12 Key Responsibilities of Business Analysts in Agile, Innovation, and DevSecOps

Here’s how Wikipedia defines the business analyst role, which I believe needs some deeper context and definition. “A business analyst (BA) is a person who processes, interprets, and documents business processes, products, services, and software through analysis of data. The role of a business analyst is to ensure business efficiency increases through their knowledge of both IT and business function.”

I prefer CIO’s definition, “Business analyst help guide businesses in improving processes, products, services, and software through data analysis,” which expands their scope beyond efficiencies to include products. CIO’s definition also states, “Business analysts (BAs) are responsible for bridging the gap between IT and the business,” which I believe is at the heart of the role and its responsibilities.

BAs are facilitators, help drive decisions, and fill execution gaps

Some key words in CIO’s definition include “help guide business” and “bridging the gap.” Very often, this is between IT and business, but that doesn’t have to be the case. I view BAs as facilitators with a more open-ended role compared to product managers, DevOps engineers, data scientists, scrum masters, and others driving transformation and innovation.  

Second, the focus on data is really one of helping teams make smarter and faster decisions and execute their game plans. Data is one tool BAs must be skilled in and use, but it’s not the only one. I expect BAs to understand user experience, capture requirements, read/understand code, research solutions, execute testing plans, and perform other functions to help agile teams plan, execute, and transform.

BAs take on important agile, innovation, and DevOps responsibilities

I first wrote about the critical role of BAs in Driving Digital, where I explained their role in scrum and working with product owners on writing meaningful requirements. In a post, three important responsibilities of BAs in agile, I explain their role in driving collaboration and decision-making. And I just recently shared my 72^nd video on the Driving Digital Standup on the BA’s role in agile, innovation, and DevOps. Watch the video below, and the twelve key responsibilities follow.

Here are the details on the BA responsibilities which I explain in the video.

Agile

1. Writes user stories everyone understands
2. Negotiates scope and estimates
3. Captures non-functional acceptance criteria
4. Leads user acceptance testing (UAT) and analytics

Innovation

5. Translates vision and roadmap into epics and features
6. Transforms roadmap into a release strategy
7. Proposes feature flags based on targeted personas
8. Researches frameworks in SaaS, UX, APIs, libraries

DevSecOps

9. Prioritizes test cases to automate in continuous testing
10. Crafts standard security and IT Ops requirements
11. Facilitates canary deployment strategy to reduce risks
12. Triages production defects and prioritizes on the backlog

BA, product owner, DevOps, and scrum master roles reviewed

Let’s consider the BA role in relation to others on typical agile teams pursuing innovation and implementing DevOps best practices.

• Product owners focus on customer value propositions, roadmaps, and delivering business value.
• DevOps teams plan and implement innovative, maintainable, secure, and reliable solutions.
• Scrum masters focus on managing blocks, inter-team communications, and continuous process improvement.

And BAs? Here’s how I define their role at the end of the video:

BAs connect the extended team to ensure the right things get done the right way.

If you’re a BA, I’d love to hear your questions, triumphs, ideas, and challenges. If you lead agile organizations, let me know how you utilize the BAs to drive agile, innovation, and DevSecOps. Here's how to contact me, and more to come on this topic soon!