Analytics has gained due importance over time. As companies make huge investments in analytics as well as create in-house analytics team; there is an outright desire to ensure that the investment doesn’t go in vain. Hence, all effort to made to hire the best people, those who possess analytics knowhow as well as provide training to perfect analytics professionals. Below is the ideal process that firms should adopt to create a high performance analytics team:

Recruit: Never compromise while recruiting. Choose nothing but the best. If this step is taken carefully, the rest will fall in place. Judge the person on the basis of important skills: Structured thinking, Business understanding and problem solving, Attention to details, ability to triangulate numbers & do back-of-the-envelope calculations are important and so are Communication skills. Judge the candidates via multiple rounds of role-play as well as interactions.

Train: Once you have successfully cleared the first step, it is equally essential to provide the requisite training and resources. 

Foster Analytical thinking: Analytical thinking requires professionals to adapt to the situation and different scenarios. This will emerge when people are provided the culture that accentuates it.  Let the business analysts’ work closely with the business team and give them the opportunity to handle bigger roles whenever possible to ensure feedback on a regular basis. Brainstorming and knowledge sharing sessions are critical to gather creative ideas and further evolve structured thinking among all.

Manage Performance: Once you have your team in place and a culture that fosters analytical thinking, ensure that they handle the challenging problems with utmost sincerity. For this, acquaint them with the objectives and the problems that are keeping you from achieving the desired results. Once they have accomplished the tasks, provide them with the feedback based on performance. Do not overload them with excessive projects and ensure you monitor whatever has been assigned with utmost dexterity.

These best practices will your firm build a high performing analytics team that delivers results.

Hi Kimbo, 

I do agree with you. I get the feeling that the original poster of this works or has experience in a Data Analytical team, rather than a Business Analyst team, 

There are some points where he is right, and others where, sorry, but he just isn't in the real world.

Recruitment - If you think you can only hire the 'best' I would ask one question - How do you know they are the best, I have hired many people over the years, some, who turned out to be the best BAs I ever had the pleasure of managing, didn't necessarily comes across the greatest in interviews. Whilst, others could clearly recite a book that they had read beforehand. When it comes to recruitment, as the hiring manager, you have to be mindful of lots of things. Do they know how to handle pressure, do they know about how to gather requirements and do they know how to interact with other people. It is very unlikely that they will be experts in the company, unless they already work there. That comes in time, but I wouldn't expect them to be so straight away. That's being unrealistic. 

I look for BAs who have passion - they want to learn, who have a degree of common sense, they are happy to communicate with people above AND below their grade. They have good attention to detail but also know how to listen, what to ask and when to do both. 

Other skills can be learnt over time. Things such as the methodology that you work in, will not be learnt or known straightaway, 

Data analytics and Financial analytics are very specialist forms and just because they come from those fields, doesn't mean they will make good BAs (and vice versa) 

Yes, training is important but often for a BA, it is more about experience than anything else - working on different types of projects and with different stakeholders. No training will ever give you that. 

Building a Team - remember that some BAs will not always work best with every other BA, so as a Manager you have to work with that. Yes, knowledge share is important, I always have a session on a Friday afternoon where we share knowledge and quickly go through from a BA perspective, how our projects are going. As I am in charge of resource allocation to projects, I ask my team what sort of projects they would like to work on next, both because they might enjoy them, but also because it may give them an opportunity to learn. 

Because every company that I have worked at is different, both in culture and also methodology ways of working, t is hard to say definitively 'This is the way you should work....'. Instead, a good BA manager should be able to adapt him or her self. Adaption is probably the most key thing for both BAs and their manager. If you can adapt quickly and learn as you go, then you are more than halfway there.