Picking the right team is half of PM’s success. And a huge challenge. In this article we’re talking about Business Analyst – a key to success in a way to cover clients’ expectations.

My name is Mariia Shmilyk, I am a Senior Project Manager at SoftServe with 11 years of working experience in IT and 4 years in project management. I work with several domains - healthcare, telecommunication, IoT, mobile apps, etc. Currently, I’m involved in a project from healthcare domain with one of the top 5 biggest SoftServe clients. Project started with several people and grew up to 150+ people. In this article I will share my insights of building relationship as part of Project Manager job.

What is the Business Analyst role on my project?

Stakeholders from the client-side were not aware of the Business Analyst role value on the project. There are Product Managers (not to be confused with Project Managers) at their company who also play the role of Sales Managers. They work closely with customers and understand the users' needs best. At the same time, Product Managers don't have time resources to work closely with teams on our side. So, there was a need to add a "buffer" role - Business Analyst.

As was mentioned above, Product Managers don't have the opportunity to participate in Scrum team meetings. They provide a high-level vision of features and describe how they should work, avoiding deep dive into the development process and user stories description. That's why Business Analyst (next - BA) covers this part with the next flow:

BA communicates closely with the client's Product Managers, collects the sketchy requirements to the backlog, and brings them to the team's Grooming meeting;
BA discuss requirements with the team, gather questions, risks, obstacles, implementation plan, and then go back to the Product Manager;
The two steps above may repeat until Business Analyst has described and estimated stories in the backlog;
The Product Manager reviews the final roadmap and approves it so the team can start the development process.

The Business Analyst is the main person who works closely with the client-side Product Managers, sometimes with the help of engineers when support with technical details is needed. And the main responsibility for BA is to manage requirements.

Get to know more: Building Great Relationships in Project Management With QC Team

How are the roles distributed between Project Manager and Business Analyst?

The Project Manager plays the role of Team Lead on my project. I'm responsible for the operational part - reports to clients, metrics collection, staffing, Scrum of Scrums, and dependencies between teams.

Business Analyst manages scope and estimates.

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Based on the outcomes from scope planning, together with BA, we plan the team workload for milestones. My goal is to plan capacity to reflect the scope and track the team's load.

Also, BA plays the role of Scrum Master during internal meetings when I'm not able to join because of overlaps in schedule.

How to show value and involve the first Business Analyst?

I have experience working with different team compositions for this client - with and without BA on the project.

In one team there are Product Manager from client-side and our development team. For another team, we persuade the client to add a Business Analyst together with the development team and Product Manager.

Sometimes the Product Manager can be available one hour per week for a meeting with us. For developers working directly with the Product Manager can expand the scope of discussion and planning cycle. BA can make some decisions on their own, leave out some requirements, analyze the input from the team and communicate only touchpoints. With this approach, even one hour per week sync-up can be more productive as BA comes with the result already.

Also, communication with the team becomes easier with BA as there are no language barriers and BA is fully available for the team.

One more reason to have a BA on the project is that Product Managers from our client's company might not have a technical background. They may be ex-doctors, who can work closely with hospitals but can't advise about technical details needed for feature implementation.

As a result of the team model with BA, I can share positive client feedback. They agree that our workflow works best and when they need to staff a team of 6 people, we already plan to have one BA and five developers instead of six. They are ready to sacrifice the speed of development, but it will be better still than developing something wrong.

What are the peculiarities in Business Analyst staffing?

I had a case to staff a Business Analyst who worked in a small product company. She faced the often case to play the combined role of Project Manager and Business Analyst. Together with BA responsibilities she needed to have 1-1 meetings, salary discussion, staffing, and dismissal, etc. Her main motivation to try herself at SoftServe was a separate position of BA at the company. In my opinion, it is a plus when a person who wants to be BA can focus only on business and requirements.

Despite truly BAs, ex QAs are also good candidates for the Business Analyst role. Based on my previous experience with the absence of BA, QA can cover the requirements management. Also, during the interview, our client usually asks if the BA candidate has experience in the healthcare domain. And it could be a challenge to find a person with such knowledge. That is why QA engineers from healthcare projects might be a great match for such positions.

During the interview, I pay a lot of attention to candidates' previous experience. I dig a lot into details about responsibilities and the quality of their performance.

What is the strategy to prevent burnout of Business Analysts?

Our Business Analytics are loaded on the project and from time-to-time face burnout with specific circumstances.

Here are some reasons and common cases that may lead to burnout and the loss of motivation:

Deadline is lit and Product Managers from the client's company are not responding;
Several Product Managers from client-side share requirements that are contradict;
Miscommunication between Business Analyst and Product Managers takes place, and it impacts the requirements;
Business Analyst should keep an eye on a lot of dependencies between the development team;
Business Analyst sometimes should obtain a strong stand in front of developers when they try to influence the requirements shared from a client;
Sometimes, a team should transfer the scope to another team after the planning process is done and the work of the Business Analyst begins from nothing again with another scope.

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And how do we fight burnout? Here are some good practices:

We created RACI matrix together with the client's team, so all stakeholders are aware of who does what;
As a Project Manager I follow up the practice to document responsibilities for my Business Analysts, so they clearly understand expectations about their role;
We tried several approaches in change request management to back up BAs and make sure they are protected;
We invest in the professional development of our guys. In our case, healthcare learning activities are super relevant as it is our domain, and we need to continue to gain knowledge in this field to understand client's business peculiarities;
We implemented an internal rewards and recognition process that is based on feedback not only for BAs but for the whole team.

Finally, I’d like to highlight that recognition is a nice component of team motivation and a tool to prevent burnout. I usually apply my team members to SoftServe Awards thinking about wonderful things they did during the last year. SoftServe Awards is an internal event where everyone can nominate top contributors in distinct categories. It is an effective way to highlight the achievements of your team-mates and I believe you can always find something that stands out from the routine. Also, it is very valuable to hear recognition feedback from a client about how the team implemented features. Even if everyone was exhausted while developing, they are so happy after hearing the value of their work.

Interviewed by Leila Mamedova, SoftServe’s Project Manager