I’m excited to announce I’m a contributing core team member to PMI’s foundational standard in business analysis. Our core team is a wonderful group to work with – Laura Paton, Cheryl Lee, Sue Burk, and of course we are tightly aligned with Dave Bieg. PMI has launched a new blog to keep you informed about the development process we are going through. You’ll find early posts that introduce the core team and discuss the value of the standard. Future blog posts will highlight the need to evangelize business analysis work within our organizations and how to generate executive support for business analysis. I’ll tell you we have been at this for a couple months now, brainstorming, writing, listening to communications on social media and other sources, brainstorming, reviewing research, rewriting, debating, deciding, deciding again, writing….and I love where this is headed!

I’ve had a few people ask why I signed up to do yet another one of these massive writing projects! In the last 4 years, I’ve co-authored 2 books (Software Requirements and Visual Models for Software Requirements) and was a core team member to Business Analysis for Practitioners: A Practice Guide and BABOK, and yet I still keep coming back for more! So I thought, what better place to give my own answer to that. First, by now it has to be obvious, I have a passion for what we do in the business analysis and product management space! Second, I want to share that knowledge to help others grow too – from my research findings in the community to my own experiences I’ve learned from. Third, I love that I too get to grow by nature of thinking through and writing about these topics. So all around it’s a triple win for me.

Now, as for whether we need this new body of work from PMI– obviously I wouldn’t work on it if I didn’t think so! But to be clear, I think the market has asked for it. Their focus is supported by research and has a different perspective than other organizations’ out there. They even found that stakeholders are asking for guidelines about how to do business analysis. Their research points to the fact that projects still aren’t going all that well, but when they have strong business analysis practices, they go better. Anecdotally, I see the exact same thing in many organizations in the F500, so I support the research results are accurate. PMI has used this to make a business case to develop this new standard for business analysis, and I believe in that business case. In fact, the proof is in the pudding to some extent, as they have had really good traction with the BAPG and PMI-PBA which are in 63 countries in just one and a half years! And I know not everyone can see this yet, but this body of knowledge will in fact be different than all the others out there, so that alone adds value in itself.

I have produced a lot of published bodies of work that I think are all very good, but all could be improved upon. If I have anything to do with it, PMI’s will also be very good and probably will also be improved upon as it evolves. But I also think it has the potential to serve an untapped audience and even help previously tapped audiences do better business analysis! You can sign me up for that any day!