[Sigia-l] IAs vs BAs

[Ray Sharma]

I have been in this position, in particular within a large corporate.

As an IA sitting between the business, development and user helping to
achieving their objectives, others within a company can find it difficult to
understand what an IA does -and yes I have send them links, shown them
stuff, presented to them and sat down with individuals to try and explain.
Sometimes I think business's may hire an IA in a leap of faith rather fully
understanding what an IA does and how it can benefit any product!

Using words and concepts business users seem more comfortable with I have
referred to myself as a form of BA. I've been careful to convey that when
acting as a BA I am collecting Business requirements and the next steps
would be to understand user requirements (yes I know you would think this
should come first) and fit that within a development process (hence sitting
between the business, user and dev above). 

However many business's would say they have already captured user
requirements (via marketing etc) and fed these into the business
requirements - and you would like to think so too wouldn't you!. However the
user requirements captured are often high-level and related to business
objectives and marketing spin rather than actual individuals and the issues
they face. 

To sum up a BA collects business requirements and documents them; they very
rarely offer solutions or ideas based understanding technology or users but
have (if they are good) ensured different parts of the business have been
represented. An IA provides solutions and ideas - a problem solver - they
need requirements to focus their work and look to use IA and usability
methodologies to achieve this. An IA is not a BA or vice versa, but they can
complement each other, giving IA's more time to focus on their job.  One of
the constant challenges I face as an IA is to not try and be part of every
step of a process, but ensure I have made it clear what I need to do my job
- BA's fill the gap of gathering business requirements.

Ray

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