Objective of the event

To evaluate how the Business Analysis skillset manifests in various adjacent roles such as Sales, Bidding, Account Management, Consulting, Solution Architecting, Data Science, Product Management etc The roundtable is also a precursor to a full conference on the same theme in June to be held in Pune / Mumbai region.

Event Description

The International Institute of Business Analysis (IIBA), Mumbai Chapter organized a roundtable. Weschool was the Academic Partner and Host for the roundtable. The roundtable theme and design was done by Dr Pradeep Pendse along with IIBA Board members. The theme of the roundtable was Business Analysis as a Skill sets across the Project/Product lifecycle. The theme sought to identify the need for Business Analysis skillsets right from the sales and bidding stages to product development/management and delivery and maintenance. While the Role of Business Analyst today has morphed into several adjacent roles such as presales, account management, product owner etc the hypothesis is that Business Analysis is an underlying skill across all these roles.

The International Institute of Business Analysis (IIBA), Mumbai Chapter organized a roundtable. Weschool was the Academic Partner and Host for the roundtable. The roundtable theme and design was done by Dr Pradeep Pendse along with IIBA Board members. The theme of the roundtable was Business Analysis as a Skill sets across the Project/Product lifecycle. The theme sought to identify the need for Business Analysis skillsets right from the sales and bidding stages to product development/management and delivery and maintenance. While the Role of Business Analyst today has morphed into several adjacent roles such as presales, account management, product owner etc the hypothesis is that Business Analysis is an underlying skill across all these roles.

The session was kicked off by a welcome address by Ms Bhakti Khanna Communications head for IIBA Mumbai- This was followed by a Presentation Mr Govind Sridhar , Secy of IIBA Mumbai about IIBA its mission, vision, activities and future plans,. Mr Sridhar also mentioned about the forthcoming IIBA annual conference which for the first time is being organized in Mumbai-Pune region. Most previous conferences were held in Bangalore and always drew tremendous participation. Dr Pradeep Pendse , founder and President of the IIBA Mumbai, set the context for the discussion showing various roles in the IT domain and the career paths for BAs. He then highlighted the various Practice Areas of a BA and explained how these practice areas were relevant to a wide variety of roles which he had just described. The 30 odd participants were split into 2 groups – one group largely consisted of people from Digital Transformation area (Both CIOs/CTOs as well as from IT/consulting companies), while the other group was primarily oriented towards Product Management. Both the groups were asked to discuss the application of the practices listed by Dr Pendse and how they relate to their own roles and some of the challenges which they faced in BA practices in their context. The Key points which emerged:-

1. Product Vision is a mixed bag – the stability of the vision is a challenge – many organizations tend to pivot very often- technology and other factors also disrupt the vision.
2. There is a need to develop BA skills among Sales and Bidding people. At present BAs are asked to contribute to bidding processes – however going forward it may be imperative for Sales and bidding people to develop this skill since they have the opportunity to interact with clients early on in a project.
3. In an inhouse IT department, the CIOs/CTOs tend to be closely involved in Business Strategy – Enterprise Analysis is one of the knowledge/Practice areas in BA which such individuals must develop. Many a time BAs are not directly involved in such strategy discussions. However it is important that they are able to develop that level of influence to be find a seat at the table and contribute in the discussion.
4. Gartner coined the term Citizen Scientist – in the same manner it would be necessary to have citizen BAs. This implies that many end users and managers who manage various business processes must develop the BA skill set so as to be able to analyse their own processes and suggest improvements
5. While we assume that Digital Transformation implies technology, it is important to identify upfront whether automation is really necessary or justifiable or are their easier process change options. This reduces the possibility of wasted effort in automating processes which can be better handled in other ways.
6. The term MVP needs to be replaced by MLP – ie minimum or most loved product. Many at time MVP fails to excite customers.
7. Rapid Prototyping in general was an important skill in the technology space.
8. Eliciting requirements – Design thinking, user journey maps etc are very useful – Eliciting by observation may not be possible in many offshore development projects as well as SAAS based B2C products and platforms – Data therefore becomes important – Ability of BAs to analyse data to find hidden opportunities and run experiments is very important in this context.
9. Many BAs and Product Owners/Managers do not use the tools and techniques – there is a need for educating them and to instill in them the importance of the tools and techniques for improving their own ability to analysis requirements.
10. It is essential for BAs to understand technology – since they are involved in making choices about technology and platforms for business solutions.
11. The BA role may over a period get replaced by many other job titles – however the underlying skillsets are important.