Business Analysis and Project Management — Challenges, Ramifications and Effective Solutions
Introduction
The success of a project is dependent on two profound key pillars of the Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) which are, Business Analysis and Project Management. During the delivery of a software project, it is very important that the Business Analyst and Project Manager have their roles and responsibilities defined for various phases of the project, and there are no confusions in approaching a solution for the same problem domain. There are many phases of the project, where Business Analysis and Project Management activities go hand in hand as both these activities are dependent on each other to get an effective solution for the same pain area. The Business Analysis and Project Management activities should be a collaborative effort in order to achieve the project goal, deliver effective business value and together bring success to the overall smooth project delivery.
This blog post will throw some light on some of the challenges faced during Business Analysis and Project Management activities while working on a similar project phase, and how we can effectively streamline the two activities to come to a collaborative approach to find the effective solution.
Challenges Faced and Collaborative Approaches
1. Scope Freezing
Challenge — Deciding the Project Scope and freezing it can be quite challenging as it involves understanding the project expectations, business problem and propose an effective solution. Many times the Business Analyst is not considered a part of this phase as it only involves requirements to be decided at a very high level without going into more details and only project manager and primary stakeholders from the client are involved. What happens eventually, that during requirements gathering and elicitation sessions, sometimes requirements expected by the client which are critical for the success of the primary business value to be delivered is not captured during project scoping and then arises the problem of how to mitigate this error after the scope has been frozen. It eventually leads to the big confusion and capability of the vendor in delivering the solution to the client.
