What’s a Mavericks BA-ddie?

You’ve probably heard this before: “A Business Analyst (BA) is the bridge between business and tech”. Now that’s a broad statement. What is it really about? What’s the difference between a BA and a Maverick one? And, with the advent of AI, why would we still need a human to be the BA?

Turns out, like all jobs, there are a lot of nuances to my work. And it’s these nuances that present opportunities to distinguish myself from a good BA, to a great one, to a Maverick that simply can’t be replaced by anyone or anything.

As a BA, my job is to balance and optimise outcomes on both the business and technical side of a project. This is not a one-person job, it’s a TEAM thing. But no team starts off as a high-performing team, not even if we hired the best of the best (and we do). And even after achieving high performance, it still takes a lot of effort to maintain that level of performance and not fall back into old habits (more, in my opinion).

This is where the BA comes in. We are connecting links for an Agile team and make sure we are Building the Right Product. Our superpower is in asking the right questions at the right times to the right people to enact change. Most differences can be overcome with just a little more empathy and understanding of the “other side”. Whether it’s between business v.s. tech, or devs v.s. QA, UI v.s. UX, etc., achieving optimised outcomes really boils down to creating a shared vision of our goals and priorities, and deciding on the best win-win-win approach as a team. 

At Mavericks, effective BAs are often proxy Project Managers (Or PMs for smaller projects). The BA is often in the best possible position to help manage the team and the project (when the project manager is away). Aside from managing the product backlog, being a BA requires taking up leadership responsibilities and helping the team grow individually. 

Our BAs are also UI/UX Designers  with a focus on user journeys and user experience too. We often develop a better understanding of user needs and preferences through observation, user interviews and feedback. We aim for Simple Working Solutions for the team to progress faster and better. We don’t have to be experts in this area (afterall, the rest of the team can function as beta user testers too), but it does make a big difference if the BA is the “last line of defence” to catch simple & basic design gaps (we use a lot of common sense!). We help the team stay focused on the bigger picture of customer satisfaction, business benefits and improvements and return on investments.  Everything we do as a team should be meaningful and change the world positively.

So, the most effective BAs are a little bit BA, with a sprinkle of PM and UX design. Taking the lead to facilitate and coach individuals into all-rounded team players is an extra rewarding part of the job too!