Effective BA Practice Day 1: the Purpose of Business Analysis

How to build an effective BA practice? This is going to be a series of posts for anyone developing a business analysis capability at their organization.

So where do you start? With the purpose of business analysis.

Who are business analysts? Why do you need one (or two, or three)? What is the value? Didn’t they say agile teams don’t have roles anymore?

Business analysts are professional trained to apply business analysis tools and techniques to identify what is required to solve business problems or satisfy business needs.

The goals of business analysis must be business-oriented — achieving specific business objectives.

And yes, even on agile teams someone still needs to analyze business problems, model the context, the processes, capture user stories, acceptance criteria, and business rules. Whether you call them agile business analysts or scrum team members, they still perform business analysis activities.

The work of a business analyst fulfills objectives critical to the success of enterprise change:

  • Analyze business systems and enterprises, their problems, needs, and opportunities.
  • Help clients define objectives and results they expect from a business change.
  • Capture and communicate business requirements and create a shared understanding of expectations.
  • Facilitate the implementation of the change defined by business requirements.

Contact Yulia for details on Business Analysis in One Day and other corporate training programs. Consider other ways to help your organization mature its business analysis and business architecture functions, and explore BA videos on Why Change YouTube channel.

Please share your thoughts!

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