Advance Your Career with These Trends in 2021 and Beyond!

International Perspective | Trends in Business Analysis in Sri Lanka

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Every business today is a digital business. COVID-19 has made organizations, big or small, rethink, reorganize, and realign their business to meet this new demand of being digital. Organizations that do not change or are late to adapt either lag behind or sadly become extinct.   

 

 

The Need For Proper Business Analysis 

The role of the Business Analyst is thus more crucial than ever. The BABOK® Guide clearly states that a Business Analyst is anyone who enables change in an organization by identifying the needs of stakeholders and recommending solutions that deliver value. Change is inevitable and more so today, and thus the role becomes ever so important.  
 
The pandemic and other latest trends in the Micro, Meso and Macro environments create the need for proper Business Analysis. An analyst is anyone who enables change, not just IT. Hence, even an entrepreneur, a C-level executive, a marketer, a salesperson and basically anyone is an analyst. 

What Are The New Demands From The Role? 

The role of business has changed from being a mere ‘communication box’ to a change agent. Gone are the days where a business analyst was considered a median that converts business requirements into solution requirements. The BA must be able to identify problems and opportunities, clearly break them down to the constituent parts, identify interdependencies and recommend solutions – custom made or modified; to meet stakeholder demands. But is this enough?  
 
The Business Analyst must now have a complete new set of abilities where they are able to be proactive rather than reactive. Analysts are now required to take a more human-centric approach to empathize with real world users to detect (rather than receive) real problems and pain points they face. Understanding characteristics, behaviours, feelings of different user personas in different contexts while being a fly on the wall thus becomes really critical. They are required to synthesize, decompose and draw experience from analogies from the past or other domains and be able to give far superior experiences to stakeholders. 

Trends In Business Analysis In Sri Lanka 

I thought of including a little bit about some observations about the BA practice in Sri Lanka as well. Business Analysis is more perceived as a job designation than a job role and it is more popular in IT solution / product development, both in IT and non-IT sectors. Analysis tasks are carried out by practically everyone (change agents) in other walks of life. Whether these change agents are familiar with the standards, the governing body, etc., is another question. The Business Analysts in Sri Lanka get the chance to play more of a doer role rather than a thinker. This is because many business analysts in Sri Lanka have had experience working on different projects for clients based in other parts of the world. 
 So, the opportunity to ideate and initiate might be less unless it is a startup. But hey! Tech startups are booming, and more and more Business Analysts now get the chance to voice their ideas and opinions. Still, I guess it is important that analysts understand that IIBA and the BABOK provide the foundation and the building blocks based upon which everything else is set up. 

What Do The Numbers Say? 

Finally, I would like to touch upon a few numbers from the 2020 IIBA Global Business Analysis Salary Survey. For anyone interested, you may access it here. 
 
The top industries that Business Analysts works for are IT and Banking & Finance while 80% of the Business Analysts report that they have worked for their current employer 5 years or less. Business Analysis is a fluid area with a wide array of opportunities to learn and thus people tend to change jobs often for more experience and higher pay. There is more and more emphasis on training as highlighted in the report and it is not different in the Sri Lankan context as well. Those certified with an IIBA certification earn 12% more according to the report and more importantly they portray to their employer a sense of credibility and knowledge unparalleled to those without a certification. Agility and data analysis is growing as a whole with aspects of faster time to market, continuous improvement, the need for competitive advantage and the use of latest technologies such as IoT, AI (Artificial Intelligence), and Machine Learning has demanded higher levels of capability from the analysts as well. 
 
So, are you ready to take up these new challenges in 2021? A great place to start is with a certification from IIBA. 

 

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