There is still a lot of debate in BA circles around what our role is and what is offered by the various organisation representing and supporting BAs. Is the role all about requirements analysis? Are we just interested in IT and systems analysis or are our practitioners focused on the broader business and processes?
I came across an interesting article forwarded to me by some information architecture friends, Matt and Andrew. The article on the discipline and role of IAs was written by Jesse James Garrett in 2002 and the issue of defining the roles of IAs that they were struggling with back then, are very familiar issues that we are now facing as BAs.
Garrett argued that there is a discipline known as information architecture as well as a role known as information architect and that they evolved hand in hand but the time had come for change. Thus, just as there is the discipline of Business Analysis, there is the role of a Business Analyst. If we define the discipline based on the role then we may potentially be too broad as the role of as business Analyst varies from organisation to organisation an em-compasses BAs working as commercial, process, financial, technical and systems analysts. If we define the role based on the discipline, then whatever the field of business analysis is, those who are specialists in this field are business analysts. This definition however could, in practice, become too narrow.
As suggested by Garrett we seem to be at an impasse “Any definition broad enough to encompass the role is too broad to foster useful discussion of the discipline; any definition narrow enough for the discipline is too narrow for the role” and “Basing either definition on the other means one is going to be insufficient. Trying to do both at once isn’t working, producing a classic chicken-and-egg problem”.
We really need to define the scope of what is business analysis and then can look at what that discipline offers in the way of frameworks and tools to its members, as the specialists in this field. If we decouple the definition of the discipline from the definition of the role entirely then we have the opportunity to concentrate on more precisely defining the discipline of business analysis.
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