Posts about Every Woman

Archive for March, 2011

It is no secret that when it comes to efforts on business change and IT, project management and business analysis roles tend to blend together. Aside from the usual responsibilities of working as a liaison among stakeholders and participating in the user acceptance testing preparations, business analysts naturally take on the responsibilities of project managers, while project managers also tend to take on the responsibilities of business analysts. The aforementioned scenario usually happens in cases where either the business analysis or the project management role is weak or absent within an organization.

Most commonly, the role of a business analyst involves responsibilities revolving around requirements. Business analysts plan the requirements approach for the project, elicit requirements from the stakeholders, specify and analyze the requirements elicited, validate the requirements to ensure they are true and correct, manage the validated requirements through traceability, and communicate those requirements to the implementation team or the developers. In order to perform those responsibilities effectively, business analysts must take requirements training. It is the business analyst’s job to determine the things and steps that must be done in order to successfully solve the business problems that are brought forth by the business community. While doing their job, they sometimes end up determining how to efficiently solve those business problems in a timely fashion; a responsibility for project managers. On the other hand, while trying to resolve business problems, project managers often find themselves having multiple discussions with the stakeholders about the scope of the requirements and making sure that all perspectives are appropriately represented in the requirements; a responsibility that a business analyst must do.

Business analysis and project management are both important aspects in business. Although these two roles are often blurred in many organizations, business analysts and project managers must collaborate together while balancing each other out.