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Purpose .1

Business analysts need to be able to be effective in formal and informal leadership roles, in order to guide others investigating requirements and to help encourage stakeholder support for a necessary change.

Definition .2

The business analyst’s responsibility for defining and communicating requirements will place him or her in a key leadership role in any group or project team, whether or not there are people formally reporting to the business analyst.

Leadership involves motivating people to act in ways that enable them to work together to achieve shared goals and objectives. The business analyst must understand the individual needs and capabilities of each team member and stakeholder and how those can be most effectively channeled in order to reach the shared objectives. Effective leadership therefore requires that the business analyst be able to develop a vision of a desired future state that people can be motivated to work towards and the interpersonal skills necessary to encourage them to do so.

Effectiveness Measures .3

Effective leadership and influencing skills are demonstrated though: Reduced resistance to necessary changes.

▶

Team members and stakeholders demonstrating a willingness to set aside personal ▶

objectives when necessary.

Articulation of a clear and inspiring vision of a desired future state. ▶

Teamwork

8.5.3

Purpose .1

Business analysts must be able to work closely with other team members to effectively support their work so that solutions can be effectively implemented.

Definition .2

Business analysts customarily work as part of a team with other business analysts, project managers, other stakeholders and implementation SMEs. Relationships within the team are an important part of the success of any project or organization.

There are a number of team development models that attempt to explain how teams form and function. These models outline how the team progresses and what is normal at various stages of the team lifecycle. Recognizing the stage of the team’s progress can lower the stress of team relationship development by allowing members to recognize behaviors as normal, expected, and a stage to be worked through. Communications and trust can also be enhanced through understanding and awareness of facets such as the process of setting of rules for the team, team decision-making, formal and informal team leadership and management roles.

Team conflict is quite common. If handled well, the resolution of conflict can actually benefit the team. The basic types of conflict are emotional and cognitive. Emotional conflict stems from personal interactions, while cognitive conflicts are based upon disagreements on matters of substantive value or impact on the project or organization. Resolution of cognitive conflict requires the team to focus on examining the premises, assumptions, observations and expectations of the team members. Working through such problems can have the beneficial effect of strengthening the foundation of the analysis and the solution. Many conflict situations encompass both emotional and cognitive elements.

Effectiveness Measures .3

Effective teamwork skills are demonstrated though: Fostering a collaborative working environment. ▶

Effective resolution of conflict. ▶

Developing trust among team members. ▶

Support among the team for shared high standards of achievement. ▶

Team members have a shared sense of ownership of the team goals. ▶

Software Applications

8.6

General-Purpose Applications

8.6.1

Business analysts use office productivity applications to document and track requirements.

Definition .2

These applications generally consist of three components in a suite of tools: word processing, spreadsheets, and presentation software. The documents produced by these tools are the primary way in which information is stored and distributed in many organizations, and business analysts need to be proficient with their use even where more specialized tools are available. They have the advantage of being low-cost or even

Underlying Competencies Software Applications

free, and almost every stakeholder will have access to them.

Word processors are commonly used to develop and maintain requirements documents. They allow a great deal of control over the formatting and presentation of a document. Standard requirements documentation templates are widely available for word processors. Most word processing tools have a limited capability to track changes and record comments, and are not designed for collaborative authoring.

Spreadsheets are often used to maintain lists (such as atomic requirements, features, actions, issues, or defects). Spreadsheets are the tool of choice for the capture and rudimentary algorithmic manipulation of numeric data. They can also be used to support decision analysis and are very effective at summarizing complex scenarios. Spreadsheets also support limited change tracking, and can be shared among multiple users in much the same way as a word processing document.

Presentation software is commonly used to support training or to introduce topics for discussion among stakeholders. While some of these applications can be used in a very limited way to capture requirements or simulate a low-fidelity prototype, their primary purpose is to support the structuring and delivery of verbal information.

Collaboration and knowledge management tools are used to support the capturing of knowledge distributed throughout an organization and make it as widely available as possible. They enable documents to be made available to an entire team and facilitate collaboration on those documents, enable multiple users to work on a document simultaneously, and generally support commenting on or discussion about the documents or their content as well. These tools may take the form of document repositories (which integrate with office productivity software), wikis (which allow easy creation and linking of web pages), discussion forums, or other web-based tools. They can vary widely in cost.

Communication tools, such as email and instant messaging applications, are used as needed to communicate with stakeholders who are remotely located, who cannot respond to queries immediately, or who may need a longer-term record of a discussion. They are generally available to almost all stakeholders and are very easy to use. However, they are generally not effective for long-term storage or retention of information. Their primary use is to facilitate communication over time or distance.

Effectiveness Measures .3

Measures of skill with general-purpose applications include:

Ability to apply an understanding of one tool to other similar tools. ▶

Able to identify major tools in the marketplace and describe how they are used in ▶

any given situation.

Understands and is able to use most of the major features of the tool. ▶

Able to use the tools to complete requirements-related activities more rapidly than ▶

is possible without them.

Able to track changes to the requirements made through the tools. ▶

Specialized Applications