THE IMPORTANCE OF ALIGNING THE BUSINESS ANALYST ROLE

What does it mean to have a well aligned business analyst role? When the business analyst role is well aligned to the requirements or development process, projects run very smoothly like well oiled machines. Just like there are many types of machines, there are also many types of processes and each process requires careful consideration of how the business analyst role must be aligned. High performance machines require a more precise alignment of its parts to produce the desired result, and high performing processes require a more precise alignment of the business analyst role to produce a high quality deliverable. In a misaligned machine, the parts will grind together, spew out smoke and sparks, have fits and starts, and sometimes break down altogether. When this happens on your project, it means missed deadlines, delays, cost overruns, and sometimes catastrophic failure.

Challenges to Aligning the Business Analyst Role
Business analysts today must contend with many different software development processes at various organizations. There are a number of traditional waterfall and iterative approaches such as RUP, SCRUM, Agile, Extreme Programming, etc. Each of these processes also comes in many flavors, and each places a unique demand on the business analyst role.
Roles Drive Behavior
Roles are defined positions within an organization that set the expectations of the behavior of the individual assigned to the position. Roles have labels such as Business Analyst or Systems Analyst, and have a set of assigned activities and responsibilities. While activities determine the tasks and deliverables for the role, the responsibilities determine with whom the role will interact. These assignments are intended to induce a desired behavior and produce a desired result in support of a process.
Telltale Signs of Poorly Aligned Business Analyst Role
You must carefully consider the activities and responsibilities assigned not only to the business analyst role, but to all other roles that interact with the requirements or development process. This alignment occurs not only at the project level, but also at the organizational level. Failure to align with the project and the organization will lead to a number of undesirable results.
Role Conflicts: Same activities or responsibilities, Different label
-When the same activities or responsibilities are assigned to two or more analyst roles with different labels.
For example, the Business Analys" within the marketing organization has the same defined activities and responsibilities as the System Analyst within the IT organization. This situation will creates conflict between the marketing and IT organizations and make it difficult to have a single point of accountability and governance over the requirements development activities.
Role Confusion: Same label, Different activities or responsibilities
-When one or more roles have the same label but different assigned activities and responsibilities.
For example, the Business Analyst in the marketing organization has different assigned activities and responsibilities from the Business Analyst in the IT organization. This situation creates confusion within the project team, as team members attempt to understand the distinction between the roles, and ultimately diminishes the value that each role brings to the project.
Role Fragmentation: Poorly Distributed or Decentralized activities and responsibilities
- When the activities and responsibilities that should be assigned to a single "Business Analyst" role are assigned to more than one role.
For example, the activities for requirements traceability are assigned partially to the Business Analyst in the marketing organization, partially to the Systems Analyst in the IT organization, and partially to the Process Analys" in the sales organization. This situation makes it very difficult to establish baselines and perform requirements validation across all the project requirements.
Role Ambiguity: Poorly defined activities and responsibilities
-When the activities and responsibilities for the "Business Analyst" are poorly defined, ambiguous, or nonexistent.
This situation results in required activities not being performed. For example, failure to assign the "Requirements Validation" activity to a Business Analyst means that the validation will typically occur downstream during testing, which places an additional burden on the testing team to validate requirements. This may also result in requirements being completely overlooked.
Impact of a Poorly Aligned Business Analyst Role
When the business analyst role is not well aligned to the process, the impact is anything from bothersome to catastrophic. Some of the possible impacts are:

• Schedule Delays, caused by duplication of activities that are assigned to one or more individuals who are working on the same thing. These activities can be in the development or the management of requirements.
• Requirements Duplication, caused by multiple analysts from different functional groups collecting the same or similar requirements for the same project. Duplication results in multiple requirements baselines which must be kept in sync.
• Requirements Conflicts, caused by multiple analysts from different functional groups collecting the same or similar requirements for the same project. Conflict becomes an issue when the same requirements have slightly different interpretations between analysts. This will eventually result in quality issues in the final product.
• Artifact overload, caused by multiple analysts from different functional groups producing redundant requirements artifacts. This typically occurs because roles are not aligned across cross functional groups, so artifacts which could be created once for multiple purposes, are instead created twice.

Gaining alignment of the Business Analyst Role
There is no one-size-fits-all solution to aligning the business analyst role, just like there is no single approach to SCRUM, or RUP, or some other Agile approach. Gaining alignment requires collaborative development of roles and responsibilities with all cross functional groups who must participate in the requirements development activities. The most important objectives to accomplish this are:

1. Gaining a common understanding and agreement to; adhere to the process, the artifacts that serve as input to the process, the artifacts that are output from the process, the activities to be performed.
2. Assess the current roles to determine;
   1. What activities will individuals stop doing that they are currently doing
   2. What activities will individuals start doing that they were not doing before
   3. What will be the common labels for defining the various roles
   4. Which role will be assigned to govern the requirements development activities
   5. Which role will be assigned to govern the requirements management activities
   6. Which roles will provide input to the process
   7. Which roles will receive output from the process

Conclusion
Building a high-performing business analyst team relies on ensuring the team is properly aligned to the project and organizational objectives, and has buy-in at all levels of management. Business analyst teams that are not properly aligned, will struggle to demonstrate their value to the organization, and may negatively impact the organization's ability to deliver. This alignment comes from a clear understanding of the organization's process for requirements and software development, and a collaborative effort between all cross-functional teams to define roles and responsibilities. Achieving the right alignment will ensure that your team will run like a highly tuned engine and allow the business analyst to manage ever more complex initiatives while delivering high quality results