Movement Musasiwa, Software Designer at Afrosoft Holdings, talks about the golden thread of business analysis in solution delivery with Charlene Seini, in business analysis and the interface designer.
Job titles don’t always necessarily reflect responsibilities. Please tell us what you do and what your role entails?
My responsibilities are to perform the analysis of the business requirements in order to create the system design and build a prototype that will be used towards establishing a working system.
In what way does business analysis interface, support and / or enable your accountabilities and responsibilities?
Business analysts provide me with the launchpad into understanding what the client wants, and from there I can prescribe a solution design based on those specified requirements.
In what way does poor quality business analysis impact and / or limit your ability to deliver effectively?
Inaccurate requirements lead me on a wild goose chase, whereby I specify a solution which ends up being worlds apart from what the end user wants, …
which in turn leads to failing user acceptance testing and therefore a failed project.
How could business analysts optimally focus and deliver in order to better support your capability?
By gathering accurate and finite business requirements, sourced from the relevant business stakeholders and specifying them at a very detailed level. At the same time they should be avoiding ambiguity and obtaining business sign-off from both the end user as well as someone in higher authority (such as the project sponsor or business owner).
Business analysis is not exclusive to business analysts; it is a discipline performed throughout business change. What business analysis activities do you perform as part of your role?
To begin with, I scrutinise business requirements to ensure the same understanding as the business analyst. Then I create process flows based on supplied business requirements, and user stories and use cases to simplify understanding downstream. In the absence of a business analyst, I’ll step in to conduct user interviews, create the business requirements document, obtain approvals and then hand over to the next person.
‘Business Analysis And The Interface Designer with Movement Musasiwa‘ was first published in the 2016 Inter-View Report. You can learn more about business analysis and the interface designer by chatting on Twitter with @baanesu and @CharleneSeini.
