Recently, I have been lucky enough to speak at IIBA Chapter meetings in Jacksonville, FL in November and Kansas City, KS in December.  The topic revolved around what SDLC professionals need to be thinking about for 2011.  The talk looks at the Macroeconomic picture, salary trends as documented in our PM, BA and Agile salary surveys and technology trends.  All directed towards the focus point of what do you need to do as a SDLC professional to stay afloat in 2011.

One of the most interesting and hopeful findings that came out of both the salary data and attendee feedback was the potential for a positive trend in the evolution of the BA position.  The key to this evolution centers on input into the “future state” and visibility as a trusted advisor.

Salary for a BA increases as a BA gets closer and closer to impacting the “future state” of the system or process.  This means that when a BA has a seat at the time when defining the drivers and rational for a system or process and makes contributions to what the future state will look like (especially for a business process prospective), they make more money.  The industry looks to be titling this position a Solution Architect.

The person in this position must have strong skills in developing a business case, must have a natural ability to communicate and negotiate with business decision makers and must be seen as a strong “technical” contributor but also flexible.  The latter is critical.  Too many times BA professionals in the doer role are viewed as regimented.  This stereotype has negatively impacted the BA’s upward mobility into the early stage decision-making of a project.   The best way to put this is that a BA must be willing to bend when voicing “technical” or detailed process issues and differ ultimately to the final business driver.

When I manage technical professionals, I make sure they understand that ultimately the decision between competing technical issues will be made based on business metrics, not technical metrics (assuming that technical options are functional and feasible).  A BA in a Solution Architect role must be able to properly quantify their positions, provide reasonable, though out and constructive criticism of ideas and goals, and ultimately, partner with the decision making team on the outcome.  Even if they understand the outcome might not be the “perfect” solution.  At the heart and soul of most BA professionals is a perfectionist.  The sad things about it, business isn’t perfect, not in the least.

At the same time a business decision maker wants that perfectionist in their ear.  A person who will ultimately support them but will quietly let them know the pros and cons of the strategy they are envisioning.  This gets the BA to the second stage; that of trusted advisor. You as the BA have so much data and knowledge.  The business decision maker gets spun around in a thousand directions with multiple inputs competing for his or her attention. You can come in and provide the foundation information and analysis to this decision maker so they understand the current picture and the impacts that potential strategy will have.  Wow.  That is pretty powerful and all from a position of non-judgment and support.  This is VERY, VERY valuable.  You are basically making the decision maker an informed decision maker without them doing the work.  They do what they are paid to do – make decisions.

In speaking to numerous SDLC professionals and having the opportunity to hear the skill requirements of multiple companies, this is a trend that will grow.  But, there is the possibility that instead of coming from the BA world, professionals working as Solution Architects might come out of the Finance and Accounting side of the business.  These folks would just have to be trained on internal systems and requirements gathering.  I believe it is much more efficient and effective for a company to pull from the BA side of the house when developing a Solution Architect team instead of pulling from Finance and Accounting.

I am hopeful the IIBA looks at this growing trend and develops a subset of skills and techniques for it within the BABOK. This will only hasten the growth and acceptance of the Solution Architect position.