I have been providing business analyst services through my company White Pine Software Ltd since 1988.
In 2011 I went through a corporate branding exercise and came up with the Discover, Analyze, Innovate, Communicate tagline.
To me, this tag line captures the major activities of a business analyst.
Discover encompasses the activities for learning a new domain, capturing the current state, capturing requirements, learning new environments and new people.
Analyze is the activity of going deeper to really understand a subject. Requirements analysis, enterprise analysis, business cases, return on investment, SWOT analysis, root cause analysis all fall within the analyze paradigm.
Innovate is the problem solving, creative, part of the profession. This is the area I enjoy the most. From designing effective user experiences, designing databases and frameworks, brainstorming to come up with new and innovative ideas.
Communicate is an important area. The value that is created through business analysis must be communicated to the client along with the understandings that have been gained along the way. Requirements documents, Use cases, BRD’s, process models, presentations all fall within the communication area.
The different areas can also be combined to form new perspectives.
- Discover and communicate becomes journaling
- Discover and analyze becomes investigation.
- Discover and Innovate becomes invention.
- Communication and analyze becomes instruction.
- Communication and innovate becomes visioning.
- Analyze and innovate becomes brainstorming.