The crew over at 37signals makes a great breakthrough in terminology by declaring that software needs editors. That’s a wonderfully succinct definition of a role that has not been talked about a lot in the past. The general process is “business owner” comes up with ideas, analysts distill those to requirements, and finally developers implement requirements.
That leaves the “business person” responsible for editing the features, and completely in charge of the process. I suspect this works reasonably well in software for sale markets, because the business people are really just proxies for customer demand. Presumably they are looking at all sorts of marketing data, customer surveys, customer behavior, etc. to determine what features should go in. Their core competency should be this editing role.
In “enterprise” development, who performs the editing role though? The business people should be experts in their domain, be it stock trading, banking, auto manufacturing, health care, or whatever other domains we can dream up. They are the authors and the writers, and I think it’s the business analysts’ role to act as that editor figure. Not authoring, but shaping, directing, and molding the raw ideas.
I think that’s the analysts’ role because the BA works closely with the developers too. And unlike editing a piece of writing, there are technical concerns around what goes in or out. The complexity and maintenance costs of implementing a feature one way or another, or of leaving it out entirely aren’t up to the whims of the analyst (or the original business owner). It’s really a team effort, but the analysts need to feel empowered to guide the process, and provide data and hard justifications for why something does or doesn’t make sense to be included.
The important thing, like the 37 signals guys said, is that software isn’t just a bunch of checkboxes. When company websites are rated by third parties in terms of checkboxes on a feature matrix, it can be easy to forget that what’s good for your rating might not be best for the customers.
