There are various reasons for project failure and one serious but often unobserved cause is the potential conflict between the project manager (PM) and the business analyst (BA), emerging from unclear roles and responsibilities definition within a project at the organizational level.  Even if both roles are “regulated” and governed by standards and organizations (PMI, IIBA, and IPMA), still discussions around who is doing what, when and why are constantly present in organizations, which means that boundaries are not clearly set yet.  

Background

Based on PMBOK (PMI, 2008, p. 4), “Project management is the application of knowledge, skills, tools, and techniques to project activities to meet project requirements. Project management is accomplished through the appropriate application and integration of the 42 logically grouped project management processes comprising the 5 Process Groups. These 5 Process Groups are: Initiating, Planning, Executing, Monitoring and Controlling, and Closing Project”.  

In comparison, BABOK (IIBA, 2009, p. 3) states that “Business analysis is the set of tasks and techniques used to work as a liaison among stakeholders in order to understand the structure, policies, and operations of an organization, and to recommend solutions that enable the organization to achieve its goals.”

Looking at the theory and additional literature mentioned below, one may see that a door to potential conflicts and discussions is already opened as none of them is stating clearly which the boundaries of each function are.  While project borders, project management methodologies, and project management skills are all well-defined, the responsibilities of the project manager are rather high level described and actually not segregated from the responsibilities of the project team members, and especially not from the business analyst, who seems to evolve to the key person in projects. 

Harold Kerzner (Kerzner, 2009, p. 162) states that the project manager’s responsibilities are: “… stronger role in project controlling and planning. Coordinating and negotiating requirements between sponsor and performing organization. Bid proposal development and pricing. Establishing project organization and staffing….”   The same author in another book mentions that “… there are at least twenty generally accepted roles and responsibilities of the project manager…” (Kerzner & Saladis, 2009, p. 120).  

Howard Podeswa says: “Prior to the start of a project, the BA performs risk analysis as part of pre-project opportunity assessments (Feasibility Study, Business Case) when, typically, no project manager (PM) has yet been assigned” (Podeswa, 2009, p. 63). The business analyst is already involved in project-related/project-defining activities, before the project manager is even considered, thus the BA starts collecting information and contributing to the project definition. The statement of the author is very powerful and positions the business analysts in advantage in knowledge about the project, which cannot be compensated anymore by the project manager, thus the project manager is at least one step behind. This already creates an imbalance in the relationship between project manager and business analyst. 

As clearly stated in an article by Peter G. Furst (2011) and actually in almost all PM literature, “The project manager is responsible for the project's success”. Following this statement, one should ask the question: how the project manager can take the responsibility for the project’s success although a second person is highly influencing the project, supported by the formal approval of an institute (IIBA)?  

Results/Discussion:

Moving from the theory into the real world, one can stress again that literature itself is not clearly defining the roles contribution and is not setting the basis for a harmonious and balanced way of collaboration within the project.

Harold Kerzner states that “the major responsibility of the project manager is planning [...] In most cases, the project manager provides overall or summary definitions of the work to be accomplished, but the line managers (the true experts) do the detailed planning” (Kerzner, 2009, p. 19).  This does not reflect the opinion of one of the authors. Neither does it reflect what he experienced so far in his yearlong working experience in project management. He always saw his role in project management as being the project lead, although he was called project manager. It is rather important to lead the people, to communicate a vision, have a strategy for the project, communicate with business and make sure that business is happy, than planning the project and managing some people.

There are two scenarios that should be considered in projects

Scenario 2:

In practice, one may say that sometimes in organizations there is a war going on between the two roles and that this situation has been generated by limited or improper adaptation and adoption of standards. The authors have seen situations in which roles were overlapping, responsibilities were unclear, authority undermined or missing and in the end projects failed. 

Of course, there are organizations where project managers and business analysts are collaborating in an harmonious way,  and it can be anticipated that this is the result of a careful adaptation of frameworks and the existence of internal rules between PM and BA. 

All people in the projects business as well as most people in any other business know (more or less) what a project or a project manager is. This is not the case for the business analyst. Though one might believe the main responsibility of the business analyst is the business analysis, this is not true according to IIBA, which states that the business analyst is involved in the pre-project phase, responsible for many tasks during the project life, and also being part of the post-project phase (e.g. maintenance phase for systems that were delivered in the course of a project). Often, the business analyst title is used, although inappropriately, for system analyst, system architect, etc.

For many years during which project management became more mature and customer satisfaction was increased, projects were done without business analysts. Technical specialists were there, no doubt, but no business analysts (as they are defined today), who is nowadays supposed to be the expert of the project related topics. Do we need people doing these tasks, which are mentioned in IIBA as tasks of the business analyst? Definitely! It would be arrogant to say “the project manager can do these things on her/his own”. But can one person do all these mentioned tasks? No, definitely not! There is a need to rethink the job title of business analyst, e.g. having System-Analysts, Process-Analysts, Database-Analysts etc., each of them having very special skills to fulfil project tasks. These highly specialized people are very important for any project, and subsequently for the project success.

The title business analyst is often used for a broad variety of experts, which sometimes do not even touch the field of projects, or even worse, the field of business analysis. Some examples are system experts, operations experts, and data quality specialists. Just by assigning the job title ‘business analyst’ to their direct reports, some managers believe to be allowed to staff projects with them, no matter what kind of expertise actually is expected and needed. The reason behind this improper placement of resources, this ‘fitting by job title’, is often the short-sighted strategy of local managers to enhance the importance of their own department while losing sight of overall business goals.

Story of success 

One of the authors started her career as a BA and continued as a PM.  When acting as BA on projects, she understood well her responsibilities, which were to analyse the business context, as given, understand their needs, find the gap, envision the future situation, and then propose potential solutions and approaches together with the technical team. She was involved in helping the PM to define the detailed scope, work together and agree on the work packages and deliverables, actively participating in the project jour fixe and controlling meetings. The BA was the one responsible for delivering a comprehensive and qualitative documentation and product, but the overall project responsibility stayed in the hands of the PM. This split of responsibilities between BA and PM generated beneficial effects for the projects. That was due to the fact that the BA had a strong knowledge of project management. The BA understood were her boundaries were in terms of role, understood the project management process, but the BA also understood that she acted as support for the PM. That meant providing the PM with the right information and data in order to take the appropriate decision. 

Now, acting as a project manager she has a higher level view of the project. Her main responsibility is to deliver business value to her clients by delivering a successful project. She is focusing on the project management process and documentation and only checking that deliverables are within the required quality. Due to her previous experience, she believes that the key to a successful project is to have very good specifications. Thus, she is always looking to have a highly skilled BA in her project and try to get involved, if possible, in the early phase of a project. Having a BA in the team increases the project’s rate of success. Of course, when talking about small projects, she usually takes over the BA part.

Her skill set also helps her in defining the boundaries of a project together with business; differentiate between what they want and what they actually need and getting the project focused on bringing business value by eliminating the non-essential parts. It also helped her to know what to ask from her resources to deliver and to be able to better check the progress of those tasks.

Out of her experience, her opinion is that the BA and the PM should share a common set of skills, such as strong skills in communication, elicitation, and negotiation. They contribute to each other’s activities (e.g. the BA in scoping the project, the PM in the requirements phase) and they should also share a common understanding of what the other one is doing and where the boundaries of their roles are. Otherwise, conflicts may arise between them that could hinder the positive outcome of the project.

Conclusion

As long as both roles, the project manager and the business analyst, have a clear picture of their responsibilities and have the same overall objective in mind – satisfying the customer by delivering the requested product – the relationship and cooperation are normally very successful and beneficial for all parties.
 

PMs and BAs need to understand where each other’s roles and responsibilities start and end, especially in terms of scoping, requirements definition and management, and risk management.  The PM is assigned on a project basis, whereas the BA should be permanently assigned to the business area. Both must work together within and outside the project in order to establish a successful relationship and achieve the desired project outcomes.