Relying on Business Analysts

To all BAs, I am sorry about this observation. It’s not personal, but you have been given an almost impossible job.

As an IT Director or Manager, you may think that your Business Analysts are one of the most important links in the whole software development phase.

You allocate a large proportion of the budget to them to produce highly detailed documents. But these details can only be as accurate as the customer has been able to describe their needs at the time the requirements were gathered.

What you may not be aware of is that it is quite often left to the Developer to finalise and correct those business requirements and business specification documents.

Let me just repeat that you spend a large proportion of your budget on Business Analysts, yet the Developers frequently have to correct the documents.

When a Developer has read one of these highly expensive documents, he will quite often find mistakes and anomalies in them.

“Do you really mean this”, the Developer will say, “oh no I don’t” says the BA.

The Developer will point out that certain scenarios have not been considered.

The Developer will point out that there are better ways of doing things at a far lower cost.

The Customer will say, “That’s not what I wanted”.