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Tuesday, 24 November 2009 00:00

Business Analysts Need to be Project Managers

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I know what you're thinking. Kupe has lost his mind...he's a flip-flopper! In my last post, What?! You Don't Want to Be a Project Manager, I gave my view on why companies need to have career paths for their BAs other than to become a Project Manager. I sit here today still defending that position. But, I do feel BAs with project management experience have a slight advantage. As some of you know, earlier in my career, I went from an accountant to business analyst. What you may not know is I took a project manager role at one point in my career. I was one of those new guys trying to move up that company ladder and thought all my happiness would come from being a PM. Wrong! The good part of that experience was that I was formally trained and had the opportunity to work with a great mentor. My last year and a half as a PM I had to play both roles, PM and BA. I found myself spending more time on the analysis side of things, therefore neglecting some important PM tasks. It was at that time I realized my true love was business analysis. I found an opportunity to go back to business analysis full time and never looked back.

With every situation I try to find the positive. For me, gaining PM experience made me a better business analyst. In the spirit of this week's US holiday, Thanksgiving, here are the top three reasons I am thankful for being a project manager.

Planning

I am thankful for understanding the basic concepts of a work breakdown structure. As business analysts, it is our responsibility to plan our activities. Then working with the project manager our plan gets incorporated into the overall project plan. When developing my plan I am able to layout my schedule with proper dependencies and include adjustments for my working time and my stakeholder's working time. With the help of MS Project I can see where I need to add or where I can reduce time. For this I am thankful that I have PM experience.

Project Lifecycle

I am thankful for understanding the full project lifecycle. As business analysts, everything we do impacts all phases of a project lifecycle. As a PM I was able to get better insights into the needs and challenges for development, testing and implementation. Every project we work on is a change to the people for which we implement solutions. As a PM, I learned to work closely with the business stakeholders to develop strategies to help the user community implement and adjust to the new or enhanced system. For this I am thankful I have PM experience.

Leadership/Motivation

I am thankful for being able to lead and motivate teams. As a business analyst and a project manager, you have to lead and motivate without authority. My approach as a project manager was to lead and motivate by building a strong trusting team. By coming together early in the project and determining the tasks needed to accomplish our goals, everyone was bought-in to the project approach. Together we were accountable for our successes and failures. As a business analyst, I find the need to motivate my business stakeholders to participate in the analysis approach every now and then. In my post, Mr. Business Analyst, You're Not a Good Fit!, @gbusby commented that a senior level BA role requires selling. I agree 100%. Many times stakeholders still want to give a few statements about their needs and then let the project team work their "magic." That approach almost guarantees failure, so we need to find creative ways to get these stakeholders to fully participate. As a BA you may not be leading the entire team, but at senior levels you will find yourself leading a team of BAs on a project. You need to be able to lead and motivate this group. For this I am thankful I have PM experience.

Even though I do not want to be a project manager, I found my experience helped me become a better business analyst. What role(s) did you have in the past that helped you become a better business analyst? What are you thankful for?

Thank you for reading and leaving your comments,

Kupe

Don't forget to leave your comments below

Jonathan "Kupe" Kupersmith is Director of Client Solutions, B2T Training and has over 12 years of business analysis experience. He has served as the lead Business Analyst and Project Manager on projects in various industries. He serves as a mentor for business analysis professionals and is a Certified Business Analysis Professional (CBAP) through the IIBA and is BA Certified through B2T Training. Kupe is a connector and has a goal in life to meet everyone! Contact Kupe at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. .

Read 4702 times Last modified on Tuesday, 27 March 2012 13:46
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Kupe Kupersmith

Kupe Kupersmith, President, B2T Training, possesses over 14 years of experience in the business analysis profession. He has served as the lead Business Analyst and Project Manager on projects in the utility, television and sports management and marketing industries. Kupe is a Certified Business Analysis Professional (CBAP) through the IIBA. Kupe is a trained improvisational actor and performed for years in clubs around Atlanta.  He is a big believer that we can work and learn while having fun. Kupe is a connector and has a goal in life to meet everyone!

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Comments  

 
0 # Abhishek Kashyap 2009-11-24 04:39
I agree with your view of a BA need to be Project Manager however, I partially agree with the reasons mentioned by you 1. Planning: Though it gives BA the opportunity to be involved in WBS and the overall project planning however, this very exercise can be achieved vy taking a proactive participation in planning along with your PM. To understand this aspect of PM does not require a BA to play a full time PM role 2. Project LifeCycle: Here again I beg to defer. in order to understand the project lifecycle a RAIS (Responsibility , Approver, Informed, Support) matrix can be very useful. This matrix uses the 4 categories against each of the project artefacts and the different players (PM, BA, Developer) in a project 3. Leadership/Moti vation: This is more of a behavioural competency than a learning curve from a project.
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0 # Devon Johnston 2009-11-24 05:00
I went from Programmer to Web Manager to Business Analyst. As a programmer I often did my own analysis. As Web Manager I did enough upfront analysis to make the decision whether to turn the request into a project or not and I was the Project Manager/Leader on all web projects. (You may wonder why I went from Manager to BA, long story, but I found I lacked the skill set necessary to be a good manager, basically I lacked duplicity) Whe n I first started working as a full-time BA, I used MSProject to track my own tasks and have studied PM for some time. (Received 6 weeks formal PM training on one job) Thank goodness I have PM experience, because I am the PM on most of my projects now. Without that skill set, my projects would not succeed. It is tough to balance both acts, and unfortunately the one that gets the least attention is the Project Management role. Doing both jobs definitely shows you very clearly why they are two separate jobs. So yes, I agree with you. BAs need PM experience and training.
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0 # David Wright 2009-11-24 05:16
Ones' own past experience can certainly help in doing a better job. However, lots of BAs don't and won't have PM experience. They may have different experience, like being a QA Tester in the past. I do have some experience in WBS because of my time working with methodologies. However, I have found if I need to know something, reading and training can do the trick. A BA has to be a quick learner, because you may work in very different business domains from project to project. Leade rship, that's "a horse of a different color", it is something that emerges in a person irrespective of job experience. Many good managers are not good leaders, and the reverse is true. ... and that's all I have to say about that.
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0 # Doug Bonebrake 2009-11-24 07:24
The second knowledge area listed in the Business Analysis Body Of Knowledge is "Requirements Planning and Management." In effect the BA must be capable of planning and project managing the requirements analysis process. While requirements analysis is a subset of the project life cycle, it is a foundation setting portion of the project and a success driver if done correctly. I agree that large projects should have a separation between the PM and BA roles, but the author is quite correct that BAs will be more far more successful if they learn and understand PM skills.
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0 # S. Randall Westcott 2009-11-24 10:50
On small projects and in small companies I am often expected to wear both hats. On one project I was brought in as a BA but due to a change of personnel there was no PM for a good chunk of the project. Had it not been for my PM experience the project may never have been completed on time or in budget. The more you know the more valuable you are to the company.
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0 # Swagat 2009-11-24 18:05
From my point of view, BAs with PM skills have obvious advantage to become a PM. However, for those BAs like me who didn’t come from coding background, it is very much necessary to have a technical lead on the project. So in that scenario BA can handle analysis and PM responsibilitie s and technical lead can take care of technical ones. I think a combination of BA with PM skills and technical lead can perform better than that of BA and PM on small scale projects (team of 12-15 or less). For large projects, there has to be separate roles such as BA, PM, and technical lead.
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0 # Steven A Jones 2009-11-25 02:00
Here's a question back to everyone who HAS the PM training/experi ence... Which have you found more important as a BA, the PM methodologies (management/adm inistrative aspect) or Leadership? Leadership isn't as easily taught as the administrative and planning and it can, in some way, resemble salesmanship. I'm curious if there is any correlation in Leadership between coming from the business-side of things vs. the tech-side. Any thoughts?
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0 # Declan Chellar 2009-11-25 03:25
Good article, Kupe. While I agree that BAs would greatly benefit from experience as PMs, I would not necessarily agree that they "need" to be PMs. I feel full systems life cycle experience is more important, since such experience would give the BA a better understanding of the consequences of good and bad analysis. Full life cycle experience would also, ideally, include team management experience of either a development or testing team. However, a BA with PM skills would be a rare thing of beauty. The problem is that a PM with PM skills is a rare thing too! ;-)
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0 # Kupe Kupersmith 2009-11-25 21:26
Thanks for all the great comments! Declan, I agree, BA don't "need" to be PMs, but the experience is a wondeful thing! I love your last line! @dwright and @abhikashyap22 - I agree with both of you regarding leadership, and I feel my PM experience helped me learn valuable lessons on how to and how not to be a leader. Do you disagree that your experiences don't help you become a better leader? Maybe I misunderstood your comments. Keep the comments coming!
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0 # Linda 2009-11-30 01:01
I started as a developer designing and testing rocket propulsion systems (yes, a rocket scientist) then managing large and small development teams and now a CBAP after 20 years. I realized that my passion and talent was in understanding problems and providing solutions regardless of the technology. My project management and development lifecycle experience gives me insight into the work and resources required to deliver a solution based on the needs of the stakeholders and with realistic expectations. I prefer not to wear the PM hat but I do provide the risks, dependencies, milestones, needed resources, etc. that contribute to the overall project plan. I rely on the PM to manage those project items just mentioned and to fight the political battles. However, as a BA the degree of how much I have to wear the PM hat depends on the individual PM, the organization, the culture and the size of the project. One has to be flexible and capable.
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0 # Kupe Kupersmith 2009-11-30 02:32
Thanks for your input lindareyna. You wrote, "However, as a BA the degree of how much I have to wear the PM hat depends on the individual PM, the organization, the culture and the size of the project." Great addition to the list of reasons to be thankful for your PM experience!
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0 # Paul Mulvey 2009-11-30 03:23
I'm in the "don't wanna be the PM" camp (even though I was blessed with the initials PM). This is not to say that knowing how to do PM tasks does not help, but you do not want to assume the tasks of a PM. Reason being, you have none of the authority but all of the blame. There's a saying in aviation - when the pilot makes a mistake, the pilot dies; when Air Traffic Control makes a mistake, the pilot dies. Common denominator: the pilot takes the hit. It's the same thing with doing the PM's tasks. If you do not do it correctly, then you are the one to blame (even though it was the PM's responsibility) . Now, if the BA were to be assigned the role of the PM, that's another story...
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0 # Tom Miller 2009-12-05 10:33
Kupe, I wanted to say I was "thankful" that you wrote this particular Blog. Everythin g I have seen seems to indicate that in small settings and some medium-sized settings a BA who can pinch-hit for a PM is much more effective on a project that one who is "clueless" outside of the requirements portion of the process. I am going to arbitrarily assume that in a large business there will always be a PM available who can "pinch-hit" better than a BA normally would. there appear to be a number of Senior BAs out there that have published experiences (Carkenord for instance) that indicate they were PM's for a significant period of their past's and still do it depending on what they were hired to do. Tom
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0 # Kupe Kupersmith 2009-12-06 22:20
Tom, Thanks for the kind words and comments.
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0 # Emma Poole Sheldrick 2010-01-18 01:23
I definitely identify with this article and have a slightly different viewpoint. I was in a small company for 7 years doing a split PM/BA role - we developed new software on an ongoing basis so I had to plan the delivery and manage the developers as well as undertake all the UAT, do user training, draw up new process maps and then write the new SOPs/system manuals. I'm now a Senior BA with no PM responsibility and the biggest thing I'm finding is that PMs never seem to realise how important requirements engineering is and how important it is to test those requirements to see if a solution is fit for purpose. I inherited several projects when I moved and saw so many requirements along the lines of 'solution must be portable' or 'must be user friendly'...!! Only by having my previous PM experience can I fully appreciate that time MUST be built in to ensure the requirements and testing are done fully
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0 # Kupe Kupersmith 2010-01-18 01:32
Great point @emmaps! I see this same concept as it relates to BA managers not having a BA background. I actually touch on that in my post due out tomorrow. I think as more of us mature into roles where we can help guide the team in allocating the proper time to BA activities, projects will improve. Thanks for your comment!
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