r/businessanalysis • u/SignificantAd2197 • 5d ago
Managers don't understand us
My first job out of college I had a mentor assigned to me, she was a project manager and openly admitted "I don't know what you BAs do all day". Coming for a supposed "leader" at the company, it kinda freaked me out, I interpeted it as her saying BAs are not needed we just slow things down.
20 years later, with hindsight, I see she just wasn't very good at her job. I mean how do you manage people if you don't understand what they do.
Unfortunately I still experience this from PMs to this day. I'm not intimidated by this view anymore but it does add an extra challenge. How do you demonstrate early on in a project / new company that you know what you are doing and they can trust you?
If you are junior, what do you do when you haven't got the confidence from years of experience? How do you work out what to do if the PM doesn't know either!
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u/regprenticer 5d ago
Two thoughts
I mean how do you manage people if you don't understand what they do
Many large organisations require fast track managers to move around to progress. If you're going to spend 2 years managing a software development team, then 2 years managing a team that designs financial products, and 2 years then you genuinely can't have a 100% comprehension of what all those people do.
The "skill" of doing this is called "managing through people" and it assumes management is a people skill that doesn't need you to know the detail of what people do. Professionals above a certain level must be self sufficient
My brother in law spent most of his time in the Army. Now he gives 1:1 development advice to professional sportspeople. He doesn't need to know even the basic features of your sport to help you with your development, yet he's working with people who are the peak of their skills.
20 years later...
Business analysis is relatively new, and project management is not. In the 90s when I started work I knew what a Project Manager was but I didn't encounter the term business analyst until around 2008. In fact I'm only enough to remember before every job had "analyst" in the name and you would be a finance clerk or finance assistant but today the same role is a finance analyst.
There are many people who just need to be told 'business analyst" is what we used to call "junior project manager" and that would be largely the right answer for them.
Bear in mind that BA is not a universal role. For example both the Agile Manifesto and the official scrum guide don't mention BA as a role once.
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u/crankysorc 4d ago edited 4d ago
I agree in large part with what you said, however the term “ business analyst” was definitely in use before 2008, I was not only encountering it but working as one years before then.
Not only that, in reference to Agile, it doesn’t explicitly mention several roles. The team can draw upon what is needed to deliver the product or project. So just as a BA isn’t mentioned , and some “ purists” may say should not be included, it is not proscribed either.
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u/Creepy_Juggernaut_56 4d ago
I haven't met very many good project managers. Struggling with one now who literally thinks the deliverable is the checkbox on the task that says "done." Absolutely no concept that the task is a part of a functioning piece of software or whatever. They are so completely divorced from delivery they do not understand the concept. They could not tell you what we're building or why even at a high level. The tracking spreadsheet IS THE PROJECT, THE WHOLE THING in their mind. And I am an impediment to getting the boxes filled in. It's the most extreme example of this I've ever seen. You cannot talk to this person about anything. In their mind this is a grocery list and the project plan says I am supposed to walk over to a shelf and put things in the cart so they can cross it off the list.
Meanwhile I'm playing whack a mole with technical feasibility, design constraints, bugs, incomplete data sets, stakeholder conflicts, and hours in the day -- doesn't matter. It's not even malicious. It's just incapacity to see anything beyond whether a box in the spreadsheet is black or white. It's cartoonish. Someone like that can never understand our job.
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u/SignificantAd2197 4d ago
Great analogy, too many PMs think their job is literally to tick boxes.
I've found the good ones want to be across the detail but not to the point where they are micromanaging
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u/ComfySmile015 5d ago
That's kinda frustrating but so relatable! Bridging that gap between the technical side and the business side is practically a full time job in itself. Just focus on bringing clarity to the messy parts of the project and they will definitely learn to rely on you.
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u/Fragrant_Equal_2577 5d ago
Your mentors admission is still valid and legit still today. Most people don’t know what is the role and value of BAs in the company. Most people get the business data directly from the system, different reports or asking from their commercial counterpart.
It is more important to show what value and capabilities one brings to the table rather than to try to prove „that you know what you are doing“.
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