April 09 Editor’s Note: Should the BA care about BPM and SOA?

Adrian M. — Sun, 05 Apr 2009 21:23:00 GMT

Yep!

OK… this could have been a really short editor’s note but I’ll wait to practice word frugality for my Twitter posts. Yep – you can now follow me and other Modern Analyst editors on twitter: http://twitter.com/ModernAnalyst.

Now back to BPM…

First, I’ll resort to some simple logic:

The backbone of any reputable business is a set of carefully defined business processes which govern how the organization should function (I recommend reading The E-Myth Revisited).
The business analyst role entails understanding how a business organization functions to accomplish its goals (see the business analysis definition in the BABOK 2.0, which has been recently released).
Therefore => BPM is very relevant for the BA! As a matter of fact, BPM should be done by the business analyst.

Business Process Management (BPM) refers to the discipline which business owners and managers employ to think about, understand, and improve upon how a business works in order to accomplish its goals.

This entails:

Business Process – a set of coordinated activities and tasks whose purpose are to accomplish a something of value for the organization.

AND

Management – the practice of (1) planning, (2) organizing, (3) directing, and (4) controlling.

The value of the business analyst is, perhaps, never more apparent then when he/she is involved in planning, organizing, directing, and controlling business processes which aim at enabling the strategic goals of the organization.

In this month’s issue of our eJournal we’ve provided a ton of great content related to business processes and BPM.

A word of caution: while I believe you should master business process management, be careful when and how you apply these skills.

On to SOA…

While many business analysts would be content to stay exclusively focused on the business side of the house, the reality is that, in today’s world, technology is at the core of almost any business initiative. Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) is a system architecture paradigm which is widely used to design and implement the technology behind many process-centric applications.

John Moe’s SOA Column debut has a good introduction to the subject: “SOA What: SOA 101 for Analysts”

If you are a Systems Analyst, then SOA is even more relevant since you may be called upon to design and specify services which will be used as part of a service-oriented type application. We’ll cover more details related to service specifications in future articles.

What are your thoughts on the relevance of BPM & SOA for the BA?

Do you work in an environment where BPM & SOA is used?

- Adrian

Adrian Marchis

Publishing Editor

ModernAnalyst.com

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April 09 Editor’s Note: Should the BA care about BPM and SOA?