Application Development Company

I have spent a lot of time talking about the duties of the Business Analyst (BA); now let’s talk about the characteristics that make up a good BA.  I find it interesting that Kupe wrote on this very subject this week, I guess great minds do think alike.  As Kupe notes, the IIBA call these underlying competencies and define these as “the skills, knowledge and personal characteristics that support the effective performance of business analysis”.

The BA performs an important role in the application development process and is tasked with the duty of ensuring that the IT business solution meets the needs of the business.  The BA develops and maintains the business and functional requirements that the IT business solution must contain in order to be deemed successful.

So we know the role and duties of the BA during a business application development project, so what “skills, knowledge and personal characteristics” does a person need to have to perform these duties.  As the duties of the BA entail eliciting requirements from stakeholders and working with an application development team, you can imagine that communication is at the heart of the competencies of a BA.  Good written and oral communication is necessary in order to be able to perform these duties.  Good communication is not only departing information, but taking in information, or listening.  This is often the skill that is over looked when we talk about skills or create a competency model.

Notice that when discussing competencies, that we not only are talking about “skills”, like Decision Making, Creative Thinking, Learning and Problem Solving; but we are also considering “knowledge” and “personal characteristics”.  As the BA has to work with both the business and information technology staff, they need knowledge of the organization, industry and technology.  What kind of personal characteristics would you want in a person that serves such an important role?  I am sure ethics and trustworthiness would make the top that list.

So if you’re a BA looking to advance your career, there are some competencies to work on.  If you’re an organization or manager looking to hire a BA, look not only at their skills and past performance, but develop some probing questions that will give you a look into their “underlying competencies”.