Team Affinity

There are times when a business starts to lose money and no-one is sure where the problem is located. Going over facts and figures only points to the bottom line. The bottom line continues to shrink. People start to get desperate. Strategies are planned and implemented to no avail. Tried and true measures are no longer working. It is time to call on the experts. The business analyst needs to be brought in. The problem is finding one who knows the company.

Finding a good business analyst is not as hard as everyone thinks. They are not the enemy. They are not some eerie creature sneaking around, lurking behind every corner. A good business analyst is a creative thinker. He or she is a motivational, aggressive team player. The business analyst can gather data and other pertinent information from management and other sources to determine what is the key problem.

A qualified business analyst may already exist in your organization. A member of the IT department could be the one who develops a project program designed to save the company money. This is some one capable of setting up a development team to think outside the box. You are looking for someone creative. You want someone who is not afraid of a vision. Someone with good communication skills is a must. Most projects fall short due to the lack of communication.

It is actually a benefit to choose someone in-house. He or she already knows the company. The business analyst will know the strong attributes as well as weaknesses of the company. Choosing someone from inside the organization means he or she will know the people involved. Camaraderie may already exist. This can make the gathering of information easier. The more easy it is to collect needed data and information, the more quickly a project scope can be developed.

The best business analyst will be able to speak the language of which ever department he or she needs to interact with. He or she will not get caught sidetracked with mundane tasks and mute points. The business analyst will know what information is needed and get it. They will keep the big picture in mind. They will motivate others to stay on task. A good business analyst will allow someone the freedom of creativity. Obviously what was being done did not work. A new approach is needed and the qualified business analyst will see this.

Someone who can develop a repoire with the departments to meet expectations is the perfect candidate for business analyst. This person will act as a liaison between management and development teams. He or she should be able to speak with authority while still maintaining a level of respect. The perfect business analyst will be able to foresee problems which may arise between teams and squelch them before they start.

A liaison between involved departments, a leader during meetings, a project developer, and a numbers cruncher are all beneficial attributes of a good business analyst. Find someone capable of doing all these things and you have found a great asset.

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IT stands for Information Technology. It is simple pronounce I T, the two separate letters. In most organizations it is the computer department. The place where all the geeks gather to hunch over clicking keyboards to get the computer to do some wonderful new trick. That is what people imagine. In fact the IT departments are one of the key elements in today’s technology. Without IT departments, there would be many items we commonly take for granted no longer available to us.

IT departments are responsible for every banking system in the world today. It was the IT departments who first made it possible for online banking. It was the IT department who came up with computer software designed to allow the use of debit and credit cards. Lending institutions and finance companies who depend on amortization calculators would have to go back to figuring by hand with out the use of the programs developed by IT departments.

In short, if a computer generated the program for the device or system you are using, it was an IT department somewhere who designed it. Thus was born the business analyst. The business analyst may or may not have been from the IT department. He or she may not be able to write code. They do know the intricacies behind it. They are the ones able to speak with others to determine what the IT department should be doing.

The system works something like this. The stakeholder, someone in business or with a business interest, has an idea he or she thinks may sell or make the business more money. The idea may only generate an easier way of doing things. Faster production means less man hours. Less man hours means less payroll. Less payroll means more money for the company to spend somewhere else. The problem came when the stakeholder tried to explain what he or she wanted from the IT department. The IT department caught on to the general concept and designed an application for the program. The stakeholder found he could not use the code. Enter the business analyst.

The business analyst will listen to the stakeholder. He or she will evaluate the situation to determine if the needs of the stakeholder are viable. The business analyst can determine if other items are necessary for the stakeholder and the end user to be happy. When it is determined exactly what the stakeholder needs, the business analyst will speak with the IT department. The IT department will be off and running.

The IT department in many companies have developed amazing things. You just never know what an IT department has done for you until you stop and think about it. Processors run on code. Tiny processors are used for many things we use in everyday life. Cell phones and cordless phones are two things everyone uses. Bluetooth technology was developed by a team of IT specialists. The computers in the vehicle you drive are running code an IT department somewhere developed.

When someone mentions the IT department, it should be done with respect. Almost any electronic device or system run with a computer code would not be functioning if it were not for the IT department.

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