An effective Business Analyst has to have many skills.
Some of these skills might be hard skills such as technical knowledge, while other skills might be soft skills such as people skills.
As a business analyst, you would have to work with numerous stakeholders and these stakeholders would have various levels of importance based on how they may influence the success of the proposed initiative.
Grouping the stakeholders based on the appropriate levels is important because it influences the change.
But this might not be so easy to do, especially if you have numerous stakeholders involved in the initiative, so you can use a RACI matrix to help identify and manage the stakeholders.
RACI stands for responsible, accountable, consulted and informed and it is used to identify the various responsibility levels of the stakeholders who are involved in the change
But what does it mean ?
- Responsible (R) : these are the stakeholders who are responsible for doing the work that is needed to complete the task. Examples include the Business Analyst and the members of the development team.
- Accountable (A) : the accountable stakeholders are those people who have the authority to sign off on a task as being completed. Examples include the Product Owner and the Project Sponsor.
- Consulted (C) : the consulted stakeholders are usually subject matter experts who are usually consulted on information. The might be the end users who perform the actual work and so they know what needs to be done to fulfill the task. Examples include the End Users and their Managers.
- Informed (I) : while the informed stakeholders are people who need to be kept informed on the progress of the task. Examples might include the Product Sponsor and Executive Board Members.
Once the stakeholder groups have been identified and grouped, they should be effectively managed based on their level of importance.
The business analyst has to continuously work with the stakeholders throughout the change, so it is important that the Business Analyst builds a good working relationship with the stakeholders to ensure that they are committed to the success of the initiative.
Having a poor working relationship with stakeholders can have a detrimental effect on the change because it could lead to resistance to change, lack of support, strong negative reaction and failure to provide good quality information.