COEPD – Center of Excellence for Professional Development Happy Learning
often adapt new methods and ideas to meet the rapidly changing needs of the businesses and customers. A “Business Analyst” is a person who helps the organization to understand what the client is looking for and how to deliver them the desired output. They act as a negotiator between the client and the organizations internal development teams. They gather all the requirements from the client and assess them. It’s after thorough validation of the requirements the business analyst communicates them to the development teams. He co-ordinates with the team to ensure that all the client requirements are met.
“SCRUM’ is one such framework which helps the organization’s teams to work together to derive the expected final output. It helps the teams to structure and organize their work in an orderly fashion. In scrum “sprints” methodology is used to categorize and organize the work. Each sprint is created for a particular time frame and the deliverables in that sprint time are delivered and discussed by the developing teams and the product owners.
In scrum the product owner is the most important person. They take the final decisions regarding what to create and what not to create. Often the roles of the BA and product owner resemble in a same way, but there are distinct differences between them. A product owner is designated to one product where as a BA is designated to various number of products.
The product owner is also entitled with different responsibilities such as marketing the product and duties relating to project management. In this situation the PO might designate some of the work to the BA. The BA unlike the PO cannot take the final call regarding the product as it would be the PO calling the shots. So, the BA doesn’t feel empowered if he is designated with additional responsibilities. This might create a delay in decision making scenarios. They can also create misunderstandings and miscommunication within the team.
A BA can be a huge asset to the team with their specialized expertise in the in-depth concepts of the subject, but their role must not be similar to that of the PO.
