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Vaibhav Behere, India
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Project Manager versus Business Analyst
How is the role of a project manager different from business analyst? Is a project manager required to know the business process?
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Luis, China
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Project Manager versus Business Analyst In principle, a PM does not need to know the business process. But in a real project, no matter how big the project is, it's helpful for the PM if he knows the business processes so that he can ensure the project is under control.
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Vaibhav Behere, India
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How is Project Manager Different from a Business Analyst? Thank you for the clarification, it's a good first answer.
Who can throw more light on what are the main overlaps and what are the main differences between a project manager and a business analist?
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Luis, China
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Difference Between Project Manager and Business Analyst - A qualified business analist should contribute in requirements collection, clarification, documentation, and translate these to function specification. Also she/he needs to verify the result and support uat.
- A project manager will be responsible for the delivery of this project. In the area of reporting and mornitoring, the project manager also needs knowledge of the business requirements.
Hope the above analysis can help to answer your questions.
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PG van Bladel, Sweden
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Analists Analyze, and PM's Manage :-) A PM is managing a project. That means organizing a temporary organisational structure (people and means) in order to achieve a certain goal.
A business analyst looks at a business matter, in order to provide an analysis for it.
There can be much overlap:
* The whole goal of a PM's project can be to provide an analysis. Then an analyst can be the project manager. But as a PM one always has to look for the aspects that go into running the project. e.g. can my project members do their work? What are risks threatening my project outcome? Am I running late or out of funding?
* A project should have a business case at its core (among other things stating what the benefit of the project is). A business analyst can provide such a business case.
* A project often delivers a product that has to be inserted in a business process. A business analyst can draw such a business processes, and see that the project deliverable fits in.
* Etc.
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Natarajan Ramanathan, India
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Project Manager and Business Analyst In general, the project manager is responsible for the successful execution of a project; whereas the business analyst is responsible for the realms of the business processes.
Having said that, when the project manager does not have any domain knowledge and does not have any understanding of the business processes, there are likely going to be issues in planning, developing and executing a project.
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Esta Lessing
Analyst, Australia
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Responsibility Differences Between a Project Manager and a Business Analyst In project reality, the Business Analyst and the Project Manager work closely together and they are very dependent on each other to achieve their results. However, the 2 roles have very different responsibilities when it comes to how to approach the work at hand and who should be driving and executing separate aspects of the project.
Although the role of the Business Analyst and the Project Manager have completely different focuses and responsibilities, the two roles sometimes get somewhat blurred, in particular in 2 areas:
1. PLANNING: The Project Manager has the overall responsibility for the planning of the project, but the Business Analyst is responsible to provide a business analysis approach with effort estimates against all the business analysis tasks.
2. STAKEHOLDER ENGAGEMENT: The Business Analyst and the Project Manager both need to speak to the same stakeholders in many cases. The stakeholder might raise a requirements related discussion with the Project Manager instead of the Business Analyst. This in turn may lead to the Project Manager agreeing a new requirement or a change to an existing requirement with this stakeholder in the absence of the Business Analyst.
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K.Narayana Moorthy
HR Consultant, India
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Responsibility Differences Between a PM and a BA On one hand, a Project Manager and Business Analyst, should be working collaboratively and they often do. On the other hand, the two roles do offer a healthy contest in project related decisions. There is often some uncertainty about the borders between the roles. Sometimes one person plays both the roles without enough skills for each, and there are other cases where the team members do not know who is responsible for what.
Let us then look into these differences:
- A Project Manager (PM) has the responsibility for the initiation, planning, execution, and closure of a project.
- A Business Analyst (BA) is mainly concerned with the end product and ensuring it meets the requirements and demands of the projects's key stakeholders. A BA's primary responsibilities are communicating with stakeholders, gathering requirements, and making sense of these requirements in order to ensure that the end products will solve the business problems at hand.
A PM has to monitor and control project work. A BA has to manage business analysis performance.
A PM has to plan scope management, collect requirements, define scope, control scope, create WBS, manage requirements, traceability, define solution scope, manage solution scope. A BA has to plan requirements management, process elicitation, prepare, conduct, document, confirm, define solution scope, requirements documentation, define solution scope, manage solution scope, manage requirements traceability.
A PM has to validate scope and quality control (testing, monitoring and recording results). A BA has to validate solution, evaluate solution performance (results analysis and recommendation).
A PM has to plan communications, control communications, identify stakeholders. A BA has to conduct stake er analysis, manage business analysis, performance, communication requirements.
Summing up: while the BA is content-focused, the PM is process-focused. Both are needed for the organization to achieve its goal.
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Paul D Giammalvo
Professor and Consultant, Indonesia
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Synonyms for Business Analyst BA is a term found primarily in IT project management. In construction, particularly oil, gas mining and process plants the BA function is performed by what is known as a "Cost Engineer". This term has been in use since the 1950's and prior to that, it was known as Engineering Economics. In most engineering schools, "engineering economics" is a required course of study. The two primary organizations supporting cost engineering is AACE in the US and AcostE in the UK.
In the military industrial complex, that same function is fulfilled by what is known as a "Systems Engineer". The organization which supports Systems Engineers is INCOSE.
IT colleagues, it is a shame that you keep on inventing the wheel when all this has been done before you.
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K.Narayana Moorthy
HR Consultant, India
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Business Analyst versus Project Manager While a Business Analyst is content focused (WHAT), a Project Manager is process focused (HOW).
Content and Process are two different frames of reference which may be brought to bear on the same situ...
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James07
Business Consultant, India
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The Project Manager versus the Business Analyst The core of the difference is in the title:
The PROJECT MANAGER manages the project – "The application of knowledge, skills, tools, and techniques to provide activities to meet the project requiremen...
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