Projects and Business Analyst

Projects and Business Analyst

Business analysts are involved with projects by assisting in creating product requirements for the product development team and participating in the testing of the product once it has been developed.

When to use

Business analysts participate in setting the requirements at the beginning of a project and participate in the testing of the product at the end of the project.

Instructions

When working with traditional projects, the requirements are set at the beginning of the project in a formal requirements document. The business analysis often has a major role in working with stakeholders to prepare this document. The analysis may be involved in periodic milestone reviews on traditional projects as part of the review team. As the product development effort comes to a close, the business analyst is often involved by assisting with the testing of the new product. In addition, on large projects, a business analyst may be assigned to assist the project manager by analyzing project data to identify variances and issues in project execution.

When working with Agile projects, the requirements are captured on story cards and the project’s product owner prioritizes and “fine tunes” those stories. The business analyst is often called on to act as the product owner, meeting stakeholders and creating the story cards. In the role of product owner, the business analyst is engaged with the project team on each sprint to identify the stories to be addressed in that sprint and to do the final testing of what has been developed in the sprint review meeting. In some cases, the business analyst is a scrum team member rather than the product owner. When that happens, the business analyst is usually leading testing tasks and activities within the team.

Many product line managers have a business analyst who supports them in their oversight of the product line. When the analysis of the product line data shows a small problem, the product line manager will often assign the business analyst to determine the underlying root cause and implement a solution. The old saying, “You found it, you fix it” applies in this situation. These projects are normally characterized as small activities with little scope and a very short duration. It is common for business analysts in this role to be managing several of these efforts simultaneously.

Hints & tips

• Business analysts need to be familiar with project management methodologies so that they understand the nature of the role assigned to them.
• Business analysts need to be flexible when working with Agile projects because they will need to reprioritize the story cards for each sprint and often will need to update the story cards based on the results from the previous sprints.