Following a Twitter chat over the weekend with Alec Sharp, Chris Bird et al, I thought I’d put together this table to show how one company sees the 5W+H focus the main roles involved in designing business change. We had a fair debate about the focus of the BA and I’ve come to conclude:
1) The focus depends on the seniority and position of the ‘Business Analyst’ within the organisation.
2) All roles do, of course, need to consider all 6 dimensions – but the nature of their focus changes between roles (Zachman has this pretty well covered but I think the table below gives a slightly different perspective).
3) The Business Architect role is often missing completely or fulfilled by an external consultant.
4) It’s hard to find good Business Analysts – folk who aren’t just Order-Takers or wannabe Technologists!
A few questions I’m asking myself:
- Should Business Analyst come from the business or from IT?
- Should the Business Architect role be fulfilled within the company – is this an aka for Enterprise Architect/Chief Architect?
- Is there a fundamental difference in roles, responsibilities, emphases and deliverables when it comes to large-scale business transformation such as in a post-M&A situation relative to BAU change?
