The BA/PM Partnership

The BA/PM Partnership: An IIBA/PMI Joint Collaboration

By Elizabeth Larson, CBAP, PMP CEO, WatermarkLearning,Inc.

At a conference several months ago I sat next to a project manager who observed, “My organization has changed the way we do things. Now it’s the business analysts who do a lot of the work that I used to do, such as meeting with the sponsor to uncover the business problems, and determining what we’re going to do on the project…I can’t believe it. I feel like I’m being treated like a second‐class citizen!”

This complaint was indicative of many I’ve heard in the recent past. Sometimes the frustration is expressed by a project manager (PM) and sometimes by a business analyst (BA). It seems that as organizations realize the importance of business analysis, they recognize that both BA and the PM roles are critical to project success. They also understand that the two roles need to build strong working relationships based on mutual respect and understanding and that a strong partnership between these two roles can significantly increase the likelihood of project success. The question seems to be, however, how can the two best work together?

Joint Collaboration Background. Such confusion triggered a joint effort between the Project Management Institute (PMI) and the IIBA to facilitate a shared understanding of the roles. They formed a committee sponsored by both IIBA (Kevin Brennan) and PMI (Chuck Lage). With a project manager (Larry Goldsmith), three IIBA representatives (Barb Carkenord, Robin Grace, and myself, and three PMI representatives (Chris Cartwright, Jen Skrabak, and Cornelius Vonk), we were a global team from four countries and four continents. We spent about six months together in virtual teams comprised of one PM and one BA.

Our goal was to review both organizations’ guides to their bodies of knowledge ‐ IIBA’s BABOK® Guide Version 2.0 (BABOK®) and PMI’s The PMBOK® Guide – Fourth Edition (PMBOK®). Using these bodies of knowledge as a base, the committee looked at knowledge areas, processes, techniques, and handoffs between the PM and BA.

Our first task was to map the BABOK®’s knowledge areas and tasks to the PMBOK® Process Groups of Initiating, Planning, Executing, Monitoring and Controlling, and Closing. As we mapped tasks to process groups, we uncovered a new process group, wholly in the business analysis domain, which we called pre‐initiation. All the Enterprise Analysis tasks in the BABOK® fell into this process group.

Potential conflict. Part of our work was to describe how the PM and BA work together on each task. As a result of our analysis we noted four areas of potential overlap and conflict explained below:

1. Scope Management. There are two kinds of scope—product (solution) and project. Product scope includes the features and functions of the end product, service, or result. Project scope is the work needed to deliver that product (solution). Potential conflict can arise when the BA identifies additional business requirements that affect the project scope. To avoid conflict BAs need to ensure that although they can recommend scope changes, they cannot make commitments to the business about those changes.
2. Communication Management. The goal of business analysis is to recommend solutions that help organizations reach their objectives. To that end BAs works in two domains—the business and the project, sometimes alternating between the two. Because of the relationship with the business and because of the trust established between them, a BA often become aware of project needs before the PM does. As noted above, they cannot make commitments to the business. Instead, the BA needs to communicate those needs to the PM for the effect on the overall project.
3. Risk management. As risks are identified and analyzed throughout the project, all the risks, including those related to the product are captured, and strategies to respond to these risks are developed.
4. Requirements Management. The PMBOK® includes Collect Requirements as a section under the Scope Management knowledge area describing how requirements activities (business analysis) will be planned, tracked, and reported. This section in the PMBOK® can be confusing to both BAs and PMs.  To avoid conflict both parties need to involve the other in the business analysis planning activities.

The table below summaries the roles and responsibilities that can help avoid conflict.