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Business Analysis Center of Excellence (BACE) - The Secret to Project Success

Victoria B. Haney, PMP

 Fred Brooks made this statement over 20 years ago, it’s still true today.  Software projects are wrought with potential problems, risks and pitfalls.  Not knowing the scope, goal and requirements of the project are the biggest problems facing projects today.
 

How can the Business Analyst help with project success?
Scope and requirements management present significant difficulties for a project.  The top three problems for IT projects are:

1.                  Lack of sufficient, accurate user input
2.                  Less than complete requirements definition and specifications
3.                  Changing requirements and specification (“scope creep”) ¹

According to a 2005 study including 2,000 business professionals, completed by ESI International, 65% of all project failures could be attributed to poor requirements definition and poor scope control.²

The problem is, how to provide technical solutions to problems (needs) that are not technical, in that sense.  The obvious answer is to find those rare people who have knowledge and experience in IT technology and also in business activities.  These people can then communicate to both the solution providers, in IT, and the people who have the needs or problems to be solved. These rare people are the Business Analysts.

The Business Analyst (BA) ensures that the business need is well understood, documented and communicated to the business community as well as the project team. The primary responsibilities of the BA are to elicit requirements from the subject matter experts, manage the quality of the requirements definition and documentation throughout the project, and ensure that the project delivers what is required. 

Skills that the BA needs:

The BA must possess the skills to help overcome potential project problems. These skills include Enterprise Analysis, Critical Thinking, Business Modeling, Facilitation, Documentation and Communication and, of course, some technical skills.  Thus, the BA needs to understand the entire organization and be versatile enough to draw on the skills that are needed for a particular situation.

The Business Analyst must also ensure that comprehensive standards for processes and documentation are observed, that the requirements are accurate, and that the project actually will deliver real solutions to the stated requirements.  Without effective standards and documentation, different analysts could produce different solutions to the same requirements, which could lead to misinterpretation by the design and development staff.  Standardization becomes especially important now that so much of the design and development is outsourced or even off-shored.

   In most companies, the competencies required by the business analyst have not been recognized or clearly defined.²  Therefore, a new organization is required to support the BA and to provide a strong infrastructure to assure that the BA and, therefore, the project, can be truly effective.

What is this new organization?

The Business Analysis Center of Excellence (BACE) will develop business analysts’ expertise, expand their skill and provide guidance in processes and standards related to business analysis. VBH’s model for the BACE is: 

The business areas of many organizations are silos of information based on expertise about the business.  The members of the IT department are typically aligned by their technical disciplines, as is appropriate for the work they do. The BACE is an independent department or group within the company that provides expertise to the business areas and to IT.   Business analysts in the BACE provide the bridge to help the IT solutions providers work with the business customers who have the needs.

What will the BACE do?

The business analysts in the BACE will be responsible for several key areas:

1.      Understanding best practices in business analysis: The BACE will learn what other organizations are doing - what is successful and what is not.  One of the most important resources for best practices is the International Institute of Business Analysis (IIBA) and the Business Analysis Body of Knowledge (BABOK).  They provide guides for best practices to business analysts.

2.      Requirements processes and artifacts:  The BACE is responsible for the requirements processes and ensuring that they are kept up-to-date throughout the project.

3.      Professional Development:  As noted previously, the BA needs a broad range of skills and must be constantly updating and improving those skills.  The BACE will ensure that BAs have the tools to accomplish success in their jobs and will provide training, education, coaching and mentoring support to the BAs.

4.      Managing project artifacts:  The success of any one project must rely on the lessons learned from other projects.  The BACE, along with the project management office (PMO) is responsible for ensuring that project documentation is complete, up to date, and available to other projects.

Why have a BACE?

The BACE can fill in precisely those knowledge and procedure voids which have tended to reduce the success rate for other organizations’ IT projects.  Attributes of the BACE are:

1.      Assists the business in requirements elicitation and management, and provides assistance with business modeling.

2.      Helps to overcome organizational politics – the BACE is not part of any one business silo and is not internal to the IT organization.

3.      Bridges the gap between IT and the business areas – BAs in the BACE musts have a broad knowledge base about technology tempered by knowledge about the business.

4.      Assists Information Technology in

1. Defining requirements – BA’s are skilled in facilitation and interviewing techniques, most developers are not.
2. Providing business models in a format that makes sense to the designers and developers in IT.

5.      Helps project success by assisting the project manager with documentation and communication needs.

How do I establish a BACE?

Establishing a BACE may require major changes within the organization and the culture.  As with any project that introduces change to the way people do their work, action must be taken to ensure resistance is minimized.  The following framework describes steps to mitigate the negative effect of resistance to the new BACE.  They were developed based on John Kotter’s model⁴ for managing change, change management processes developed by Brien Palmer with the American Society of Quality³, and VBH’s experiences in establishing process changes and centers of excellence.

The BACE Framework:

1. Recognize the need and share it – establish the vision of the future and obtain commitment to that vision.
2. Assess the current situation (“as is”) – as in any change, the size of the gap between the “as-is” state and the “to-be” vision must be defined.
3. Strategize and plan – once the assessment is completed and the “to-be” state is defined, the strategy and plan are the roadmaps to follow to get there.
4. Mentored implementation – success begets success.  Choose a small project, establish and follow the new BA processes on that small project.  A pilot project provides proof of concept, an opportunity to test the new techniques and demonstrate the value of a BACE.
5. Establish an infrastructure for the business analyst – identify and provide the tools the business analysts will need to effectively complete their jobs, and also create job definitions and career paths for the analysts.
6. Anchor the change in the culture – The goal of this step is to stop seeing the new BACE as a change. The BACE will become “this is the way we do things around here.”

An effective BACE requires a change in the culture of the organization.  Change is not quick, especially cultural changes. 

Victoria Haney is President of VBH Consulting, located near Pittsburgh, Pa. VBH Consulting is quickly becoming a leader in business analysis consulting and training.  You may contact Vicky at any time via email at Vicky@vbhconsulting.com.

References

1. Information  Technology Project Management, Third Edition, Kathy Schwalbe, 2004,Thomposon Course Technology, USA
2. Eight things your business analysts need to know: A practical approach to recognizing and improving competencies, ©2006, ESI International, retrieved from IIBA.COM on August 27, 2006.
3. Making Change Work, Practical Tools for Overcoming Human Resistance to Change, Brien Palmer, © 2004 by ASQ Press.
4. Leading Change, John P. Kotter, Harvard Business Review; Jan2007, Vol. 85 Issue 1, p96-103, 8p, 2c