The Yin and Yang of the Business Analyst and Product Owner Roles-EN

A couple of months ago, I wrote a blog post on how to inventory whether or not your team has an adequate agile analysis toolbox and is prepared to perform analysis at the appropriate level (Inventory Your Agile Analysis Toolbox). Since we know that the process of requirements gathering and analysis has to occur, I wanted to address which role or roles perform analysis in an agile environment, more specifically the BA and product owner role.

Not all project teams have a role that is dedicated to the adequate skills and techniques needed to effectively perform analysis. A team without a dedicated business analyst can work, as long as someone, or the team collectively, performs a role associated with doing the right level of analysis that will lead to delivering the right solution.

Product Owner Role = Business Analyst?

Some teams will utilize a product owner role to perform the role of the business analyst. The product owner in an agile environment is the person which, at a high level, is building the business case and then ensuring that the solution stays aligned with the product roadmap and business goals. The product owner is typically assigned to the project team and works with them on every aspect of the development of requirements, designing the solution, and testing to make sure the anticipated value is met.

Ultimately the product owner wants to make sure the solution provides value to the customer and stays in line with the vision for the product. This role also leverages their knowledge of the product, the business, and the industry, as well as information gathered through direct customer contact. The team member in the product owner role is considered to be the representative for the customer, also known as the “voice of the customer.”

At first glance, you might think the product owner is synonymous to the business analyst. Or you might think the business analyst role is redundant on a project team that has someone in the product owner role.

However, in my experience, it’s rare to have individuals with both business and technical skill sets and experience. Having the skills and the bandwidth to do a thorough job of both is a challenge. And even with both skill sets, one person lacks the ability to be their own check and balance. It’s hard for someone to “ask themselves the right questions” and then to dissect their own answers to see if the answer was complete. If one individual is performing a dual role, it’s critical that the person understands that they may have conflicting goals and desired outcomes.

The Yin and Yang: Two Roles Working Together

Wikipedia defines the Chinese philosophy of yin and yang as “how opposite or contrary forces are actually complementary, interconnected, and interdependent in the natural world, and how they give rise to each other as they interrelate to one another.”

In successful environments, when there are two people playing the roles, they have an yin and yang mixture of skills, experiences, and techniques as well as some overlap in skills. The business analyst is a facilitator, an investigator, and a fact checker; they reconcile, coordinate information sharing, find gaps, and perform traceability and impact analysis. The business analyst actually can help free up the product owner to do things in addition to overseeing the project requirements. The product owner may have other tasks including meetings, running the business, personnel responsibilities, training, presentations, and general liaison activities with a large client base and leadership.

Is your team not ying-ing and yang-ing? Our Enterprise Agility solution can help!

The shared skills needed by the product owner and the business analyst include eliciting, analyzing, communicating, prioritization, stakeholder analysis and facilitating the requirements and priorities from their consumer. Although there is clearly a common thread of skills between the product owner role and business analyst role, there are some important distinctions.

Primary Activities

Product Owner Role

• Represents or is from the business
• Builds consensus of the user/business
• Accountable to the Business Sponsor
• Has content authority – owns what to build and what sequence
• Very regularly in the room with the team
• Conveys expectations
• Accepts features & user stories
• Coordinates Product Council

Business Analyst Role

• Locates, understands and defines stakeholder needs/styles of communication
• Elaborates additional specifications, if necessary
• Partners with the PO in communicating the product vision and making sure it’s understood
• Facilitates the conversation and negotiations between business and IT
• Writes user stories and supporting artifacts
• Participates in backlog refinement, grooming and prioritization
• Enterprise and technical impact and gap analysis
• Identify and close gaps in the acceptance and the input to the testing activities

Shared Activities

Product Owner + Business Analyst Roles

• Define the problem area
• Determine if the need is worth satisfying
• Prioritization
• Determine the best solution to satisfy it
• Validate the need was satisfied
• Decision making
• Define the context

Shared Activities
High Level Skills

Product Owner Role

• Subject matter expertise related to the people, processes, terms, definitions, and software
• Strategic visioning

Business Analyst Role

• Analytical skills to ask the right questions, dissect, organize, translate and cross reference requirements
• Prioritization methods
• Progressive elaboration
• Feature based road mapping
• Effective user stories
• Acceptance criteria definition
• Elicitation techniques
• Facilitation techniques
• Communication styles and techniques
• Negotiation
• Reconciliation and traceability of missing details
• Full coverage of the core components of software design

To help illustrate, consider the three aspects or buckets of analysis on most software related projects: subject matter expertise, software requirements, and design/solution implementation. A common scenario is when the product owner has subject matter knowledge versus the business analyst who has software requirements and design/solutioning experience.

The two roles working together would ideally be on teams because the problems and solutions we tackle in today’s software and technology driven world are extremely complicated. These types of complex projects require the experienced viewpoint of the customer and business as well as the technical facets to develop the right solutions. Additionally, when the two roles work together, they help provide a check and balance as well as reduce requirements gaps. The business analyst can help ensure the right questions are asked, and the product owner can provide the answers and decisions needed by the project team.

Does that mean that every project team needs to have a product owner and a business analyst? No.

A Team Approach

Not only are there times when one person can play both roles, there are also times when members of the team with various titles can divide and share the roles.

Like most things we talk about around software development, every organization does things differently and the lines are often blurred as to who does what. There are blurred lines between what titles companies use and several different blended/hybrid definitions of roles. Product owners may be called product managers or business owners. The product owner may have the role of project sponsor and/or subject matter expert as well. More and more, it’s less and less about the titles. It’s about the skills and capabilities to create a high performing team.

For help assessing your team skill gaps, download our Business Analysis Proficiency Assessment.

The most important to understand is what tasks and responsibilities are generally associated with a particular role, and then determine the best way to make sure you have coverage of those skills on your team.

I’d also love any feedback – just let me know below in the comments!

All the best,

Jacqueline