Folks,

Being a BA, I have a very good idea when I should start my work at the initiation of the project.But I struggle with question: "When will you be done with this project?"

At my firm, most of the BAs are working on more than one project at a time which is typical like any other IT firm. But we have to provide resource availability in advance(for e.g. 90 days).   For this reason I would like to know:

• When does a BA END his/her role in a particular project?

• Is it dependent on the BA's role and responsibilities in a firm?

• Is it dependent on the knowledge level of the project/business of the BA?

• Is it dependent on how much more the BA wants to learn post his/her delivery of requirements/other deliverables?

• Is it dependent on when the BA realizes he/she can provide no further value to the project since there are more skilled resources to take over the "torch"?

It would help if you can share your experience here so that we can better estimate our availability.

Thanks,

J

Hi J,

Le me at first rule out some items.  In my opinion, the answer should NOT depend on:

• the knowledge level of the Business Analyst - if the BA can't do the task it doesn't mean the tasks should not be done, it might mean that you don't have the right BA,
• how much the BA wants to learn - because it would be up to the organization/business to determine how to best use the capacity of the given analyst (of course, a good business analyst can influence that decision)

What is important, as kmajoos mentioned, is what are the expectations of the role of the BA on the given project/organization.  You can determine this by asking, upfront, questions such as:

• What artifacts is the business analyst expected to produce (i.e. business case, project charter, requirements document, process flows, functional specifications, technical specifications, test cases, test plans, etc.)?
• What tasks/activities of value is the business analyst expected to perform (i.e. requirements workshops, business process improvement, application design, user experience design, user acceptance testing, training, etc.)?

Hope this helps!

- Adrian