What is the role of a business analyst? What does an analyst do? And what doesn't an analyst do?

Sometimes you ask, "What does a business analyst do? What is their role?" The scope of responsibilities can vary depending on the company, the project, and the individual agreements between you and the team. However, as a general rule, there is a set of typical tasks for a business analyst. Broadly speaking, the role of a business analyst is to support stakeholders in identifying business needs and proposing solutions that enable those needs to be met. This means that a business analyst can perform the following tasks:

• Analyzing the operation of the organization, including both internal and external analysis, such as competition analysis.
• Analyzing business goals and the potential to achieve these goals, considering organizational conditions and external and internal constraints.
• Defining business needs and business requirements, along with related critical information, such as business constraints, risks, and assumptions.
• Identifying and analyzing stakeholders indirectly or directly involved in a change initiative.
• Analyzing potential solutions to a business problem, suggesting potential solution proposals, and analyzing the feasibility of each proposal.
• Defining the scope of a solution in a predetermined manner, such as developing a product or determining simple necessary changes in business processes or organizational structure.
• Supporting solution development by conveying business information to the team.
• Evaluating the developed solution or its fragments in the case of iterative or incremental development.
• Facilitating the smooth implementation of a solution into production, which might include providing training to end users.
• Analyzing the functioning solution to identify possible improvements.

This is a fairly general list of tasks potentially carried out by a business analyst. It's worth noting that not all tasks need to be performed independently by the analyst - on the contrary, they shouldn't be. Many of these tasks are critical from a business perspective, requiring decisions based on facts and a variety of perspectives, not just those of a single business analyst.

My personal approach is that a business analyst assists in gathering information through appropriate methods and techniques, aiding stakeholders in communication and decision-making. However, a business analyst doesn't have a "God Mode"; they lack the authority to unilaterally decide to implement or not implement a solution, make decisions about a company's strategy, or determine the direction of actions. At most, they provide information that can aid executives in making informed decisions.

What a business analyst should avoid:

• Engaging in micro-management and assigning small tasks to team members. An analyst isn't a task dispatcher. This can be a problem in many projects claiming to be Agile. People in supposedly "agile" projects may need micro-management, with specific tasks and all necessary details provided for code development. This isn't an analyst's role. The analyst defines what needs to be done, while the development team determines how to do it.
• Documenting every piece of information, regardless of its criticality or significance. Unfortunately, this is a trait of novice analysts who struggle to prioritize. They spend long hours on discussions that don't contribute to the business or create extensive documentation volumes that no one will use because they're essentially worthless from a business perspective.
• Delving into technical and implementation details. A business analyst primarily operates at the business layer, answering the question of what needs to be achieved. They don't delve into implementation specifics, technologies, or solutions. Technical aspects are the domain of technical personnel. Of course, there are exceptions to this rule. If, within a particular organization, a business analyst is essentially a business analyst with architect competencies, the scope of responsibilities can be tailored to specific needs.

In summary, the role and scope of responsibilities of a business analyst are quite extensive. Depending on the specific needs of a project and organization, the definition of the analyst's role can vary. There are established sources in the market that define the basic tasks and responsibilities of a business analyst. Depending on a specific organization's needs, the scope of a business analyst's responsibilities can be customized.

However, it's important not to cross the boundary where the role of the business analyst stops being appropriate and starts to resemble that of a project controller or a technical team member. While crossing this boundary might seem reasonable and tempting from a project perspective, it can introduce unnecessary conflicts of interest and negatively impact the analyst's ability to perform effectively, as it hinders maintaining the necessary distance required for effective business analysis and work.