A SharePoint – Business Analyst? What for?

Quick Reminder of what is SharePoint

Microsoft SharePoint is a robust collaboration platform that empowers people to work together. It’s a CMS to share, organize, discover, build and manage projects / data.
This is a Collaboration tool.

Challenges with SharePoint Implementations

A Sharepoint Business Analyst has challenges to drive:

• Because of the huge range of capabilities of SP, users are thinking it can do anything, BA has to prioritize needs .

• In order to get this, the BA has to involve the Business, including the right people (departments, communication, SP Support Team, sponsors,…) to implement SharePoint successfully.

• Understanding the Users requirements is one of the hugest part, BA has to translate in “IT – SharePoint words” the information given. Without this understanding, most of the time you will get this affirmation: “SharePoint? yes we have it, but we don’t use it”.

• Define the Business and Stakeholder needs and perspectives is the key ! Perspectives could be so different depending the user role, an IT person will thinks everyone wants “wikis” whereas Records managers trust that all should be classified as a record, Marketing person thinks if it sparkles people will use it and other will always use folders. It really depends of the user.

• User adoption: each organization is different, “change is hard” they use to say, it is creating complexity: the Business Analyst will have to plan and communicate change in order to manage the steps using the best way.

What is the SharePoint Business Analyst role?

The Business Analyst should be one of the most critical functions in your organization.The role of the business analyst is to:

• Understand what the business does, how it operates
• Examine existing business processes
• Identify gaps in processes, opportunities for improvements and automation
• Capture Users requirements (URS), create mockups
• Generate technical requirements, proof of concept solutions
• Help implement the new processes, features and tools
• Document improvements, measure, repeat the process

A Business Analyst must also understand the capabilities and constraints of SharePoint, and being aware of the latest Versions/Products/Features; this person must have business analysis skills competencies.

CONCLUSION

By defining the problem, you will build the right solution, plain and simple. That’s why the Business Analyst function is so important for a SharePoint Project Management.