How can Business Analysts add value to the final stages of a project?

The Power of Business Analysis in Kick-starting a project

Business Analysis is a key capability during the initiation stage of a project, or at the product conceptualization stage. Business Analysts (BAs) bring this capability to a project team. Right at the outset of a project timeline, BAs are mobilized to elicit, prioritize, document and socialize project or product requirements. As such, BAs create a strong momentum in the early stages of a project. Sometimes, output from BAs is all there is to show for a project team's early efforts.

Here are some key capabilities that allow BAs to add value to a project from the get-go:

1. Communication - BAs are required to communicate with different levels and multiple business units. In a single project, BAs can be called upon to gather the project requirements from front, middle and back office teams, requiring them to conduct themselves with exceptional verbal and written communication. Leveraging their communication capabilities, BAs are able to create engagement and drive a strong credibility for the project ramp-up right from the beginning.
2. Navigation - BAs typically operate across a broad spectrum of capabilities and knowhow rather than specializing in a particular subject matter. This makes it important for them to be adept navigators of the organizational landscape to be able to identify, consult and engage Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) both internally and externally. Good navigation skills allow BAs to support project team in building a federated think tank that can bounce around ideas quickly to build strong project intelligence upfront.
3. Data Analysis - In addition to qualitative dimensions of a business problem that a new project/product/initiative is looking to address, BAs can help uncover the scale of the problem through quantitative metrics such as number of complaints received, revenue lost or risk borne. Adding quantitative appraisal can add strength to the business case underpinning the project.

As BAs are among the first ones to be mobilized on a project team, they usually need to be shapeshifters to keep up with the changing needs of a project at different stages of maturity. In particular, BAs can add value to the conclusive stages of a project through these ways:

1. Product Evangelism - As BAs have been involved with a product from the conceptualization stage itself, they are able to become credible evangelists for a newly shipped product and the pain points it addresses.
2. Training and Product Demos - As a result of their deep engagement with the project team, as well as the stakeholders vested in its success, BAs understand the "why" behind the "what" when it comes to product features. This makes them capable of delivering gripping product demos. They can also be of great value in creating an effective training program for new users.
3. Process engineering - BAs can support process engineers in updating the process documentation to reflect the updates that have been brought about by the newly delivered project.

Overall, BAs can add significant value to a project even at the final stages. So, a matrix organization can allow BAs to stay assigned to a project to see it through rather than pulling them into the initiation for another project.