I find it interesting that the disciplines of Business Analysis and Systems Engineering share an apparently substantial overlap in their areas of declared responsibilities and specialties.
In the domain of system related projects, both specialise in requirements development, in cost / benefit analysis, in solution assessment and selection, and in verification and validation of the solution. Could it be they are one and the same thing?
The SE community recently completed its SEBOK Version 1.0 (Systems Engineering Body of Knowledge), available at http://www.sebokwiki.org. The BA community, through the auspices of the IIBA, has its BABOK (Business Analysis Body of Knowledge), currently at version 2.0 (available at the IIBA website).
I think it will be interesting to compare the two documents and see what each has to say in areas they have in common, but also in areas which the other is silent. Where exactly are they similar? How do they differ?
Since both documents are lengthy, I’ll do the comparisons in several parts.
To start, let’s look at what each BOK has to say about their particular discipline.
What is Systems Engineering?
What is Systems Engineering? SEBOK offers this brief definition:
Systems engineering is an interdisciplinary approach and means to enable the realization of successful systems
This is a very thin definition, almost to the point of meaningless. One can probably can use it to describe project management, or even portfolio management, both of which can be argued as enabling the realisation of successful systems. The SEBOK also provides a longer description:
“an interdisciplinary approach and means to enable the realization of successful systems” (INCOSE 2012). It focuses on holistically and concurrently understanding stakeholder needs; exploring opportunities; documenting requirements; and synthesizing, verifying, validating, and evolving solutions while considering the complete problem, from system concept exploration through system disposal.
In the glossary, it provides two other definitions, taken from unrelated official documents. The first is from ISO/IEC/IEEE 2010 which says that Systems Engineering is an:
Interdisciplinary approach governing the total technical and managerial effort required to transform a set of customer needs, expectations, and constraints into a solution and to support that solution throughout its life.
The SEBOK also quotes the INCOSE Systems Engineering Handbook (v 3.2.2). The first sentence is exactly the same as SEBOK’s definition:
An interdisciplinary approach and means to enable the realization of successful systems. It focuses on defining customer needs and required functionality early in the development cycle, documenting requirements, then proceeding with design synthesis and system validation while considering the complete problem:
- Operations
- Performance
- Test
- Manufacturing
- Cost & Schedule
- Training & Support
- Disposal
Systems engineering integrates all the disciplines and specialty groups into a team effort forming a structured development process that proceeds from concept to production to operation. Systems engineering considers both the business and the technical needs of all customers with the goal of providing a quality product that meets the user needs.
The focus therefore, of SE is defining what the customer needs, and delivering the solution that fills the need.
What is Business Analysis?
The BABOK provides the following:
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.
So, where SE is an ‘approach’ that ‘governs’ and ‘integrates’, BA is a ‘set of tasks and techniques’ and is meant as ‘liaison’.
The BABOK continues:
Business analysis involves understanding how organizations function to accomplish their purposes, and defining the capabilities an organization requires to provide products and services to external stakeholders. It includes the definition of organizational goals, how those goals connect to specific objectives, determining the courses of action that an organization has to undertake to achieve those goals and objectives, and defining how the various organizational units and stakeholders within and outside of that organization interact.
Here we get some clarity about the focus of BA work: the organisation.
Business analysis may be performed to understand the current state of an organization or to serve as a basis for the later identification of business needs. In most cases, however, business analysis is performed to define and validate solutions that meet business needs, goals, or objectives.
Business analysts must analyse and synthesize information provided by a large number of people who interact with the business, such as customers, staff, IT professionals, and executives. The business analyst is responsible for eliciting the actual needs of stakeholders, not simply their expressed desires. In many cases, the business analyst will also work to facilitate communication between organizational units. In particular, business analysts often play a central role in aligning the needs of business units with the capabilities delivered by information technology, and may serve as a “translator” between those groups.
While BA work is clearly meant to identify the customer requirements, it is clear that BA work sits in the non-technical area of the organisation, specialising in what the organisation does and needs. In contrast, the SE definition does not make it clear whether the SE is more focused on the technical aspects of the solution (we can assume so from the word ‘Engineering, but that is not the same as having it asserted directly).
A business analyst is any person who performs business analysis activities, no matter what their job title or organizational role may be. Business analysis practitioners include not only people with the job title of business analyst, but may also include business systems analysts, systems analysts, requirements engineers, process analysts, product managers, product owners, enterprise analysts, business architects, management consultants, or any other person who performs the tasks described in the BABOK® Guide, including those who also perform related disciplines such as project management, software development, quality assurance, and interaction design.
When you do work that is in the BA domain, you are doing Business Analysis, regardless of title. So if you are an SE, you might also be a BA.
I’ll continue the comparison in another post.
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