knowledge


Future business technology analysts will be your most valuable business analysts because they can

single-handedly turn business-requested, IT-delivered applications into tomorrow’s Dynamic Business

Applications

Responsibilities &

Focus Areas

Business Knowledge

‒ Organizational awarness

‒ Marketplace awarness

‒ Customer awarness

‒ Domain/industry knowledge

Technical Knowledge

‒ General IT fluency

‒ Organizational-specific

IT fluency

‒ Technical relationships

Job Specific Skills

‒ Management skils

‒ Requirement management

‒ Tools set sills

‒ Technical language skills

Core Capabilities

‒ Communication

‒ Analysis

‒ Change- orientation

‒ Leadership

‒ Customer-orientation

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There is immense opportunity to invest in the new business technology

analysts

Look among existing business analysts as well as businesspeople.

− Existing business analysts are well suited to the role of business technology analyst

because they’re already familiar with both the business functions in question and with

business analysis disciplines like process modeling.

− The business-oriented business analysts who want more direct control over how business

processes are automated, and IT-oriented business analysts who want to move from IT

into the business.

− Business subject matter experts are another great pool of talent on tap.

Equip business technology analysts with the tools to build Dynamic Business Apps

− Traditional business analysts will need training in the tools that make Dynamic Business

Applications possible, such as business rules engines and business process management

solutions. (The primary “tool” of the traditional business analyst’s

trade is Microsoft Office)

Establish dedicated centers of excellence for business technology analysts

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Agenda

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Source: Global Business Analyst Online Survey

Business analysts use a variety of tools . . .

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The new Business Technology Analyst use a variety of tools more than just

“Tools” to succeed

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Source: Global Business Analyst Online Survey

Finally business analysts have to learn on the job from variety of sources


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Questions

Documents

Business Analyst - RoadAhead