"Although distinguishing among breeds of business analyst makes sense in theory, in practice, trends in both business and IT are forcing business analysts to assume responsibilities outside of their siloed comfort areas. CIOs are coming under pressure to improve their business analyst talent pool as:


· Enterprisewide initiatives span functional silos.

Initiatives that span multiple lines of business or multiple functional areas rank high in terms of both risk and reward. The individuals who drive these initiatives must know the lay of the entire enterprise playground, not just that of their small corner of the sandbox. But IT organizations are often ill-equipped to support such efforts, as their organizational structure mirrors the stovepiping of their enterprise. For this reason, many CIOs have centralized their IT-oriented business analysts to support large-scale IT initiatives that span business units, functions, methods, and architectures. These initiatives could include the consolidation of several SAP instances, implementation of an enterprise data warehouse, or standardization of the order management process across lines of business. Going one step further, cross-functional teams populated by business and IT resources, such as data governance forums or centers of excellence for business process management or business intelligence, help address these types of initiatives.


· Service-oriented architecture (SOA) requires business and IT understanding.

SOA implementations require a deep understanding of both business and IT. For example, business processes often branch, a single process invoking multiple, diverse services. Successful maintenance of an SOA infrastructure also requires close attention to changing business conditions. In an SOA, software is built to accommodate change and services must meet inherently unstable requirements. For example, twenty apps might eventually consume a service originally designed for a single app, and partners might eventually use a service that was built for internal use only. When that service is an information service tasked with delivering critical data to multiple stakeholders whose definitions of data quality might conflict, the need to include business analysts with a broader focus becomes clear.

· Technology Populism delivers power to the (business) people.

Established technologies like business rules engines and business process management suites, new Web 2.0 technologies like mashup tools, and new application architectures like Dynamic Business Applications all empower business stakeholders to make changes directly to the IT assets that automate business activities. Business rules engines, for example, enable business users to define and maintain business rules without assistance from developers, while others rely on collaboration between businesspeople and developers. The ideal end users of these tools are business analysts, and a shortage of qualified business analysts is often cited as one of the primary obstacles to increased adoption of such tools and architectures.