Calling All BA Practice Leads, Again! How Many BAs Do You Need?

by Kitty Hass and Lori Lindbergh, PhD

When conducting our BA assessments, we often hear this question from Practice Leads, Senior Managers, and CIOs, “How many BAs do we need to have?” We have assessed BA practices and BA competency in large and small organizations across multiple industries. Our answer is always the same, “It depends.” If you have been following this blog, then you know that this response aligns with our key message in this blog thus far. To answer this question, you must consider these four factors:

• Number of projects and their complexity (current and future projections)
• Maturity of BA the organization’s practices
• Competency and roles of the current BAs
• Organization supportiveness and integration of BA practices

Most CIOs want the quick answer; however, it is not that simple. Without a thorough snapshot of your BA workforce, its capabilities, and your workforce’s fit within your organization, your guess is as good as the next.

The one-and-only BA Workforce Capability Assessment we introduced in the March 5^th blog post is designed to help CIOs, BA Practice Leads, and Managers answer the “how many” question. The assessment helps determine the level of capability that currently exists within an organization’s BA team and the level of capability needed to successfully execute the current mix of projects based on complexity. Furthermore, the assessment helps create BA workforce projections based on future project complexity mix.

Importantly, the assessment does not stop here. We examine organizational BA applied capability at the organizational level. Our research has shown that the performance of even the most competent BAs will decrease in unsupportive organizational cultures, thus affecting not only BA competency level, but workload capabilities, as well. We found that unsupportive organizational cultures actually make BAs appear less competent and achieve lower performance outcomes.

Armed with our assessment information, we identify the gaps in skills and competencies and draft recommendations to close gaps in capabilities.  These recommendations point out organizational issues that must be addressed in conjunction with BA practice improvement and training and development actions to achieve success.

The reference model that serves as a basis for the BA Workforce Capability Assessment is four-tiered as depicted in the table below. 

Operations and Support Focus

To maintain and enhance business operations, both generalists and system specialists are needed.  These PMs and BAs typically spend about 30% of their time doing business analysis and project management activities for low to moderately complex projects designed to maintain and continually improve business processes and technology.  The remaining time they are often fulfilling multiple roles including developer, engineer, SME, domain expert, and tester.  As legacy processes and systems age, these PMs and BAs are becoming more valuable since they are likely the best (and often the only) SMEs who understand the current business processes and supporting technology.

Project Focus

To ensure business objectives are met through projects both IT- and Business-Oriented PMs and BAs are needed.  These PMs and BAs work on moderately complex projects designed to develop new/changed products, services, business processes and IT systems. 

• IT-Oriented PMs and BAs improve operations through changes to technology.  The BAs are mostly generalists, with specialists that include Experience Analysts, Business Rules Analyst, Business Process Analyst, Data Analyst, etc. 
• Business-Oriented PMs and BAs improve operations through changes to policy and procedures.  These PMs and BAs are mostly specialized, focused on Finance, Human Resources, Marketing, Manufacturing, etc.  In decentralized organizations, these PMs and BAs are dedicated to a major business area, improving the processes and the corresponding technologies that are used to run the operations.  In other more centralized organizations, these PMs and BAs are organized as a pool of talent whose efforts can be transferred seamlessly to the areas of the enterprise that are in most need of project support.

Enterprise Focus

This group includes seasoned PMs and BAs.  PMs are trained and experienced in managing highly complex projects, programs and portfolios.  The BAs often specialize into two groups: Enterprise Analysts and Business Architects, who are operating at the enterprise level of the organization ensuring that the business analysis activities are dedicated to the most valuable initiatives, and the business analysis assets (deliverables/artifacts e.g., models, diagrams) are considered corporate assets and are therefore reusable.  Enterprise PMs and BAs focus on the analysis needed to prepare a solid business case to propose new initiatives and work on highly-complex enterprise-wide projects; while Business Architects make the enterprise visible and keep the business and IT architectures in synch. 

Competitive Focus

Business/Technology Optimization PMs and BAs are business and technology visionaries who serve as Innovation Experts, Organizational Change Specialists, and Cross Domain Experts. Business/Technology PMs and BAs focus outside of the enterprise on what the industry is doing and design innovative new approaches to doing business to ensure the enterprise remains competitive, or even leaps ahead of the competition.  Business/Technology PMs and BAs forge new strategies, translate strategy into breakthrough process and technology, and convert business opportunities to innovative business solutions. 

Based on this information, you can now see why an organizations project portfolio and the number of the projects in each focus area provide a critical input into the answer to the question, “How many BAs do I need?” But remember, that’s only half of the story.