RG Perspective
Closing the Business Analysis
Skills Gap
Finding the immediate solution and preparing for the long term
As the Business Analysis bar is raised, skilled BAS become harder to find.
Susan Martin
2/5/2013
11 Canal Center Plaza
Alexandria, VA 22314
HQ 703-548-7006
Fax 703-684-5189
www.robbinsgioia.com
© 2013 Robbins Gioia, Inc.
Closing The Business Analysis Skills Gap
The recognition and growth of the
business analysis profession has meant
increased BA involvement throughout the
system development life cycle.
Business analysts have expanded their role and skill set,
proving their value on projects of all types across the
organization from business-process improvement efforts
to application enhancements to product development.
A recent search for business analysis jobs on a popular
jobs site returned 149,289 job postings; clearly the
demand for BAs far outpaces the supply. This paper
discusses why the task of finding skilled business
analysts has become a problem for so many
organizations and suggests some effective solutions.
Not All Business Analysts Are
Created Equal
In the past, many employees with different roles used
the title of “business analyst” regardless of their duties,
background or skill set. We have found “business
analysts” who are data analysts or technically-focused
systems analysts or even technical writers.
Today, the International Institute of Business Analysts
(IIBA®) has helped to define the practice of business
analysis both more carefully and more thoroughly and
has built the Business Analysis Body of Knowledge®
(BABOK® Guide) that lays out the knowledge areas
critical to the business analyst. This guide has become
the accepted standard for the BA profession.
Yet, while the BABOK Guide contains invaluable
information, it's not a step-by-step process that BAs can
follow. In other words, knowledge of the Guide’s
contents alone is not enough to ensure success.
Analysts who can actually execute the BA role as
outlined by the BABOK and the IIBA are few and
far between.
As the profession becomes more prominent and
business analysts are seen as crucial members of any
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Business Analyst Competencies
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Elicitation and Facilitation
Modeling Techniques
Writing Skills
Communication Clarity
Analytical Approach
Problem Solving
Leadership
Team Orientation
Planning
Requirements Management
Multi-Tasking
Experience
project team, the BAs currently in an organization may
not have the skills or background necessary to
successfully execute important projects. Or, as is often
the case, there are simply not enough business analysts
to meet project demands. Organizations may be forced
to use unqualified resources or go without an important
strategic resource altogether.
An Immediate Solution and Preparing
for the Long Term
Companies that need business analysts can find it
difficult to attract and retain skilled project-tested talent.
However, even when there is a shortage of resources,
the work must be done. The result can be to rely too
heavily on the expertise of a select few over-worked,
business analysis “all-stars.” This lack of bench strength
will cripple an organization as key analysts become too
heavily allocated, or worse, leave the company.
Closing the business analysis skills’ gap requires that
companies look beyond the walls of their organization to
acquire business-analysis talent to staff immediate
needs. At the same time, they can work toward
establishing a support structure necessary to grow
business analysts internally. It’s a dual approach: a
combination of strategic outsourcing accompanied by
Closing The Business Analysis Skills Gap
organizational improvement
with the objective of
developing bench strength.
Step 1: Use a Managed Business Analysis
Solution to Staff Critical Projects
Finding, attracting and signing top talent into full-time
roles is difficult and expensive. Usually projects must
If you determine you need outside expertise, finding a
managed business-analysis solution can be the best
path to obtain world-class’ business analysis expertise to
meet immediate staffing needs. The business analyst
team from a managed solution will come ready to
contribute to project success on day one with:
• Vetted, project-tested business analysts
be staffed immediately with highly productive business
analysts. As a near term solution, the business analysis
• A proven requirements methodology
skills gap can be closed by working with a specializedcontractor to provide a managed business-analysis
• Industry standard modeling and management tools
solution using best-of-breed business analysis talent.
When does it make sense to outsource?
Not every job can be handled internally; in the same
way, not all jobs need outside help. How do you
determine if it’s worthwhile for you to outsource some
or all of your BA functions? The best strategy is to start
by asking three critical questions:
Your management may need some evidence that using
BA resources from an outside source makes sense.
Here’s what we’ve found:
Reason #1: Outsourcing can lower the risks and
improve the outcomes of large IT initiatives.
Are you searching for a skill set that is routine for your
Requirements are much too important not to do right.
organization?
This is borne out by the dismal results of industry
studies and surveys. Some key metrics:
If you have many BAs that are up-to-date with the
latest techniques and have handled similar projects,
then you are likely to be able to find internal resources
31% of all software projects are canceled before
completion
($81B
wasted)
Source:
Standish
or hire good candidates for your needs.
Chaos Report
Are the upcoming projects somewhat different and/or
53% of projects will cost 189% of estimates Source:
more high profile than usual?
Standish Chaos Report
If the projects you need BAs for are outside the comfort
zone of your current staff, you could benefit from
outsourcing the BA role to a more experienced
organization.
Have you had complaints from either the business or IT
side of the house as to the quality of requirements?
In this case, you’ll definitely want to take advantage of
using outside expertise so that new projects can be
staffed quickly and with a high level of skills – skills that
can be transferred to your internal staff as they work as
part of the project team.
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The challenges of software development projects used
to be the technology and the availability of skilled
people to implement the technology.
This was
particularly true when software applications were
written from scratch.
the case.
But today this is no longer
The challenges we face today are understanding how
we can best make use of information technology to
improve the effectiveness and competitiveness of our
business. Implementing technology without understanding
fully the business problem your users need to solve is a
Closing The Business Analysis Skills Gap
fast track to disaster.
This means understanding the
process modeling and requirements analysis that will
requirements from the business point of view.
allow it to more effectively fulfill its mission.
Reason #2: Business analysis/ requirements
Reason #4: Outsourcing can extend your
outsourcing can bring new best practice
requirements analysis into business processes
techniques to your organization.
and help identify cost effective opportunities for
automation.
Business
processes
in
most
organizations
grow
increasingly complex year by year due to competitive
pressures to add new products and services, regulatory
Many IT-driven requirements projects focus on narrow
feature/function issues of a system. Typically this
compliance, expansion through growth or acquisition,
and any number of reorganizations. The touch points
includes Use Cases or Joint Application Development
sessions that focus on issues such as the user interface
between information systems and business processes
have also increased as more and more manual tasks are
(screens for query, update and data entry), report
layouts, security requirements and other design-
automated.
This makes the job of understanding
business operations much more complex. The skill level
oriented features of the system.
While these
requirements are important for technical specification
required by a business analyst today is much higher
than it was even five years ago.
and detailed design, they do not show how the system
is supposed to support a business process. IT often
The methods of gathering and documenting
requirements that worked five years ago may not be
effective today because of the increasing complexity of
the business and the wider range of technologies for
automating business processes available.
An
outsourcing partner that specializes in requirements
analysis and business process modeling will be able to
introduce new practices to your organization at the
project level, helping internal resources to understand
how they can be used successfully.
Reason #3: Outsourcing can bridge the gap
between the IT organization and the business
organization.
In many companies the responsibility for requirements
analysis and business process modeling is pushed back
and forth between the business units and the IT
organization. Many companies are creating a Program
Management Office (PMO) that reports to the COO or
VP of Operations and attempts to bridge the
communications gap between business management
and IT systems designers. It is not an easy void to fill.
Each group has its own culture and mode of
approaching issues. An outsourcing partner can help
the PMO develop systematic methods for business
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presumes that the users know exactly what type of
system they need, and the only open question is how
the system should look and function.
But the best solutions are not always technical or
expensive. An outsourcing partner skilled in business
process modeling can help you identify where and how
you can get the best return on your investment in
business process automation.
Reason #5: Outsourcing can be a cost effective
way to get the skills you need when you need
them (even when you don’t think you do)
It can take years to develop the skills needed to do
rigorous business process models and business and
systems requirements. It is a skill that is developed
best through a broad range of projects and system
initiatives. An outsourcing partner can bring those skills
and experiences to your organization when you
need them on a project by project basis or as an
ongoing partnership.
A Checklist for Outsourcing
Not all outsourcing vendors are the same, of course.
Unfortunately most vendors boast that they have
business analysts when what’s really needed is
Closing The Business Analysis Skills Gap
experience in the discipline of business analysis. Here is
a checklist that will help you separate the ‘walk’ from
the ‘talk’:
• Is the consultancy aligned with an accredited
business analysis organization (i.e. IIBA) with
accredited analysts that will be “on site” at your
organization?
• Can the consultancy provide evidence that all
consultants are trained on the same analysis
• Does
the
approach
consultancy
that
provide
considers
an
tools
integrated
and
method
together?
• Can they adapt business analysis techniques to
tools used by your organization, or recommend the
right tool for your specific needs?
A consulting vendor should meet all of the criteria above
in order to help
competency gap.
your
organization
address
its
methods which will be used for your organization?
• Can the consultancy cite their experience in other
industries besides your own where they have
helped BA best practices be adopted successfully?
• Can the consultancy demonstrate business analysis
capability at the strategic, project, and technical
levels?
• Is the stated goal of the consultancy to enable best
Step 2: Build a Business Analysis Center
of Excellence to Grow Business Analysis
Skills Internally
Having standout analysts on a project – whether
internally or externally sourced - can lead to success,
but individual business analysts often struggle to make
lasting improvements and need support to bring about
the change necessary to make meaningful, lasting
organization-wide improvements.
practice within your organization so that you can be
A center of excellence targeted to support the business
effective after they depart?
analysis discipline can advance BA skills, increase the
quality of requirements and, ultimately, improve the
quality of delivered solutions. This approach to building
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Closing The Business Analysis Skills Gap
expertise makes it is possible to raise project success
rates and grow business-analyst talent in-house while
taking steps to improve the quality and consistency of
requirement deliverables.
A Business Analysis Center of Excellence (BACoE)
functions as a focus of developing business analysis
expertise and growing the skills of business analysts. It
typically has responsibility for several key disciplines.
Requirements Processes and Deliverables
Requirements Analytics
The BACoE works with project teams to identify base
metrics (usually in the form of a scorecard) that will
measure the business value of the requirements and
requirements processes to the organization, and reports
out to other organizations on this information.
Once established, the BACoE becomes the avenue for
The BACoE serves as the owner of the processes that
continuous improvement and helps ensure that an
organization can adapt to changing demands and meet
will be followed during the requirements life cycle. That
means defining the processes, ensuring that they are
the needs of their customers. In fact, it can become a
key contributor to achieving a high level of maturity
kept up-to-date with lessons learned and best practices,
and making them available to help ensure all BAs know
within the application development organization.
what to do.
Business Analysis Maturity Is the Goal
Business Analyst Professional Development
The Software Engineering Institute has developed a
Capability Maturity Model (CMM) that shows an effective
The BACoE, in conjunction with HR, is responsible for
defining a business analyst career path, defining
essential skills and establishing a training curriculum for
professional development. As a CIO recently said:
“Users have trouble expressing their needs and desires
in a way that the technologist can understand. There
must be someone in the middle to interpret what the
user is saying and translate it to IT.”
approach toward improving an organization's software
development processes. It has become clear that the
model can be applied to other processes as well,
particularly the requirements life cycle processes.
The maturity model is a set of structured levels that
describe how well the behaviors, practices and
processes of an organization can reliably and
sustainably produce required outcomes. The CMM has
The goal of the BACoE is to develop business analysts
who can be that ‘someone in the middle’ and can speak
five levels where the uppermost (5th) level is an “ideal”
state where processes would be systematically managed
the language that will communicate to all.
by a combination of process
continuous process improvement.
optimization
and
Tool and Asset Management
This is exactly what a BACoE is intended to do. It
documents the processes for business analysis,
The BACoE researches and manages the tools that
business analysts can use for requirements elicitation,
requirements analysis, and requirements management
so that they are repeatable (Level 2 of the CMM) and so
documentation, and management. In addition, the
BACoE is the central point for managing the repository
that they are defined (Level 3 of the CMM). It helps to
manage the process (Level 4 of the CMM) by defining
of assets created during project execution. These
assets must be organized in a way that makes them
metrics and it supports continuous optimization of the
process (Level 5 of the CMM).
available to jump-start subsequent projects and to
contribute toward building an enterprise-wide view of
the business.
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Closing The Business Analysis Skills Gap
For these reasons, the development of a BACoE
Your Path to Closing the BA Skills Gap
provides strong advantages and can be seen as a
positive differentiating factor for an organization.
Closing the business analysis skills gap should be a top
priority for any organization looking to increase its
How Do You Get There?
project success rates, and to grow and improve its
business.
Using a two-pronged approach that
Building a Business Analysis Center of Excellence can’t
be done overnight. But there are a few important
lessons that we’ve learned as we’ve working with our
clients to establish their BACoE organizations:
Starting up a best-practice organization requires a
champion at the executive level to market and drive it.
Without a champion at a high level, BACoE efforts can
incorporates highly skilled business analysts on the one
hand in order to realize immediate project success, and
the development of a BACoE on the other in order to
build
future
in-house
competency,
speeds
implementation and ensures that projects are staffed
with top-notch analysts equipped with the right process
and tools every time.
quickly fall to the bottom of the list of priorities.
Developing a BACoE should be treated as a project in
About the Author
and of itself, with a set of goals, a timeline, dedicated
resources and a business case. Building the business
Susan Martin
Susan is a founding member of DEA
case will help ensure the organization understands there
is real value to having a BACoE – value that can be seen
in reduced training costs on the one hand and improved
quality (and fewer problem logs) on the other.
and currently serves as its Executive
Vice President for Business Analysis
Competency.
In this position, she
provides more than 20 years of experience in planning
Do an assessment of your “as-is” state. You won’t be
able to build your vision or know what you need to do
and delivering implementation services and is
accountable for the development of methodologies and
or how long it will take without understanding your
current situation. The assessment lays the groundwork
course materials and oversees the quality of
deliverables produced by project teams during client
for your implementation plan and your expectations for
change.
engagements. She also serves as product manager for
the LINK™ suite of processes and tools. Susan is a
Plan on a two- to three-year effort, with building blocks
along the way. It takes time to gather the expertise
and learn how to function as a key part of the larger
organization.
Incorporate outside help. At the very least, an outside
organization can help you see where you are now and
lay out a plan for how to get where you want to go. An
outside organization can provide other benefits as well.
Perhaps most important – they’ve done it before. It
will pay dividends in time, effort and enthusiasm to
avoid mistakes and learn from practitioners with realworld experience.
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trained facilitator and has conducted many sessions in
process redesign, business requirements development
and business rules identification.
About Robbins Gioia
RG is a recognized leader in program management
services, dedicated to helping organizations optimize
business processes, accelerate change, and establish
lasting quality improvements. Headquartered in
Alexandria, VA, we deliver groundbreaking management
solutions to public and private sector clients across
the globe.