Role: Business-Process Analyst

Skills

A person acting as business-process analyst must be a good facilitator and have excellent communication skills. Knowledge of the business domain is essential for those acting in this role; however, it is not necessary for other roles.

A business-process analyst should be prepared to:

assess the situation of the target organization where the project's end-product will be deployed
understand customer and user requirements, their strategies, and their goals
perform a cost/benefit analysis for any suggested changes in the target organization
discuss and support those who market and sell the end-product of the project

Assignment Approaches

The following are some approaches to assigning this role:

Assign the Business-Process Analyst and Business Architect (and sometimes Business Designer) roles to the same person. These roles interact a lot, so it can be more efficient to have a single person responsible for both roles.
Assign the Business-Process Analyst and System Analyst roles to the same person - useful when the business context needs to be understood, but the organization doesn't have existing Business-Process Analyst skills. Many common skills exist between these roles. One concern is that this person may find it difficult to separate business needs from possible solutions, as the System Analyst works with requirements for automated systems.
Assign the Business-Process Analyst and Test Analyst roles to the same person - useful where customers are actively involved in the project definition and ongoing assessment. You might mix this with some more technically skilled staff assigned solely to the Business-Process Analyst and Test Analyst roles.