Hi again, we continue talking about the business analyst mindset and its twelve principles.
I’m Yulia Kosarenko, and today we will talk about the importance of “analysis”
in a business analyst’s title.
This is what principle number five is about:
Analysis before synthesis; information before requirements
What do I mean by this? Let me start with a story.
The first training course I took as an aspiring business analyst many years ago
was called: “How to gather and document business requirements.”
The course had some good material on what requirements are
and what they are not, what makes a good requirement,
and how to document them without ambiguity.
But it also implied that what business analysts do is “gather requirements.”
What is the image that comes to mind when you hear the expression “gather requirements?”
Are you imagining an apple tree with beautiful red fruits hanging on the branches?
Perhaps a blueberry bush?
Or a vineyard?
The reality is, requirements are not apples or grapes.
They will not ripen by themselves provided enough sunshine.
They will not be waiting for you to pick them, if only you knew when and how.
Your stakeholders will not have requirements.
What they will have are needs, wants, problems, pain points and grievances.
They may think they know what they want, but in reality,
they know much better what they don’t want.
And there is sometimes quite a difference between
what they think they want and what they actually need.
It takes work to figure out what is necessary
to solve a business problem. It requires analysis.
So you don’t gather requirements. You gather information –
about the current state, its pain points, and symptoms of problems.
This information will become the foundation of the analysis.
Here is one of my favourite quotes: Data is not information,
information is not knowledge, knowledge is not understanding,
understanding is not wisdom.
What does it tell us? We have to analyze everything we gathered and elicited.
Not all of it will be relevant or correct.
There will be biased and one-sided opinions.
There will be data that contradicts what business experts believe.
There will be documentation that does not reflect the process in the field.
There will be workarounds that users came up with
to compensate for system defects or process shortcomings.
There will be hidden root causes that almost everyone has forgotten about.
There will be unanticipated impacts and unintended consequences.
Business analysis is not going to look like this.
It will be more like this.
It will involve collecting and refining raw information,
separating relevant from irrelevant, adding more facts and conclusions,
mixing and combining it with other results, to come up with real business requirements.
The analysis will involve a variety of activities.
You will need to apply different tools and try different techniques.
You will ask questions, immerse yourself in the business process, analyze artifacts.
You will look for the root causes of the problem,
analyze processes and ways to make them more efficient.
You will need to model business activities and structures,
use data and analytics to verify your findings,
and then capture the results of your analysis in different formats.
You have to use these tools to analyze what you are hearing,
the information given to you and the facts you’ve collected,
before you can start capturing the requirements for the future solution.
The key message for you is this: you are not a scribe, you are an analyst.
Research, investigate and analyze. Analysis first, then synthesis.
And remember, requirements don’t come from business –
they come from business analysis.
This is where you, business analyst, come in.
If you would like to learn more about various business analysis techniques,
you can find more videos in the BA Tools and Techniques series
on the Why Change YouTube channel, and in my online courses.
In the next video, we will talk about other principles of the BA mindset.
Thank you for watching!