NOTE: This article originally appeared
in the September 2008 issue of Flawless Compliance, under the "Hello
Rubber, Meet the Road" section. The link to the actual issue is
at the bottom of this article.
Who is analyzing your business?
What I mean is, when you need to communicate your business requirements
to IT, who is responsible for making this happen? In most of the organizations
that I’ve worked in, this person is called a “Business Analyst.”
But what exactly qualifies a person to be a business analyst?
What Exactly Is a Business Analyst?
Like a lot of job titles I see materialize in companies, the answer
to me is a little concerning. Both the definition and the qualifications
are somewhat vague and ethereal. In some companies I’ve worked
with, business analysts are just people that collect and document high
level requirements. They have absolutely zero technical skill, and are
more like documentation specialists. In other companies I’ve worked
with, business analysts design solutions and architecture that the IT
professionals will build. They are highly technical, and responsible
for not only collecting requirements, but also building solutions, and
translating them to a point where IT developers can do the grunt work.
Regardless of what they’re called, the bottom line is that somebody
needs to take your compliance requirements, and translate them into
something that IT can build. For some reason companies don’t take
this as seriously as they should, and this lack of awareness becomes
a stealthy saboteur that can seriously damage your chances of success
on any compliance program or project. We’re going to fix that
in this article.
In my travels, I’ve come across three types of business analysts:
The Empty Analyst
The Empty Analyst has no business skills, and no technical skills.
They shouldn’t even hold the title of Business Analyst, and
it’s in the company’s best interest to reassign this person
to something more suited to their real skills. The company usually
has no idea what a business analyst should do, and neither does the
employee. So the job becomes a functionless and amorphous placeholder
for people that want a change of pace. These are totally non-productive
people, and if your technical people cannot pick up the slack, you
probably have very frustrated business users that cannot get anything
out of IT. The only thing I’ve seen worse than an Empty Analyst
is an Empty Analyst Manager. I’m not kidding, they exist!
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Dilbert, August 17, 2008.
Source |
The Interested Analyst
The interested analyst is the most common type of analyst I see.
These are people who have adopted business analysis as a second language
of sorts. They understand a little bit about their end users ( i.e.
compliance ), and they have a few technical skills. They probably
have a rough understanding of how compliance works, but you wouldn’t
want them designing a compliance process. They probably know a little
SQL ( a common database language ), but you wouldn’t want them
designing an intelligence system ( i.e. compliance data system ).
The company feels like they have a pretty good job description put
in place for their business analysts, and the analysts themselves
feel pretty good about their role, and feel like they are actually
contributing in a positive way.
Here’s the issue. Remember the “Telephone Game”
you used to play in grade school? This is the game where you sit in
a circle, and you start with somebody whispering a phrase to the person
sitting directly to their left or right. They only have one shot to
communicate to their partner – nothing can be repeated or clarified.
This goes around in a circle until it gets back to the originator
of the phrase. The original person then states out loud what the “new”
message is, after it has passed around the circle. What makes this
game fun is that the original message never holds its composure, and
in the end you usually end up with something completely off base.
This is what happens when the Interested Analyst attempts to build
business requirements. They will interview your business end users,
and only get a portion of the real requirement correct – for
simplicity sake let’s say 50%. Then, they will attempt to build
documents for IT. Since they’re only fractionally technical,
the communication to IT will be a fraction of what technical people
need to know – again, let’s say 50%. In the end, IT is
building a solution that is at best 25% of what the users want. Add
to that a project management team that insists on a waterfall approach
and you have a disaster waiting to happen.
The Expert Analyst
The Expert Analyst is the only one who will get you to the Promised
Land. The Expert Analyst understands both the business and IT extremely
well. They are qualified to design a compliance process, argue the
merits of an intended solution with the internal auditors, architect
and build a compliance data system, and address external auditors
on all levels.
The Expert Analyst understands that business analysis is an industry,
and seeks to understand the body of knowledge that encompasses it.
They study things like effective process design, stakeholder negotiation,
and project team integration.
For obvious reasons, these are the kinds of business analysts you
want at your company. With business analysts like this, you really
don’t need business people or IT people, just a group of great
people that can get the job done. This is the foundation for what
I call a Finance Systems Group. You don’t have to go this far
however, to get the benefit of having Expert Analysts at your disposal.
So, Where Are These Super-Human Analysts?
You may be saying to yourself, “That’s all fine, however
where do I find people like this?” Actually, it’s not as
hard as you might think. The key is to find people that are motivated
to grow in this direction, and then cultivate them with training, education
and practice. It won’t happen overnight, but it won’t take
forever either. Start by finding good technical people and / or good
compliance analysts with a desire to develop into something greater.
Then, whether it’s me or not, solicit the help of a good coach
that can develop the skills necessary to complement the skills they
already have.
This approach may seem a little costly and time consuming, but what’s
your current cost of retaining your Empty and Interested Analysts?
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