BA for AI: Agentic AI and the Future of Business Analysis

There's a conversation happening at the edge of the business analysis profession. It's not about whether AI will replace business analysts. It's about whether they will step up to shape AI.

That's the thread running through a conversation recorded for Business Analysis Live! It features IIBA President and CEO Delvin Fletcher and guest Susan Yu—futurist, technology consultant, and author of an upcoming book on AI-augmented business analysis. 

Susan, Delvin, and I spent an hour getting honest about agentic AI: where organizations really are, what business analysis professionals need to bring to the table, and why the stakes just got higher.

Note: This conversation was recorded in May 2025, more than a year before this episode aired. A lot of what Susan Yu talked about has since caught up with the rest of the world. That's what futurists do!

The Year of Agentic AI? Yes and No

Susan Yu’s answer to “is this the year of agentic AI?” was a refreshing both/and. Yes, as the tools are genuinely more accessible now. Platforms like Claude and Microsoft Copilot Studio let people build and deploy agents using natural language, no Python required. The barrier to entry has dropped dramatically.

But also no, as most enterprises are still figuring out how to roll out basic generative AI. Susan’s own company was mid-implementation on a Copilot rollout when we recorded this. The gap between what the technology industry is pushing and where organizations actually sit is significant, and it’s not closing as fast as the headlines suggest. 

Delvin put it plainly: organizations are being pressured to both catch up and keep up simultaneously. That’s not a comfortable place.

Decision Architecture: The New Frontier of Business Analysis

Here’s what changes with agentic AI: it’s not just answering questions anymore. An agent can be prompted to write a marketing script, identify five thousand target contacts in the banking sector, and get them to click a button by Friday… autonomously. The action chain is real, and it executes.

So who stands in the middle of that chain and asks whether it should? Susan Yu pointed to a concept gaining traction globally: decision architecture. The organizations that will win in the agentic era, she argued, are the ones that can design ethical, traceable decision frameworks, not just automate faster. She cited the UAE’s Regulatory Intelligence Office as an early example: an oversight body specifically created to review AI-generated laws and ensure human experts validate outputs before they take effect.

This is where Delvin drew the thread back to business analysis: “There’s a space there for business analysis to make a difference.” We’re already doing versions of this: thinking through authorization workflows, delegation of authority, and stakeholder implications. And the agentic era makes that work urgent.

The Skills That Will Matter

Susan Yu was direct about the threat. Business analysis professionals whose value proposition is writing clean requirements and documenting what SMEs say (without a lot of strategic thinking attached) will find themselves displaced quickly. Automation handles that part. What it can’t replicate is the judgment: the systems thinking, the ability to ask why at the right moment, the ethical reasoning, and the governance instinct.

Delvin added something that doesn’t always make it into skills frameworks: courage. Organizations navigating these initiatives need people willing to say, “we’re not ready” or “this part needs more work.” That’s not a new business analysis skill, but in a moment of intense pressure to move fast, it becomes more urgent.

The Way Forward

The closing minutes of this conversation belong to a reframe from Fabrício Laguna and Michael Augello, both IIBA senior advisors. It was offered outside this recording, but it’s been making the rounds this year: stop asking what AI will do to business analysis and start asking what business analysis needs to bring to AI.

Susan Yu put a finer point on it: the future belongs to the business analysis professional who can orchestrate an environment where AI amplifies human judgment rather than replaces it. She admitted she doesn't know exactly how yet, but you could see her already imagining what that might look like.

Listen to the full episode on Spotify, or search "Business Analysis Live" wherever you get your podcasts.

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