In this article, I attempt to demystify the different combinations of a Hybrid Business Analyst and break down the top 7 hybrid Business Analysis roles.
“Try not to become a man of success, but rather try to become a man of value.”
Albert Einstein
Companies are moving into the digital transformation space. The demand for the Business Analysis Skillset is growing especially that of a Hybrid Business Analyst.
You may ask why? Digital transformation and the advent of agile has merely expedited the need for hybrid roles.
Do you consider yourself a Hybrid Business Analyst or wanting to become one?
Organizations exist to provide solutions and with the changing needs of what organizations offer as solutions come the need to transform job roles and responsibilities.
A Hybrid Business Analyst is someone that plays dual roles in addition to being a Business Analyst.
With the changing market conditions comes confusion around what are the top Business Analysis roles?
Here are the top 5 Hybrid Business Analysis Roles:
- Project Manager + Business Analyst
- Scrum Master + Business Analyst
- Product Owner + Business Analyst
- Test Engineer + Business Analyst
- UX/UI Designer + Business Analyst
- Business Intelligence Analyst + Business Analyst
- Software Engineer + Business Analyst
The question is can these hybrid roles be successful?
Can a Project Manager Become a Business Analyst or Can a Business Analyst Become a Project Manager?
The answer to the question above is yes. However let’s break this down even further as to why and under what situations could this combination work.
The Project Manager and the Business Analysis role can be overlapping or in some instances are mutually exclusive.
Let me explain as to how they can overlap.
In smaller organizations and is smaller efforts the Business Analyst can kick start scoping of the effort upfront and has the understanding of the stakeholders, business needs upfront.
In this instance it would make more sense for the Business Analyst to plan the tasks for the effort and monitor and deliver the project on time.
That being said, for bigger efforts (strategic) that are complex in nature you would want the segregation of duties to gain efficiencies and have the roles be mutually exclusive.
Can this hybrid role be successful?
As you can see in the diagram above there aren’t as many common elements between the two roles.
The two roles are very different with different objectives.
Can a Scrum Master play the role of a Business Analyst or Can a Business Analyst play the role of a Scrum Master?
Scrum is a framework that helps teams work together.
A scrum master helps oversee the scrum and development team.
They are knowledgeable in Agile methodology and scrum and able to educate others. They also act as a buffer between the scrum team and product owner and maintain a safe working environment for the team by helping with conflict resolution.
Scrum.org has an interesting article on the
A Business Analyst and Scrum master can work as a hybrid role. Infact some scrum teams are small enough that it can allow for both roles to coexist.
Similar to a project manager, the key word is as long as the projects are low in complexity and are low risk, it could make sense to combine the roles.
To work as a scrum master, you need to hold some level of scrum master certification. Here are some responsibilities of a scrum master.
- Lead the scrum team in using Agile methodology and scrum practices
- Helping the product owner and development team to achieve customer satisfaction
- Lead the scrum and development teams in self-organization
- Remove impediments and coach the scrum team on removing impediments
- Help the scrum and development teams to identify and fill in blanks in the Agile framework
- Resolve conflicts and issues that occur
- Help the scrum team achieve higher levels of scrum maturity
- Support the product owner
Can this hybrid role be successful?
There aren’t a whole lot of overlaps between the two roles.
In some senses it makes sense to split the two roles completely but they could be combines given the right type of effort.
Can a Product Owner play the role of a Business Analyst or Can a Business Analyst play the role of a Product Owner?
The answer is yes and I have seen this combination quite often. Infact a Product owner is typically an IT professional in agile responsible for evaluating work generated by a software scrum team.
Business analysts can step in as a Proxy Product Owner.
The one drawback of this combination is that a Product Owner is more strategic and is concerned about the vision of the product. A Business Analyst typically is in the weeds.
It depends on your perspective and if you would enjoy understanding both the micro and the macro.
The responsibilities for a Product Owner are as follows:
- Supervise and advise the scrum team to meet software expectations
- Manage the product development team to create a strong end product
- Nurture ideas and solutions to existing customer problems
- Communicate effectively with team members to achieve project goals
- Extract and retrieve information and data sets to improve upon software
- Determine roadmaps for products in the creation phase
- Work closely with the scrum team throughout the development process
- Schedule and lead meetings to identify issues and fixes for projects
Can this hybrid role be successful?
A Business Analyst and a Product owner are concerned about the product. Among all the hybrid role combinations these two roles can either compliment each other or actually enhance eachother.
Can a Tester or Test Engineer play the role of a Business Analyst or Can a Business Analyst play the role of a Test Engineer?
The very nature of a tester is to break down the work to the level of detail so as to break the product!
This combination in my mind could be a lethal combination in terms of providing a quality product. As a tester, you understand the technology, the solution, and how to break down the positive, negative, and alternate scenarios.
As a Business Analyst, you understand how to take the Business Needs and translate them to requirements through different techniques like brainstorming.
The responsibilities for a Test Engineer are as follows:
- Establish a framework for necessary contributions from various departments and facilitate their collaboration
- Document and monitor testing outcomes and establish steps to remedy problems
- Analyze current technologies used within the company and develop steps and processes to improve testing procedures
- Detailed understanding of how to properly document test cases and create effective and focused testing plans
- Assist other department engineers in creating practical demonstrations of proposed solutions and demonstrating them to other members of the team
- Work closely with departments within the company to ensure hardware is available for projects and working properly
- Provide detailed specifications for proposed solutions including time and scope involved
- Define clear goals for all aspects of a product test and develop steps for their proper execution
Can this hybrid role be successful?
Given that both roles are concerned with the Product, the hybrid combination would be a successful one.
This article does not attempt to cover steps to move from a Test Engineer, but this article is a good reference> https://www.softwaretestinghelp.com/career-shift-from-tester-to-ba/.
Can a UX Designer play the role of a Business Analyst or Can a Business Analyst play the role of a UX/ UI Designer?
Put simply a Business Analyst is good at working and identifying the needs of the customers and documenting the changes vs a UX/UI designer who is responsible for making the mobile, web or UI users happy.
These roles can both complement each other or merge well together.
The UX Designer combines elements of research psychology and digital design.
Responsibilities for UX/ UI Designer
- Conduct testing of sample applications, websites, and software to Assess user experience and ease of design
- Use recent studies and findings to establish the best overall design elements to include in UX design experiences
- Build storyboards to conceptualize designs to accurately convey project plans to clients and senior management
- Create surveys for research through various media platforms to gather feedback on user’s ease of use and satisfaction interfacing on company websites and products
- Design the aesthetics to be implemented within a website or product, from the layout menus and drop-down options to colors and fonts allowing for interface edits as needed
- Analyze customer responses and website data to examine high traffic web pages and determine why certain webpages perform better
- Enhance user experience by creating seamless navigation through various digital programs and interfaces within the company
- Combine interface design concepts with digital design and establish milestones to encourage cooperation and teamwork
Depending on the size of the organization and the size of the work it could make sense to combine the roles. Many Business Analysts by default are tapped in to do mock ups of UI’s.
Can this hybrid role be successful?
The Business Analyst and the UX/UI designer can coexist as long as there is an understanding of the skillsets needed. It also depends on the complexity and the size of the effort and if there needs to be a segregation of duties.
Can a Business Intelligence Analyst play the role of a Business Analyst or Can a Business Analyst play the role of a Business Intelligence Analyst?
Over the years there has been some confusion around the role of a Business Analyst Versus the role of a Business Intelligence Analyst.
Business Intelligence Analysts use data to catch the pulse of current market trends to better assist companies with profits.
Analysts work with data from multiple locations. Data can be provided from a company database, be mined from web crawling software, or by checking in on another company’s data.
The collected data is then utilized to create a picture of the current market and the best path for a company to take in the future.
The question is will Business Intelligence Analysts replace the role of Business Analysts or can they work together side by side?
In many instances both roles can be combined into one however it depends in the complexity of the efforts and the size of the efforts.
Responsibilities for Business Intelligence Analyst
- Utilize company resources to curate data
- Analyse data for market trends and patterns
- Generate weekly and monthly reports with market trends past and present
- Design new data collection models to better collect information
- Coordinate with IT department to implement new models
- Perform data profiling to identify anomalies
- Develop protocol on how to best filter and variance
Can this hybrid role be successful?
Both roles are extensions of each other. The difference between the two roles are getting familiar and building the data muscle to work with large sets of data. In this combination having the core Business Analysis skills are a benefit.
Can a Software Engineer play the role of a Business Analyst or Can a Business Analyst play the role of a Software Engineer?
The answer to the question is yes.
There were over 1 million people employed as software developers/ engineers in 2019.
By definition Software engineers are computer science professionals who use knowledge of engineering principles and programming languages to design, code and build software products, develop computer games, and run network control systems. The outlook for software engineers looks bright with a growth of 21% over the next 5 years.
While Software Engineers tend to get into the weeds of technology that can be a plus or a negative. The key is the ability to pull themselves out of the weeds and have the ability to understand the business needs and scope.
Responsibilities for Software Engineer
- Analyze, design and develop tests and test-automation suites.
- Design and develop a processing platform using various configuration management technologies.
- Test software development methodology in an agile environment.
- Provide ongoing maintenance, support and enhancements in existing systems and platforms.
- Collaborate cross-functionally with data scientists, business users, project managers and other engineers to achieve elegant solutions.
- Provide recommendations for continuous improvement.
- Work alongside other engineers on the team to elevate technology and consistently apply best practices.
Can this hybrid role be successful?
The image of a Business Analyst stuck behind a computer and not wanting to be bothered is one of a traditional one. I have seen some really good Business Analysts that have been developers in their part lives. The combination could work wonderfully! Similar to a test engineer, the devil is in the details and this is where this hybrid role can shine.
In this article I went over 7 Hybrid roles and if these roles can be successful.
In conclusion
Some efforts/ projects require the segregation of duties and in some cases they don’t. The questions to ask here are:
- What are the needs of the project or the organization?
- What is the size and complexity of the effort?
- Would the Product benefit or gain efficiencies by having a hybrid role?
Are you familiar with other hybrid roles out there that I have not mentioned above? Would love to hear from you.
