Customers are impatient. They demand new solutions and demand them immediately. But taking a concept and developing it into a marketable product that satisfies its users takes time and usually many iterations.
This is where the business analyst comes in.
Business analysts play a key role during product development phases in terms of customer feedback and the wants and needs internal conversations that take place, whether the company uses a waterfall or agile management model.
Two Paths Toward a Product
Product development takes many forms, and timelines can shift between one organization and another. But most teams face a choice as they begin to develop something new. They can take small, measured steps with analysis at each stage (waterfall product development), or they can move quickly and make changes after the first product hits the market (agile).
Business analysts have long played a key role in the waterfall management method of product development. They amassed the research, created the reports and helped the team stick to a schedule.
In agile environments, however, the role of a BA is a little less clear.
Agile coach Rich Stewart says there’s actually no defined role for business analysts in agile teams, especially those that use a scrum framework. “The Scrum Guide defines three roles: product owner, ScrumMaster, and development team. Even teams practicing a framework other than Scrum, such as kanban or Scrumban, often stick with these three roles,” he explains.
So, while Stewart says there is a place for BAs and their expertise in the “problem domain,” the exact role can look different in each instance.
Because business analysts know quite a bit about leading teams and developing schedules, they do, in some organizations, take on the role of product manager. But that may not always be the best move.
As Kent McDonald, author of “Beyond Requirements: Analysis with an Agile Mindset,” explains: "Product managers are responsible for making decisions. Business analysts are responsible for making sure decisions get made."
If you tackle both roles, you'll inevitably let one set of tasks slide. But if you shore up a product manager, you could quickly become invaluable.
"The business analyst is a facilitator, an investigator, and a fact checker; they reconcile, coordinate information sharing, find gaps, and perform traceability and impact analysis,” writes agile consultant Jacqueline Sanders-Blackman. “The business analyst actually can help free up the product owner to do things in addition to overseeing the project requirements."
Let's get specific. As a business analyst working on product development, you have plenty of tasks to check off each day, although your to-do list may vary from one product to the next. But there are a few items most BAs must finish.
The first: Help your company find an MVP.
What is a Minimum Viable Product?
In a perfect world, companies wouldn’t launch anything that fails. In reality, most organizations look for opportunities to get a product in front of customers fast. Then, they gather feedback to make the next version better.
That first version of the product is typically called a minimum viable product. Just because an MVP comes early doesn't mean it's shoddy.
"MVP, despite the name, is not about creating minimal products. If your goal is simply to scratch a clear itch or build something for a quick flip, you really don't need the MVP. In fact, MVP is quite annoying, because it imposes extra overhead,” explains Eric Ries, author of “The Lean Startup."
Of course, the real value of producing the first iteration of any product is what you’ll learn from customer feedback.
Josh Aberant, CMO of SparkPost, says, "Let’s be clear about the nature of an MVP: it’s based on insights about actual demand as a means to reduce the risks of development and to validate ideas before they’re completely set in stone. Although an MVP begins with a core premise that underlies the product’s subsequent iterations, it’s a vision that’s refined with user feedback and market research."
Put plainly, developing a killer MVP takes quite a bit of conversation, research and refining. And that's where you'll put your BA skills to good use.
How will you do that? You'll tackle some, or all, of the steps below.
Potential Task: Make Sense of All That Data
A minimum viable product is truly valuable when companies have proof that the concept is a winner. That proof comes from data, and data is literally everywhere.
Small business development consultant Dragan Suteveski, Ph.D. says MVP data can come from any of the following:
Sales and marketing records.
Google keyword searches.
Competitor research.
Customer interviews.
Focus groups.
Every one of those methods could result in a mountain of data.
Consider customer interviews, which Dave Power, CEO of the Perkins School for the Blind, likens to “sifting through sand for gold.” While 9 out of 10 conversations may not result in anything actionable, the gold is in “the one that reveals a customer problem that no one has solved, that can point to product and service innovations and new sources of revenue."
As a business analyst, you might perform that sand sifting for project managers, and validate insights by tying two data points together. If a customer mentions the need for a feature, and you determine no competitor offers that perk, you could be off to a great development start.
Potential Task: Facilitate Conversations Between Teams
In addition to data mining, there’s another important task to undertake: Helping stakeholders talk to, rather than around, one another.
During the build process, companies decide what must be included and what's nice but not necessary. The problem, says agile consultant Allan Kelly, is that stakeholders always believe their idea is necessary. "Several stakeholders demand their request is a 'must' and fight like wild dogs to avoid 'could' or 'would' status. A vicious circle is created as stakeholders realize that nothing except 'musts' will get done."
Product managers are responsible for the vision and roadmap of the product. They answer questions about what should be built and why. As a business analyst, your role is different: You determine “how to best build and support what the product manager is requesting on behalf of customers and the market,” explains Aha! cofounder and CEO Brian de Haaff.
"They also ask, ‘What internal business challenges will we face for this project?’ ‘What technical restraints do we have, and how can I document them for the team to digest?’ ‘What risks are known, and what action items could lead to solutions?’” he adds.
Your input helps guide the discussion, and the insights you bring to the table can help the whole team make smarter development decisions without fighting.
What happens when teams don't have a BA dedicated to this process? The biggest problem is that it can become very difficult to get any decisions made, says Kent McDonald at KBP Media, because everyone involved approaches the project with their own ideas and interests.
Potential Task: Refine and Revise the Product
With a minimum viable product in place, the work has only just begun. Your team must build on that early success to ensure the product is ready for the marketplace.
"The only way to find that out—the only way to test your assumptions—is to put your product in front of real users as quickly as possible. And when you do, you will often find that you have to go back to the drawing board. In fact, you’ll have to go back to the drawing board not just once, but over and over again," writes Yevgeniy Brikman, Gruntwork cofounder and author of “Hello, Startup.”
As a business analyst, you will be crunching data from those user tests, and then will guide your team as they make decisions based on your analysis.
In an agile product development environment, a potential change to a product is called a "ticket," and processing each one takes a significant amount of work. Keren Sharlow, director of product management at Catalina Marketing, explains how a BA helps with tickets:
The business analyst understands what consumers really want.
The business analyst determines which teams will work on the solution and ensures those teams are prepared to work together.
The business analyst creates a schedule of bite-sized work that leads to the end goal of a product release.
The business analyst keeps channels of communication open between collaborating teams.
In essence, a BA works as an intermediary between the research and the work group. Your role as business analyst is to ensure that customer needs are taken onboard, applied to the next iteration of product development and that the project gets done on time. It’s a crucial role, and it’s one business analysts are uniquely qualified to fill.
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