As with every other thing in existence, continuous evolution has impacted, is currently impacting, and will continue to impact the business analyst role and practice.

The business analysis career has evolved significantly over the past few decades since its delineation, this has been driven by the ever-changing technological landscape, business needs and accepted industry practices. From an initial technical and core IT focused perspective, it has initially subtly and laterally aggressively transformed into a more strategic, data-driven, and multifaceted profession focused on solving business problems and optimising the opportunities that abound within the internal and external environment of the business.

System Analysts were the earliest professionals to carry out activities similar to what business analysts do today on projects, the early days were characterised by focus on the optimisation of software and computer systems, with much emphasis on the technical side. The systems were developed and produced in a way that was inspired by what the creators perceived to be the needs of the end-users, and not necessarily what the end-users would have wanted the solutions to do for them. There continued to be a huge gap between what business and individuals needed and what the software companies offered.

Naturally, this miscommunication paved way for an unavoidable market disruption occasioned by more business-needs leaning smaller software companies who created software based on the needs of end-users, this resulted in the more satisfaction for their customers and of course it started to erode the market share of the bigger software companies. The latter responded over time by adopting the business and end-user led software creation approach and this ultimately led to the proper delineation of the business analyst role as we have it today.

Business analysts were hired in droves to manage requirements engineering: eliciting requirements from stakeholders, validating the requirements, documenting the requirements, managing the requirements, modelling the requirements, and ultimately communicating the requirements with the technical teams that will build the software with a view to ensuring that what was built was what the customers and end-users wanted.

Over time, the scope the role expanded into understanding business needs, business process improvement, change management, enterprise architecture, adoption of multiple project management methodologies and the use of advanced tools to carry out business analysis tasks and this is where the practice is today; employers and clients demand much more from the business analyst than they did decades ago.

The rise of mobile technology has also pulled the business analyst in the direction of user experience as businesses continue to generate great experiences for their customers on screens of mobile devices. Agile’s iterative approach to software development has demanded flexibility and speed from business analysts as they have had to keep pace with shorter software development cycles aimed at rolling out increments at the pace that the end-user will need it for businesses to stay competitive.

The future holds even more evolution for the practice of business analysis; therefore, business analysts must remain relevant and up-to-date with the trends and drivers that will characterise the evolution of the future. Like the proverbial high waves of the sea, the business analyst must ride the way because the alternatives to that aren’t as many as one would want.