Businesses highly depend on technology now, so why shouldn’t they? Because the world has become fully digital and everything is at your fingertips now However, even though everything is easy and technology bridges every gap, whether it’s about optimizing operations or enhancing customer experiences, one problem still exists. It is a communication gap between business teams and IT departments. Many would wonder why they should communicate; what could be the consequences? Well, many consequences include misaligned expectations, project failures, and inefficiencies if there is no communication between IT and business teams. Business analysts can bridge the gap and talk about the technical requirements. A business analyst course helps in learning better how to translate business needs and make sure there is a seamless collaboration.
There are various things that can help IT and business teams unite to make a better team and bridge the communication gap, like addressing common challenges, best practices, and the tools that can be useful to facilitate effective communication.
The Role of a Business Analyst
Business analysts play a major role in bridging IT and business stakeholders. They make sure that technological solutions and organizational objectives go hand in hand and that there are no issues in communication between them. Their responsibilities include:
Requirement Gathering and Analysis
Business analysts understand and document the business needs so that they can guide the IT solutions and make the solutions impactful.
Stakeholder Communication
There are two types of stakeholders in an organization: technical and nontechnical and business analysts ensure there is an alignment between both.
Process Improvement
Business analysts look for inefficiencies and suggest improvements and enhancement processes.
Change Management
Everything changes with time and adjusting to new changes is tough so business analysts ensure that the transition of new symptoms or processes is smooth.
Risk Management
Business analysts look for potential risks in projects and then propose strategies to tackle or avoid the risk.
Solution Validation
Business expectations and IT solutions might differ sometimes but it should not happen and business analysts should make sure of it before deployment.
Challenges in Bridging the IT-Business Gap
Even though Business Analysts are present, several challenges are faced by IT and business teams while communicating:
Different Priorities
Both parties have different priorities, as business teams are more focused on achieving strategic goals and revenue generation, and we can have IT teams working on technical feasibility and security.
Communication Barriers
There are certain things that business teams don’t understand about IT professionals, like the use of technical jargon, which further leads to misunderstanding.
Changing Requirements
Businesses have evolved rapidly, and you can study the changes and trends through business analyst courses, which further help to tackle IT and business teams. The constant changes in business lead to difficulty in coping with shifting projects for IT teams.
Limited IT Knowledge in Business Teams
Business teams sometimes fail to understand the technological constraints, which leads to unrealistic expectations.
Resistance to Change
There is often resistance to change, as employees don’t want to accept the new technologies because they fear disruption or might not understand.
Strategies for Business Analysts to Bridge the Gap
As there are many challenges, business analysts need to overcome these challenges as well, and for that, they should follow strategies and bring the best out of them:
Develop Strong Communication Skills
Business analysts should have good communication skills because if they aren’t good at communicating, how would they bridge the gap between IT and business teams? They have translated IT concepts into business-friendly language for business teams because it is pretty complex for them. Techniques to improve communication include:
- Flowcharts and diagrams provide a visual representation, which makes the technical process easier to understand.
- Business analysts have to explain business needs to the IT team so that they understand the needs and demands clearly.
- Organizing regular meetings to bridge communication between both teams and keep them updated.
Facilitate Collaborative Workshops
Business and IT teams have to interact to understand each other’s needs, discuss their project goals, clarify requirements, and address concerns for which collaborative workshops can be effective and useful. For an effective workshop, business analysts should:
- Start the discussion where IT and business teams share their ideas and perspectives.
- Brainstorming sessions and role-playing exercises are pretty much useful and teams can interact with each other.
Create Clear and Concise Documentation
Documents are very important for understanding the needs clearly and IT teams should have clear and concise documentation so that there is no misunderstanding and everything is clear between business and IT teams. Business analysts should:
- Create documents that are needed by both teams and are easy to understand.
- Use Business Process Modeling (BPM) to represent workflows visually.
- Tracking the changes is very important to understand what to add and avoid in the project so maintain traceability matrices.
Leverage Technology and Analytical Tools
Business analysts can use many analytical tools to improve communication and streamline processes. In business analytics courses, usage of these tools is taught and these tools are:
- Business Intelligence (BI) Tools include Tableau and Power BI for data-driven decision-making.
- Requirement Management Tools are Jira, Confluence, and Trello to track progress.
Understand Both Business and Technical Perspectives
Business analysts should not only try to build communication between business and IT teams but also understand technology and business strategies. Ways to achieve this include:
- IT-related courses or certifications help a lot in understanding.
- Going to conferences and meetings to stay updated on industry and market trends.
- Creating a strong relationship with both IT and business teams to understand their challenges and needs.
Mediate and Resolve Conflicts
Both the teams are quite different from each other and have different priorities so conflicts can arise between IT and business teams and for that, business analysts should be ready. They should:
- Talk out with both teams to encourage compromise and find common ground.
- Helping the teams with data to support decision-making.
- There should be a problem-solving discussion rather than allowing conflicts to get bigger.
Real-World Example of a Business Analyst Bridging the Gap
A real-world example will help to understand how business analysts bridge the gap between IT and business teams. For example, a retail company has introduced a new Customer Relationship Management system. Now, both IT and business teams want different things. The business team wants a system with many features to improve customer service, while the IT team is focused on security and wants it to work well with existing systems. Now, none of them are wrong in wanting different goals, so a business analyst in this situation would:
- Talk to both teams to understand their needs and concerns.
- Look into the plans and goals of the IT team and check if the features are secure and possible.
- Create a plan that will help balance both business and IT team goals without any conflict or hassle.
- Ensure users test the system before it is officially launched.
Bridging the gap between IT and business teams is very important for any organization because with various technologies comes great tension and conflict, and conflicts don’t work well for businesses. So, business analysts step into the scene and make sure the IT and business teams build good communication and work with collaboration.
