How are your business analysts doing?

How do you determine how well your business analysts are performing?

There are a few different aspects that can be used to measure your business analysts. When I say measure I mean from the perspective of areas for improvement and to understand the strengths and weaknesses of individual analysts.

Deliverable quality
I already wrote about how to assess requirement quality. Use requirement clarity, completeness, consistency, testability, traceability, modularity, feasibility, design independence and correctness to assess the quality of the deliverables.
Meeting expectations
As part of any engagement, a business analyst needs to set expectations regarding the deliverables.

• What are the work products to be delivered?
• What tools and applications will be used?
• What is the estimated time required to complete the deliverables?
• Who needs to be included in the process?
  

Basically this amounts to a business analyst following through on what they said. However, some leeway is needed to allow for the use of different approaches when the situation warrants it. Flexibility is important afterall.

Soft skills

• Professionalism and conduct
  
• Development of relationships
• Facilitating understanding across the business and IT teams.

Conclusion
Ultimately, the outcome of a project determines its success. When looking at the business analysts involved you can measure them based on three basic areas:

• Quality: Quality of deliverables
• Time: Meeting of expectations
• Resources: Facilitating understanding, development of relationships and professional conduct.