How do you measure and communicate the value of business analysis to your organization?

one of the most important points about defining value criteria is qualitative and quantitative, and quantifying them. because in that case measuring would be more easy and practical.

In my experience, the first step is to show your value by doing good business analysis. Be aware of what business analysis skills you are using and when it is working, as others about the impact they are seeing. Then extrapolate and scale that impact and tell the story. Show by doing and being seen adding value!

This is basically describing what business analysts do and why companies hire them in the first place. If you need to communicate your value as a business analyst, it's a matter of demonstrating that the results have successfully aligned with the strategic goals and objectives of the organization and project.

This is where we get the biggest pushback when we ask the “Why” question. It makes the requestor think and this mindset has to be cultivated across the organization. If they don’t cascade it down then you can’t expect the worker bees to somehow figure out the value. But once the value is determined the next steps become easier - what to measure? How to measure? How do we report? Benchmarks etc.

What has worked for me is to show the data on project success correlated with business analysis work on that project. Measuring things like: - Did successful project have BAs on them? - Did these projects have experienced/trained BAs? - Did successful projects do Business Analysis and focus on this practice? What roles/titles performed the analysis? BAs or not. - What techniques were used for analysis on successful projects? And last, make sure to be aware of what defines a "successful" project. I find that IT and PMOs define success quite differently than the non-tech and non-PMO leaders.

In addition to using the tools, bring the user in for compelling business case. Ask the key customer (not the internal users who think they know what their customer want, but the real customer, reach out to them) for the value it will deliver. Also, one of the most important and easiest way for analysis and building stakeholders relationships is job shadowing, it will help you identify the pain points easily and quickly.

Get regular feedback on business analysis work from stakeholders. After a requirements or use case or user story workshop, ask participants to rate the effectiveness of the session and the techniques or tools used. Ask development and technical teams to rate the clarity and effectiveness of the requirements/use cases/user stories that they consume.

Telling stories of great business analysis on projects works! To do this, you will need to have those real project examples with great analysis happening! Back to "showing the value" vs. "telling the value". When telling these stories focus on: - The pain points w/o analysis, and how analysis removed the pain for various roles (business stakeholders, users, tech team, vendors, etc...) - The gains that various stakeholders experienced when analysis was done well - What those stakeholders had to do to contribute to the analysis - The changes everyone (BAs, Stakeholders, Tech, etc...) need to make to scale the success. -

In addition to reporting risks, issues and dependency on the business analysis work, it is also important to regularly evaluate the alignment to benefits case. Also, do the evaluation continuously at milestones and checkin with your stakeholders as things move, deviate as project progresses many times. In my experience, not many organisations are effective at benefit realisation so continuously building it through out the lifecycle is key to its success.

I agree that understanding best practices is a good way to be effective as a BA. The other benefit: knowing when to push back when non-BA’s think that they know the process better and that certain steps can be skipped. I’ve encountered this at every organization I’ve worked for, so it’s rampant.

I am not sure that aligning with best practices is a 5th step in measuring and communicating the value of business analysis. Good business analysts are mindful of best practices and seek to align their work with them over the course of a project.

Communicate to the organization and explain the business analysis best practices you want to adopt, so that they can give you the best feedback on surveys and evaluations. They may not understand all the work that BAs do, but they should be able to see the results.

The best way to show the value of good Business Analysis is to demonstrate it. Teams, stakeholders, and Leaders know it when they see it and experience it. I also like to measure things like: - What projects/teams had a BA and did those projects perform better overall? - What projects/teams had a trained and experienced BA, and did these projects perform better than others? This is a simple measurement that clearly (never seen this not work in many organiztions) the value a BA brings to the team.