How to Develop and Grow a Business Analysis Practice

A business analysis (BA) practice is a group of business analysis professionals organized to maximize opportunities for mentorship, sharing of knowledge and skills, and requirements reuse across enterprise.

An excellent BA practice doesn’t grow by itself – it must be nurtured. Without good business analysis, projects fail, arguments and misunderstandings poison the project atmosphere, and money is wasted.

If you struggle regularly with project delivery, it will pay to invest more in your practice. Business analysis is not easy, especially when dealing with multi-system changes, complex business processes, or problems that have more than one root cause. Here are just some of the frequently mentioned reasons for failing to understand business requirements on a project, which leads to a lot of waste or even complete failure of the initiative.

Business analysis can also be hard because of a lack of understanding on the part of stakeholders about the importance of requirements which may result in the lack of cooperation with a BA.

Excellent business analysts with experience and sharp skills are also hard to come by. It pays to grow good BAs from within the company, but that, too, requires thought and investment.

Here are a few things you can do:

Develop a supporting culture
Create a shared templates and artifacts repository
Support training and mentorship
Educate project stakeholders about business analysis.

One of the fundamentals of successful business analysis is sound methodology. It doesn’t have to be overly elaborate — lightweight is more likely to succeed. However, a complete lack of methodology and structure creates uncertainty about “what to do next” which is especially difficult for junior business analysts to manage.