Business analyst and communication plan

1. What is Business analysis ?
As per BABOK…Business Analysis is the practice of enabling change
in an organizational context, by defining needs and recommending
solutions that deliver value to stakeholders.
Why do organizations struggle with change?
One key factor is the limitations of stakeholders is that each
stakeholders have different perspective/expectation/needs.
A business analyst works within an organization, helping to manage
different perspectives of different stakeholders acting as a 'facilitator' to
understand requirements from different stakeholders and create a
common understanding of the needs and solution to those needs.

2. As a business analyst, one will need to:
 Communicate with internal / external stakeholders to understand the
needs(requirements) ;
 Identify the opportunities and potential risks attached to those needs;
 Identify the solution and potential risks associated to those needs;
 Document and Communicate the requirements and solutions to every
stakeholder as per the communication plan*.
 Support the staff and teams in making the recommended changes,
including helping to resolve any issues;

3. Keyword : Document and Communicate
What is Communication ?
Communication is simply the act of transferring information from one
place to another.
The definition sounds simple but in practical life on day to day basis, it
is complex.
This is because various categories of communication occur at any time
and it is the BA who needs to identify the noise, eliminate the noise and
communicate the precise work requirements or work completed status
reports to the relevant stakeholder.
The most common misconception about communication is just the
good ability of relaying information . Often ignored skills are empathy
and listening skills.

4. What is a communication plan?
 Identify your stakeholders (to whom)
 Identify stakeholder expectations (why)
 Identify communication necessary to satisfy stakeholder
expectations and keep them informed (what)
 Identify time-frame and/or frequency of communication (when)
 Identify how the message will be communicated (the stakeholder’s
preferred method) (how)
 Identify who will communicate each message (who)
 Document items – templates, formats, or documents the project
must use for communicating.

5. To summarise :
One of the biggest benefits of
effective communication plan
for a BA is productiveness.
If stakeholders understand what
is expected of them and when
is it expected, they will perform
better and will result in less
defects/bugs (cost of rework).
Miscommunication may lead to
more than just a failed project,
like loss of resources, loss of
market share, delayed time to
market, unhappy or lost
customers and bad reputations.