7 Trends in Project Management and Business Analysis to Watch for in 2009

This post is in response to 7 Trends in Project Management and Business Analysis to Watch for in 2009, originally posted on Project Manager Spotlight.

This blog entry is more like a present view of Project Management and Business Analysis in 2009, instead of a future view. If you are a BA or a PM you have always felt the pressure of management concerns that your responsibilities overlap, you have seen the Agile trend coming over the last couple of years, and you saw the economy starting to tank in Q3 2009 and have felt its impact on business travel and education.

On the convergence of PM and BA roles, I think the industry sees that each position has a distinct profile of success. A Project Manager's profile is much like that of a General Manager or Accountant. A Business Analyst's profile is much like that of a Product Manager. This profile distinction limits the capabilities of each position to do the others' work. The rise of the business-side focused BA has a ton to do with the failure of Project Management to build what was needed. Project Managers can build what is specified, they can build it on time & on budget, and what is built can be really good, but the PM position never has never focused around whether what was built was usable.

For the rest of 2009 and beyond, the competitive advantage will be given to CIOs who understand this distinction and maintain the BA/PM solution in SDLC work, and even work to make that relationship strong. They will get relevant and useable product on time, on budget. If they use user feedback and create value metrics, they will be able to show great ROI on projects with both a BA and PM, based on increase productivity of the workers using systems built. This metric will easily trump the cost reduction metric and will provide significant business competitive advantage to the organization in terms of functional business applications.

I do agree with this post that Project Management and Business Analysis have to be seen as skill sets even more so than job positions. This becomes very clear when looking at Agile.

The Agile trend has a high level of potential failure. It is increasing looking more like a cult movement than a legitimate methodology. You are either part of the cult or you are not. PMI and IIBA will have to step up and look at Agile, not as methodology but as a management philosophy, and begin incorporating its basic concepts into their overall structure. Agile demands that human beings treat each other fairly. It demands we see each other as adults. It demands that teams are allowed to manage themselves and solve their own problems. All VERY good ideas in theory, but these basic human tendencies prove very difficult in practice. In the end, Agile is asking too much of management and the workers to be scalable and repeatable.

The trend in 2009 and 2010 will be for PMI first and IIBA second to look at Agile and integrate it within each of their Bodies of Knowledge to provide a vastly improved solution for the practice of Project Management and Business Analysis. This is a much more probable outcome than the continuation of the currently stove piped tactics.

The BABOK 2.0 is exciting, but an updated standard does not legitimize the association or the position. It is nice that professionals are using the standard to perform day-to-day work. The reality though is that workers are interested, but management isn’t. There are approximately 500 CBAPs currently. The certification is not setting the world on fire. The IIBA has not done a good job marketing the BABOK or the certification to Fortune 5000 companies. The BA-doers and their managers know about it, but does the CIO? Does the Application Development Director know about it? If they know about it, have they been told about its value?

The BABOK 2.0 is an exciting improvement in the BA standard, but the IIBA must quickly change its focus to show the VALUE of the skills set to the business side. They need to produce return on investment statistics that show how much faster and more effectively an organization goes to market with a solution or an application when it uses certified Business Analysts. They need to show the competitive advantage provided. Right now the CBAP is a nice to have from the perspective of a business. IIBA must turn it into a need to have.

The IIBA is at a critical junction. They have a solid product now, but little to no mind share with the business world. Without an active and fast attack by the IIBA to market the value of the Business Analyst skill set to the business work, the CBAP trend in 2009 and 2010 will look much like the trends of the CAPM and PgMP certifications from PMI.

Trends are always interesting to debate and concern, this was an alternative look at some “possibilities” for the PM and BA skill sets and positions in 2009-2010.