When I joined the BABOK committee about a year later and raised these concerns, I was asked an insightful question: “Elizabeth,” one of the committee members asked, “as a PM did you come up with all the deliverables, tasks, and estimates for everyone on the project?” Ah, BAs sure do ask good questions! I remembered that as a PM I had gone to many team members, in particular technical SMEs, the developers, our full-time business SME on the project, and others to get their deliverables, tasks, estimates, and availability. But it had never occurred to me to involve the BA. With that one question the light bulb came on. The image of locked horns disappeared. In its place I saw a PM (me) with the weight of too much project planning on her shoulders suddenly stand up straight and unencumbered. How much easier my life as a PM would have been if for the business analysis work, I had taken the information from the BA and rolled it into the overall project. What a relief it would have been to get the business analysis input from the person who knew the most about business analysis!
With the light bulb came a few related insights:
So my advice, PMs, is to let the BAs do business analysis work, which includes business analysis planning. My advice, BAs, if confronted with a PM who wants to plan for the entire project, is to keep asking those insightful questions!
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Agreed: As with all delivery colleagues, BAs should be responsible for their own workload, after agreeing goals and timelines - while project management should focus on delivering goals and removing obstacles rather than micro-managing.
Project management can too easily become a fight to keep the plan up-to-date while stressing the delivery team because task 2.5.43a wasn't completed yesterday -- and unfortunately, this loses sight of the reason for running a project, which is to realise some business value by introducing some form of change for the business.
Speaking from personal experience as project manager as well as business analyst -- having managed projects, both successfully and poorly -- I far prefer the term project leader, as this puts the emphasis more on supporting, facilitating, and leading a team to achieve the goals rather than managing tasks, processes, and resources.
Thanks for the comment, David! I agree about leading and about removing obstacles as a primary PM function. I hope the conversation continues and am curious what others think about the title of project leader vs. project manager...
Lucy,
I'm so glad you are enjoying the blogs! I hope you continue to follow them and add your own experiences.
Elizabeth