IT Consultant

One of the most important duties of the BA role within an organization is to be the “bridge” or “translator” between the business side and technical side of the business.  It takes excellent interpersonal skills, especially communication skills to perform this role; and the BA is the role within the organization that is in prime position to accomplish this goal.

Organizations whether in Cincinnati, Dayton or other business community, have different internal structures and utilize BAs differently.  Whether the BA reports to the business side or the technical side of the organization, their duty to foster understanding is the same.  Some organizations have BAs that work on the business side of the organization, these BAs are often called Enterprise Analysts or Enterprise Architects; and BAs that work with the technical teams of the organization, these BAs are often called Systems Analyst or Business Systems Analysts.  Often the stakeholders on both sides of the fence work with their BAs and the BAs on the business side and technical side work with each other to drive change within the organization. 

Issues arise when the enterprise application development team does not understand the requirements and their importance and priorities.  Issues also arise when business stakeholders do not understand what the IT business solution that the technical team intends to deliver.  The BA is charged to work through these issues and foster understanding of each stakeholder’s goals, requirements and solution needs.  The BA can best accomplish this goal by developing a shared dialog and vocabulary between the stakeholders.  Each side needs to understand, at least in part, the other sides’ terminology and acronyms.  Shared terminology can go a long way to foster understanding.

By building the bridge of communication and understanding between the different teams within the organization the BA can help reduce project timelines, reduce project communication (overhead) needs, better utilize project resources and possibly gain greater project portfolio management.   So a BA needs to always be improving their communication and negotiating skills to better facilitate understanding within the organization.