Business Analysis
Somewhere between the CEO and the code pounder is a Business Analyst or someone with a similar title. While a programmer might be fascinated with algorithms and user interfaces, the BA looks at how data and responsibilities ‘flow’ through an organization. ‘Events’ such as a customer buying something trigger ‘behavior’ - processing a payment, pouring a cup of coffee, pulling a product from a warehouse shelf, activating an account, flying a passenger, and so forth. Tasks from these events ‘fan out’ into various nooks and crannies of the organization: handling baggage, verifying an Id, connecting a home to a junction box. Ideally, all this happens ‘smooth as silk’. When it doesn’t, the analyst is responsible for finding out why, and proposing a way, or the ways, to make it so it does.
The flow of information through the organization leaves a trail of both what it does (expected functionality) and how well (or badly) it does it ([dys]functionality). ‘Hacking’ the machinery of the organization begins by finding ‘data structures’ - paper forms, spreadsheets, database tables, and files. In some cases the ‘data’ exists in someone’s head. From there, the BA tracks down the ‘business rules’ that govern how new instances of these structures are ‘filled in’ from ‘corporate knowledge’ and worker and infrastructure actions.
In an ideal world, a business process is consciously designed by a manager or a management team. ‘Inputs’ are formally defined and a set of business rules show how these inputs are worked on to produce ‘outputs’. In ‘back offices’ that deal with paper forms or money, such processes are somewhat obvious. When one is dealing with the front desk at a hotel, however, ‘anything can happen’. Processes cannot be designed for every contingency. Managers and staff make ‘ad hoc’ decisions, which are often arbitrary or occur in circumstances where the background influences actions.
Many businesses are designed to run like cars on freeways - certain things are assumed to be present and in good working order. Factories in low labor cost foreign countries load containers with goods, these float through the oceans and then through the rail network to the local warehouse, where they are loaded ‘just in time’ onto trucks. When the bridges go out and the road gets potholed, business processes have be redesigned. Pandemics, wars, and fuel shortages mess things up. Business analysts are critical in the teams that adapt the organization to present realities.
Often this is like trying to shoot birds from a racing motorcycle - everything is moving. The supply chain issues that have surfaced recently are a combination of labor shortages, transportation bottlenecks, factory shutdowns, quarantines, and government tariffs or outright import prohibitions. A buyer is told particular parts are ‘tied up in port’. All they know is that it’s on a container on a ship that’s waiting its turn at the loading dock. This doesn’t convey the chaos in the loading terminal, with a shortage of truckers, or the fact that once the container gets shipped to a warehouse, there is no one there to unload it, and in any case no room to store the freight. This is what happens when the volume of on-line ordering and fulfillment doubles (in a $21 trillion economy) in two months.
In unstable environments, people make judgement calls as to what to do ‘right now’. This isn’t necessarily done with any understanding of effects this has elsewhere in the organization. When things start to jam up, the business analyst is there to unravel the tangle.