BUSINESS ANALYSTS:

BRIDGING THE GAPS BETWEEN BUSINESS AND IT

CHACKAPONG WONGWON

Krung Thai Computer Services Co., Ltd,

Sawai Brown Building,

22 Sukhumvit 1 Rd., Bkk. 10110.

Tel (662) 2084085

Abstract: The paper describes a solution to the problems occurred between IT and users by using Business Analyst approach. It starts from describe the typical problems and how Business Analyst can help in solving the problems or filling the communication gaps between business units and IT. The paper also describe their involvement in IT process design. Finally, step by step implementation of Business Analyst team.

Keywords:Information Systems, Strategic Planning, Information Technology Implementation and Policies, Quality Assurance and management.

  1. PROBLEMS.

Since computer was invented and used in business 40 – 50 years ago. There always been problems and the same typical problems are communication and understanding between business units, who need IT services and IT units who are expected to give services. We can explore those problems in more details in the following areas.

1.1 PROBLEMS IN PLANNING.

The IT plan must be aligned with the business plan and, on the other hands, business should use IT capability and opportunity to drive the business plan. , That is a very good concept but it is not easy to implement the concept.

The problem is IT does not know what are the business plans. They may not want to know. They may want to know but no source of information, or not understand the business plan. On the other hands, business units may not want them to know. They may want them to know but no chance or opportunity or procedure to tell them. They may think that it is no points to tell them because they won’t be able to understand anyway. Many organization create a planning procedure so called “corporate plan” to allow all BU (and IT) to participate in planning session. It works to some extents but still having problems of understanding and also time spent in planning.

Businesses normally do not know IT. They can not explore the opportunities in using IT for improve their products and services. They wait for IT peoples to tell them. IT people do not tell them because there is no chance, no opportunities or no procedure to do that. They may think that it is no points to tell them because they won’t be understand anyway.

Most common case is the business people do not want to know IT. They only want to use IT to improve their products and services without knowing “theory” or bits and byte of IT. IT people knows “theory” of IT, they know it inside out and want to share that knowledge to business people. They do not want to involve in applying them to improve user’s products and services and think that is business’s roles.

1.2 PROBLEMS IN SYSTEM DEVELOPMENT.

System development and delivery always have problems in all groups of users, operation, line manager and executive. The same old complaint was:

From IT“ Users never give the specific requirements, they always change”.

“ They asked us to create the systems for them. Then they not even remember what they asked for”.

From users“ They never understand our needs, They always deliver the wrong things,

“Their systems never works, The systems is not flexible”.

“ The systems they created are useless, very difficult to use”.

Many system development methodologies were invented in the past 30 years. We can not say that it fails and, at the same time we also can not say that it success. Following are some collection of those methodologies and why it was not successfully implemented.

Waterfall approach. The system development life cycle was divided in to several phases. The tasks and objective of each phase was clearly defined. It was expected to start the second phase only when the first phase was done, the third phase only when the second phase was done, and so forth. This rule is only used by IT and users don’t accept the rule. They think that they should be able to change the requirement and specification since the working environment was dynamic and always changed. So, they change their need and the “water” starts falling from the top level again.

Spiral approach. The system will be developed to suit a small requirement of users first. Then it will be implemented and tested by using it in the production. Then IT people will let user add more requirements and making changes to the original system. The system will be modified to suit Those “some” more requirements and changes. After these were done, It will be put to use in the production and ready for new requirements and changes again. The system will be bigger and bigger. It sounds good, but consequently, it takes a lot of time and effort from both IT and users, the process in developing the system is very slow. The cost in developing and maintaining the systems is very high. IT does not see the whole picture from the beginning causing them not able to make a good design of the system.

CASE tool. The CASE tool was expected to help in system development in both front end and back end. From requirement definition to data definition and then system analysis and then system design and then code creation and then documentation. The problem is most system analysts may not like it. They don’t like the way it analyst the systems and the way it design the systems. Programmers may not like it. They don’t like the way it codes the program and the logic create by the tool. Users may not like it because it asked too many questions. They think that some of those questions are too easy to ask. Beside, it may not suitable for small and medium size enterprise. They must think twice before committed to CASE tool in term of costs, resources and time.

4GL.4GL was invented and hope that it will be easy enough for users to use it. And it is! Some good 4GL we can even guess its commands and most of the time we guess it right. But only IT peoples belief that it easy enough for users to use it. Users don’t. They don’t want to be able to use it; they don’t want to know about it. They still belief that systems development is IT’s jobs and not their. Excel and Words of Microsoft are getting more successful in term of getting interested from users. In general, 4GL can only interest IT people and not users.

JAD. Joint Application system development means to let users and developers sitting side by side and helps each other in developing a system. Many tools help promote JAD including 4GL. It is difficult to get users involvement since they don’t have enough spare time as long as they don’t belief that systems development is their responsibility.

Software Prototyping. It is a methodology to let users “see” the system even before it was done. Users then are able to change or modify the system the way they like. Since it is not actually “built”. It is easy for developer to modify it as requested by users. Users, knowing that what they “see” is only the “prototype”, They not really give attention to them. When they got the real one, then and only then, they will look at it.

Other tools. Other tools and methodologies are also well known and widely used, for example, Structured Programming, Object Oriented Programming, Client/server and Web-based Programming. Those tools are help programmers in their programming jobs and transparent to users.

Those tools are not actually solving the problems of system development. The root cause of the problems if communication between users and developers. More involvement from users will help.

1.3 PROBLEMS IN IMPLEMENTING NEW SYSTEMS.

Implementing and rolling out of new systems always have problems. Two main reasons are:

  1. Users need to change the procedure and process for their operation and the format of the reports.
  2. New system always creates problems.
  3. Users unable to use the new systems effectively.

Change implementation and change agents are introduced to solve the first problem. Some suggest to appoint line manager to be “champion” of the project. IT needs to help them to implement the changes by supporting them the resources and knowledge. The problem here is the line managers themselves may not want to “championing” the projects, They may not like the projects and in most cases it is very difficult to make them belief that championing the project and implement the changes are their job. They still belief that it is

IT jobs.

Temporary help-desk can be used to solve the second and third problem. But, it is only “temporary” and after the team adjourned. Users are left unattended. With the difficulty in communication and request for supports, user gets “boring” and “hate” new systems.

1.4 PROBLEMS IN SYSTEM MAINTENANCE.

Users never understand why the systems need maintenance, why it need to implement new version, upgrade hardware, O/S, database etc. etc. They don’t mind if those are not interrupting their operations. In most cases, they do.

1.5 PROBLEMS CHANGE MANAGEMENT.

Uses also need changes to the systems, The need modifications to the systems to suit their requirements. There are thousand of reasons why changes need to be made, changes in environments, changes in policies, changes in process and procedure, or simply changes because they want to change. IT normally not understands why users need change. When they have explanation, they don’t understand the explanation or they don’t accept it. Users not understand why changes cost so much, so difficult and take so long. Beside, they don’t understand why those changes cause problems in other areas or other functions of the systems. Sometime it even causes problems to other related systems.

1.6PROBLEMS IN PROBLEM MANAGEMENT.

Problem management is a tool for IT to help them keep track of problem solving, problem escalating and problem reporting. The mechanism that helps problem management works requires a good corporation from users and all concern. Users do not see this is important issue even they concern that their problems should be solved in a timely basis. The idea of help-desk is a good try to promote the problem management and expecting help-desk to help users in solving the problems. The procedure in problem solving, escalating and reporting will be handling mostly by help-desk. Anyway, when users get more knowledge and experiences in using the systems, they know how to solve some easy problems. We can not expect those users to report or record the problems or follow the set procedure. It makes unreliable information on statistics. It also gives wrong information to do performance analysis and capacity planning.

1.7PROBLEMS IN CONFIGURATION MANAGEMENT.

The centralized processing systems may not have problem in configuration management since all update or changes in configuration will be done centrally. But in de-centralized or distributed processing system environment, the update in the configuration being done miles away. It is difficult to keep track. Nowadays we may have some good tools to help but those tools can not cover all the cases. The correct information on configuration is important. We need those information in almost all other areas e.g. system maintenance, change management, problem management, capacity planning etc.

2SOLUTIONS.

When we consider the root causes of the problems stated above. We can say that the problems are falling in to theses four areas:

Problem of knowledge and understanding. User do not have knowledge and understanding in IT technology, at the same time IT do not have knowledge and understanding of business.

Problem in responsibility. There are no clear-cut responsibilities in those jobs that need involvement in both IT and users. Or, in some cases, the stated responsibilities are not accepted or not mentally accepted.

Problem in communication. Lack of good communication between IT and users cause many problems. The difficulty in understanding the jargon terms of other parties causes poor communication. The procedure also plays an important role in communication.

Problem in attitude. User belief that the IT jobs belongs to IT people and nothing to do with them. They are there to do the business job and not IT. They are there to get a good service from IT without any commitment, involvement or any support at all. On the other hand, IT belief that they are there as a technical people to give services and support users. The have no need to know how their users do the business.

The suggested solution here is to have a people or a group of people called Business Analyst (BA). Their job is to filling the gaps between IT and Business. They need to solve all the root cause of problems stated above. They need to have basic knowledge and understanding in both IT and business. They need to take those responsibilities where both IT and business denied. The will promote the better communication between users and IT, in fact, they are the ones who do the communication themselves. For the attitude problem, according to their roles and responsibilities, they will belief that they have responsibility for both IT and business concerning IT jobs.

BENEFIT.

The benefits of having the effective BA are:

  1. Better alignment between IT plan and business plan.
  2. Getting more users input during system development.
  3. Helping IT to create the computer systems with more user satisfaction.
  4. Smoothing the implementation and rollout the new IT systems.
  5. IT activities of users will be compliance with rules, standard and regulation set by IT or computer auditor.
  6. Better communication and working atmospheres between IT and users.

3ROLES AND RESPONSIBILITIES.

Following are basic roles and responsibilities of BA:

  1. Input to business the technology and sought the opportunity to improve the business products and services.
  2. Input to IT management on the business objective and plan. Involve in planing session and preparing both business plans and IT plans.
  3. Develop IT solutions based on clear understanding of business need.
  4. Formalize user’s request for better cost-benefit to the business. Ensure the requests are reasonable and doable by IT.
  5. Negotiate with both IT and business on the requirement, the schedule, the resource, the cost and the deliverable on system development process.
  6. Define clear roles and responsibilities for every party involved in system development.
  7. Coordinate in solving any problems that may occurs during system development process.
  8. Track and monitor the progress of system development.
  9. Coordinate in system maintenance; change management problem management and configuration management.
  10. Promote the good cooperation, communication and understanding between business and IT.

4INVOLVEMENT IN IT PROCESS DESIGN.

BA are essential resources in IT process design. They should have both involvement and commitment in all areas of the design.

Planning and budgeting process. BA helps IT in planning the project. They coordinate the resource require and scheduling. They also coordinate in identifying the investment cost and operation cost. They evaluate and make sure that the cost is justified for the benefit to the business.

Project initiation. BA help selling the project to the respective users and any other parties involved. They define all problems and issues to all concern. They also participating in feasibility study team, writing and presenting the feasibility study report to the management.

Requirement definition. BA, with their understanding on what business needs are, can explain the needs to technical people in technical terms. When there are problems or technical limitation, they also can explain them to business in the business terms. Communicating the requirements between users and IT can be done verbally and not only paper work as it used to be.

System analysis and design. BA will help developer to do system analysis and design. They can effectively comments the user procedure and operation procedure. They can also adding the recommendation of work flow that suitable for the real working environment.

System selection. In case the organization decided to buy rather than to build the systems. BA will act on user behalf in selecting the right system. They can tell how important and why each function was required. What to do if the functions specified were not available. If the modification to the systems is required, they can specified and negotiate the requirements.

System building. During the building phase of the system, BA can help developer in clarify or make adjustment to the requirement if it needed to be.

Program/project management. BA will co-operate with project manager/project leader in managing the project. They help in solving problem, monitoring the progress and ensure the accountability and responsibility of users.