Understanding Business Intelligence
Wikipedia defines business intelligence as the person doing the business analysis. Business Analyst connects the strategy and tactics of business, key challenges and ways of their implementation, the high-level requirements for the software system and the methods of its implementation. It really is a "bridge" between business and IT, offering changes in technologies and processes that will help implement key business objectives. However, in real life, these definitions are detailed and many times vary from company to company, from division to division. Forrester analysts Carey Schwaber and Rob Karel, who devoted the business analyst profession one of its recent reports, complain that, in apparent demand for this role and all related activities are still without a clear definition and understanding. And even on the part of business analysts, which may also be called by system analysts, functional analysts and anything else.
A little background
Since business analysts job functions differ so much there was the mission of forming a comprehensive definition of the profession, its progress and development, creating a system of training and certification of business analysts assumed a non-profit professional association, called the International Institute of Business Analysis (International Institute of Business Analysis, IIBA). Established in October 2003, 28 experts from eight countries, the institute IIBA unites thousands of members in all regions of the world. One of its main activities is the development of professional standards, the Body of Knowledge for business analysis – Business Analysis Body of Knowledge (BABOK).
BABOK is the amount of knowledge acquired in the field of professional business analysis and adopted today reflects the practical aspects of business analysts. Since this is the first attempt to collect and formalize a well-structured document based on common terminology and existing knowledge of professional business analysts. Work on the BABOK is considered as a platform for discussion and consensus building in the full definition of a profession. As reported in the IIBA, the development of the current version was attended by about 90 experts. The Association seeks to establish clear feedback from the community in the process of working on a new version, which is scheduled for later this year. How to determine the developers, the main criterion for the inclusion of information in the BABOK is a reflection of the proven and widespread knowledge and practice of business analysis.
In its current form BABOK describes the scope of the professional knowledge of business analysis, related activities and business analysts skills needed to effectively address the challenges they face. Business Analysis IIBA defined as a set of objectives, methods, qualifications and capabilities necessary to clearly identify the problems facing the business and the description of its solutions. The decision often involves the development of specific systems, but can also include process improvement and organizational change.
Objectives and scope of business analysis are different from disciplines such as financial analysis, project management, quality assurance systems, organizational development, testing or training, although the business analyst can deal with each of them, if not all. In IIBA note that such breadth of responsibilities in real life complicates the formal description of areas of activity a business analyst in the standard, which is one of the reasons for delaying the process of creating a new version of the BABOK (according to the plans, BABOK 2.0 was to be published in early 2008). Developers especially emphasize the fundamental difference between the roles of business analyst and project manager business analyst is responsible for determining the nature and extent of the problem-solving business, while the responsibility of the project manager is a concrete attempt to implement this decision.
