IT Success!: Towards a New Model for Information Technology

8.6. Towards the merging of the developer and analyst roles?

In the light of the changing roles of the business analyst and the developer discussed above, you will probably have seen that there is a clear overlap in terms of functional and technical skills. Which begs the question whether you would actually need both. It certainly is a valid question.

Depending on project scope and company size, you don't need dedicated business analysts. Small organizations have a combined role of analyst/developer, or in the case of packaged software, a business consultant who is a subject-matter expert in a particular functional area and is capable of configuring the package. Such people usually work directly with the IT project manager to design and propose a prototype and the subsequent releases and versions. For larger projects and larger companies, a dedicated business analyst becomes necessary to better manage the business relationship and to coordinate development and configuration efforts.

For companies wishing to adopt the iterative methods as required by the new model, the logical trend would therefore be a significant reduction in the requirement for both traditional business analysts and traditional software developers. There is another factor at play which might accelerate this trend. The software solutions landscape comprising traditional software development and monolithic software packages is evolving. Tomorrow we will see more and more hosted software-as-a-service (SaaS), open ...