From the Inside Flap
Business Analysis
Best Practices for Success
Outside of its top executives, there is no single position more central to an organization's overall success than the business analyst. The business analyst may be the only position within an enterprise that has knowledge of business processes, as well as the IT technology that supports them, all while bringing technical and business staff together to collaboratively solve problems.
Presenting best practices for identifying business problems that need solving and ensuring their solutions bring value to your organization, Business Analysis: Best Practices for Success demonstrates that the business analyst is more than a requirements recorder. Rather, the business analyst is a central cog in the successful organization's driving wheel.
This practical guide takes a critical look at the business analyst's role as the ultimate problem solver in both the business and development communities when there is a problem. Filled with illustrative case studies, tips, tricks, techniques, and guerrilla tactics, Business Analysis helps execute the process in the face of sometimes overwhelming political or social obstacles. Informed by author Steven Blais's forty years of experience performing an abundance of roles and activities integral to the business analyst position, this book answers frequently asked questions, including:
- What is my relationship with the project manager?
- Is it possible to create a common language for IT and business?
- Is there a methodology or process for business analysts?
- How can I improve the communication between product stakeholders and developers?
- Since I'm doing all three roles, what is the difference between the project manager, the systems analyst, and the business analyst?
- How do we deal with customers who give us the solution and not the problem?
- Is it necessary to provide cost justification such as an ROI for projects, and if so, how do you do it?
- Why is there always such a gap between the user requirements and the delivered product?
Being a business analyst means you are the center of change in your organization, and that's a dangerous place to be without a map, or at least a good plan of action. Create positive change for your organization, improve processes, clarify communications, investigate problems, produce solutions--do it all, with the hard-won guidance found in Steven Blais's Business Analysis.
STEVEN P. BLAIS is a solution architect and a consultant, coach, trainer, and course author in business analysis, software development, and project management. He contributes articles on a regular basis to allPM.com, a project management webzine published by the International Institute for Learning (IIL). He is a frequent content provider to numerous BA blogging sites, including EssenceoftheBA.com, and chairs a committee for the Business Analysis Body of Knowledge R3 with the International Institute of Business Analysis (IIBA), the predominant organization for the growing discipline of business analysis, with currently over 15,000 members in ninety chapters worldwide.
