Business analysts: why are there so many of you?

[MrMarkyMark]

I don't know the comment about females reminded me of this but I'll tell it anyway.
I was onsite at a 3rd party recently (a supplier to my client) talking with a BA about a system that they were struggling with as it was allegedly unstable.
To cut a long story short, they weren't using the system as designed (COTS package) and had spent a small fortune on customisations that were rushed as part of an M&A deal.

I asked a few questions and it seems that they have people with one mainframe screen they are reading data from and typing it into a web based system manually. All day every day. Several people.

And the BA thought I was asking for magic when I asked why someone hadn't thought to join the computer systems together with a data interface.
I fear that this is not an uncommon failing with BAs.

[LondonManc]

I don't know the comment about females reminded me of this but I'll tell it anyway.
I was onsite at a 3rd party recently (a supplier to my client) talking with a BA about a system that they were struggling with as it was allegedly unstable.
To cut a long story short, they weren't using the system as designed (COTS package) and had spent a small fortune on customisations that were rushed as part of an M&A deal.

I asked a few questions and it seems that they have people with one mainframe screen they are reading data from and typing it into a web based system manually. All day every day. Several people.

And the BA thought I was asking for magic when I asked why someone hadn't thought to join the computer systems together with a data interface.
I fear that this is not an uncommon failing with BAs.

Exactly the problem. A BA needs to be a little bit technical so that they can understand what might be done. If I don't know something, I'll read up on it. Too many 9-5ers about these days.

[Bee]

You make me laugh judging developers as good or bad- do you know what they do? I mean apart from redo your analysis.

To implement the requirements the developer needs to understand *everything that the BA has understood*. And that's just the functional aspect of the system and the data model.

Now I have to slice and dice it into a number of pieces that fit what is already there, what you'd like it to be going forward,
etc. All you have to do is understand what a business user (usually average intelligence) is telling you. We have real, *hard* problems to deal with that have often not been
solved before that you never know about. You don't have to worry about scaling the system and things like this - do you think that is easy? And often I have to repeat the analysis of the BA at the same time, because it doesn't make sense.

And once it's in then I have to deal with the operational stuff such as performance. Also, when a production system goes down and I have to work out what has gone wrong and fix it fast - this is very stressful. What stress do you take? This is a big aspect of the job you dont have to experience. Where are you? On the next project doing gap analysis. More talking over coffee.

I studied compsci, it was 95% male. Most BAs are female- they have therefore come from other non-Software disciplines than compsci. You can jump into a software BA role because basically anybody can do it.

And I'm not even going to get started
on skilling up- what skills do you have to maintain? Q&A and Excel, oh and directory structures. I've probably learned an A-level worth of stuff in the last year that will be useless in two years. And most of that I've had to pick up on the fly or in my own time (usually working late). By comparison, what is your struggle?

You only deal with the tip of the iceberg. Enjoy it while it lasts! BA is a confidence trick. And you get paid roughly the same as me! Who is the bigger mug?

I understand what you are saying. I'm not saying that a dev can't be a good BA. If an IT person develop their skills to be a BA it's an add value, it's nice to have but usually not essential, or could depend how the teams are structure in the organization for example mixed roles. When an IT person becomes a BA, their objective and main focus should be the business, and not how will be implemented.

When the requirements pass to IT, there was a process like research, studies...etc that the developers are not aware of.

[Bee]

In what sense? Have you got a particular example?

In what sense what?

[Bee]

Bee is a permie so I doubt that.

Permy business, obviously

Grow up...

[northernladuk]

Grow up...

It's true though.

[LondonManc]

In what sense what?

You said:
"I know and I agree with you, but what you are going to do if the client wants? "

I wanted to know what you meant by that.

[MrMarkyMark]

Grow up...

But you are a permy, what have I got to "grow up" about?

[SueEllen]

In what sense what?

You keep making long abstract statements about technology on an IT forum without an example or story to illustrate what you mean.

On every single thread you then either ignore the poster who ask questions for clarification or make out they are thick without answering the question.

You then start insulting posters who make comments because you refuse to answer the first poster who questioned you as you don't realise multiple people read these threads and want to know how your work and experience differs from theirs.

[Cirrus]

Was Bee a BA (as his client thought) or a Functional Architect?

Either way - this is one of the things that really bugs me - surely BAs should have good written English. The problem BA I had wrote in some Nigerian patois. Bee sounds as though he's just got off the Ryanair 737 from Moldova for the first time.

Requirements documents tend to be complex and they should really read smoothly. It's so irritating reading a paragraph and then going back over it again to guess what the BA might be trying to say.

Nowadays you work with lots of foreigners but I really don't understand how they steal our plum jobs ('BA' = £500 on average) when they can't even speak the language.