Business Analyst and Application Architect Roles
Who Does What
Most medium to large-scale software development projects have a business analyst to capture, curate, and understand the requirements for a solution. Complex projects need an architect to design the solution. Two different people often have those roles, but smaller organizations may have someone who takes on both roles.
The concept map below shows how the business analyst and application architect roles relate to each other around business stakeholders, their requirements, and the solution.
The map shows understanding requirements as the focal point for both roles. Business stakeholders provide requirements and verify the business analyst’s understanding of them. Once the business analyst understands the requirements, he or she shares that understanding with the architect. The better the architect understands the requirements, the better the solution will fit and fulfill the requirements.
Talent in Common
Both business analyst and application architect roles …
Demand thorough understanding of requirements
Assume a current knowledge of business and technology
Include solution curation
The business analyst curates requirements to fit the solution scope
The application architect curates technology for the solution
Require good communication skills with stakeholders in diverse roles and levels
Role Differences
While the business analyst and application architect roles have a lot in common, their differences emerge as they go through the development process.
Discovery Stage
The development process starts with a business analyst capturing requirements for a solution. The architect can audit this stage to develop a relationship with the business stakeholders and learn the requirements as they develop. The architect may suggest approaches to solve a specific problem but stands firm with the business analyst to avoid designing the solution until they both understand all the requirements.
The business analyst shows his or her understanding of the requirements to business stakeholders with concept maps, process maps, and other documents. He or she gets feedback and edits documents accordingly. These documents include a glossary of terms, concept maps, process maps, user stories, and use cases.
Modeling Stage
The application architect designs the solution using the requirements documents. He or she creates design models for stakeholder feedback. A project always has a data model, showing what the business needs to know from the solution. The architect or business analyst can create wireframe pictures or HTML mockups of solution pages and forms. The architect can design a prototype of the solution intended to elicit additional feedback from the stakeholders.
Development Stage
Once an application architect has enough feedback from the stakeholders reviewing the models, he or she specifies what the development team needs to build. The business analyst should audit this stage in case the developers come up with questions for stakeholders. The business analyst or architect can pass questions to the stakeholder(s), depending on their understanding of the question and stakeholder.
When the development team builds the initial version of the solution, it typically has just enough functionality for the stakeholders to evaluate it and suggest improvements. Both the business analyst and architect deal with this feedback. The business analyst curates the suggestions for those that add value to the solution’s scope. The architect evaluates the costs of changing the solution to fulfill the feedback. They work with business stakeholders, such as a product owner, to determine what changes deliver benefits that justify their cost.
In a Nutshell
The business analyst and application architect roles both require:
Understanding requirements, business, and technology
Recognition of what’s important to the solution (curation)
Confident communication with diverse stakeholders.
The two roles focus on different stakeholders, tasks, and development stages, as shown in the table below:
| Business Analyst | Application Architect | |
|---|---|---|
| Purpose | Understand and communicate business requirements | Fit a solution to business requirements |
| Stakeholder focus |
|
|
| Job focus | Capture and curate business requirements | Design solution with curated technologies |
| Stage focus | Discovery | Modeling and development |
| Space focus | Problem space | Solution space |
| Deliverables |
|
|
Business analysts and application architects both understand requirements captured and curated by the business analyst. The architect designs solutions to fulfill the requirements.