The Many Hats of the Business Analyst (Typical Roles)
Business analysis falls under many different roles and job titles. This leads to one of the major challenges in recognizing business analysis as a profession. The great diversity in titles makes it hard to see that there is a cohort of professionals with a related purpose.
Jobs requiring a Certified Public Accountant (CPA) credential are clearly accounting and finance related. Jobs requiring a PMP all have “project” in the job title. Things are a bit muddier when it comes to jobs that require a CBAP, a person certified in business analysis. This helps to demonstrate how the diverse “job titles” for those that do business analysis hinder an understanding of who should be included in the overall professional category of “business analysis”.
Figure 5 Job Titles Requiring Certification
Another barrier to understanding the complete role of the business analysts is the perception of the title “analyst”. I recently had coffee with a friend. He was surprised when I said that business analysts and project managers should be equal on projects. In his world of finance, an “analyst” was a step toward the role of “manager” (i.e., fiscal technician ➜ financial analyst ➜ financial manager ➜ and finance director). It is counterintuitive that a business “analyst” is a management or executive advisory position.
We can take this analysis a bit further, but reviewing our previous list of project deliverables that considered business analysis and seeing typical project roles that may be producing these deliverables.
Figure 6 Deliverables and Activities of Business Analysis
With so many different people doing business analysis activities, it’s easy to see why recognizing business analysis as a dedicated profession is challenged. Regardless of who does the activity, understanding best practices in these business analysis activities will give projects a better chance of success regardless of whether the project has a dedicated business analyst, a similar role with a different job title, or the activities are spread across the project.
If you analyze business, congratulations, you are a business analyst!