After Requirements: Is the BA Done?

What is the role, if any, of the Business Analyst (BA), once the requirements are done? What happens after weeks or months have been spent eliciting and analyzing requirements for the project? Documents are finished; reviews are completed; approvals are recorded; the requirements are “done”. But, is the BA done? Not if you want high quality, cost-effective solutions.
The role of the BA after requirements varies from company to company and from project to project. Different development methodologies and practices lead to wide variations. However there are several key roles that are critical to the successful delivery of a project - managing requirements changes; participating in the design and test reviews; and ensuring that there is traceability in both the design and test artifacts.

Change Management Process
What happens when the requirements change? And, they do change on any significant project – the business stakeholders find new functionality that they must have, but forgot about during the long requirements sessions; the design team hits a roadblock, unable to continue without additional detail or further clarification; or the team discovers that some of the requirements are infeasible to implement or so costly that they want to revisit the requirements with the business requestor. There are various techniques that can reduce the number of changes to requirements, but don’t be fooled into thinking that they can be eliminated. Change happens - it is important to be prepared to deal with it.

The BA plays a key role in changes that affect requirements, remaining the conduit between the business and the technical team(s), performing functions such as:

• Documenting the necessary changes,
• Preventing / reducing unnecessary changes,
• Evaluating the risks of requested changes,
• Assessing the impact that the change has on the project.

Without the participation of the BA, the change management process can torpedo a critical business project.

Design Reviews
How does your company ensure that the design really meets the requirements? The BA has a critical role in this process. While including the business stakeholder is also important, the BA often has a better understanding of the tradeoffs between the business processes and the technology solutions than the business stakeholder. And, the BA can help the business understand what is meant by the proposed technical solution and help the technical staff understand what the business is actually trying to accomplish. Documented requirements can only go so far in providing this needed information. There is no substitute for the multi-faceted conversation that occurs during the review process.

The BA’s expertise is also critical to the design review process in ensuring that:

1. All design components trace back to a requirement - that is, guaranteeing that no extra, unneeded functionality is added during the design of the solution;
2. All requirements have been a design component - that is, there are no gaps in the design where requirements have been missed.

Without the BA’s participation, key functionality can be missed or unnecessary and often costly functionality can be introduced to project.

Test Reviews
Software testing is used to identify that the developed system is correct, complete, secure and of the appropriate quality. But, how does the test team accomplish this? No company can test every possible aspect of a software solution. 

The BA is a key player in ensuring that the suitable amount and correct type of testing is accomplished. When reviewing the test plan and test cases, the BA’s unique blend of business and technical knowledge enables them to critically evaluate the effectiveness and completeness of the tests. The BA’s knowledge of how the business user intends to use the new functionality enables them to provide key insights in:

• Ensuring that the primary focus of the testing is on functionality that is most important to the business stakeholders.
• Helping to limit testing in areas that are less critical and have less value to company.

With the BA’s participation, the test process can be be0tter focused and more cost-effective. 

User Acceptance Testing
Beyond the review role, what is the role of the BA in User Acceptance Testing (UAT)? While UAT ultimately needs to be the responsibility of the business stakeholders’ who will be using the system, the BA can play a vital consultative role in this process. The BA can help lead inexperienced stakeholders through a systematic approach to UAT. And, because of their knowledge from design and test reviews, the BA can ensure that high-risk components of the solution are fully checked out by the business.

In many companies, the BA actually performs the UAT - though this approach has its drawbacks. The BA is generally not the user of the system and can, therefore, not exercise the solution in the same way that the end user will use it. But, often users are unavailable, so the BA can fill this gap when necessary. While this option is not ideal, since the BA generally hasn’t been involved in the coding of the solution, they can remain an independent set of eyes, able to find errors that developers and testers, who are less knowledgeable about the use of intended solution, may overlook.

So, in conclusion, the BA’s role remains critical throughout the solution lifecycle when quality and cost-effectiveness are important, as the BA continues to balance the technical and business needs of the project.

Cathy is a Business Analysis Manager at US Cellular where she leads a team of business analysts for IS projects. She is also the President of the Chicagoland chapter of the International Institute of Business Analysis™. She has a BSc in Computer Science from Iowa State University.

Cathy has over twenty years experience in all aspects of business analysis, systems development and project management, from project inception to customer acceptance. She is skilled in the analysis of business problems, as well as the design, implementation, testing, and on-going support of technical solutions. Her areas of expertise include Interactive Solutions, e-Business Solutions, Financial Systems, Gaming and Lottery Systems, Telecommunications (Operator Console, Voice Recognition, and Call Processing), Order Entry/Subscription Services, and Database Design.

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