There’s more to MBA-IT than Technology

I am precisely in a situation which is described by the article whose excerpt is given below:

Survival as a manager in today’s techno savvy work environment depends largely on your ability to innovate – and technology provides tremendous opportunities to innovate and differentiate.

The MBA of tomorrow therefore needs a strong foundation in technology.

If you read the article you will realize MBAs who can appreciate technology are need of the hour. Yet I feel there is more to it than just being techno-savy.

Presently I am part of a large Transformation project which has multitude of roles – process re-engineering, organisation design, technology etc. With a bit of technology experience and business studies background I was an ideal fit for the role of a Business Analyst (BA). But wait….what is that?

I had the bookish knowledge of “Business Analyst” role – gather client requirements, write use-cases, create specifications etc. When I ended up being one, it was much more than that. However, in summary there were a few fundamental success recipes to this role – Communication, Planning & Flexibility.

Communication – The most important factor to succeed as a BA is communication in the right form, at the right time and with the right person. This applies to managing relations with anyone on the project – Client, Subject Matter Experts (SMEs), Project Manager, Leadership Team, Design Team etc.

Planning – BAs are not managers, so why should they plan? Every BA has to plan each day to get the most out of their ever demanding routine. Setting up Client meetings, specification walk through, calls with offshore build team (in a global delivery model), clarification sessions with design team, brain storming sessions with SMEs etc. are part of daily activities. After so many meetings when does a BA work ?

Flexibility – There are times in a project when a BA has to do a lot of analysis without having a clue of what is he going to achieve. Stacks of Excel sheets full of data and formulae, multitude of domain specific documents or plethora of Power Points can be sitting on a BAs desktop. In a technology project there can also be times when the Project Manager is not able to utilize a BA fully as the work may be purely technical. It is the flexibility factor which works!

Knowledge of the technology side always makes a BA more confident and he can be more participative in design sessions as well. As the article mentions, a BA may not know programming yet he should be able to appreciate the technology bit. Armed with the above 3 qualities he can become the perfect liaison between the Client and Technology.