Thursday, November 26, 2020

Why does an IT project need an analyst?

The question is philosophical. Perhaps our project is unique and does not need an analyst? And if you need an analyst, which one? And for what? And why is it not immediately clear from the name of the role, what does this person do and analyze?

Only after graduating from the institute, I, frankly, still did not understand anything in the development process and, moreover, in the distribution of roles and the list of their responsibilities on the project. In the process of work, I repeatedly came across the fact that the people around me, both at work and outside it, could not understand what I was doing, what I was doing, and what I was being paid for. If you are a doctor, then it is clear what is useful. And if you are also a traumatologist, then it is even clearer, and when they meet with you, friends will definitely complain of back pain or somewhere else. And when they ask me "What do you work?" and I answer "Analyst in an IT company", then there is often a long silence, after which: "Mmmm ... What are you doing?" Then I talk in general terms about what I am doing, and my interlocutor gets upset because he does not understand what is the use of me, and how I can be of use to him.

Therefore, I propose you to understand the concept of "analyst", and to determine what they are in the IT environment, "what kind of animal" and what they "eat" with.

I always like to look deep into the problem and in this case I will not make an exception. Therefore, I will start with the etymology, i.e. the origin of the word "analytics".

Analytics - translated from other Greek as “the art of analysis”. Analysis, in turn, is the process of decomposing something into its components. Pronouncing the word "analysis", everyone will remember the doctors and will be right, because chemical analysis is a set of operations aimed at determining what substances the object under study consists of (qualitative analysis) or in what quantitative ratios certain substances are included in it (quantitative analysis).

The doctor makes a diagnosis of what the patient is sick with, based on the results of the analysis. In our case, the analyst conducts a study of the information environment and decomposes it into its component parts. An analyst collects information, data, technologies and a whole bunch of other things, and then with the help of various means, tools, including his own brain, knowledge, skills, analytical thinking, methodologies, puts everything on the shelves. The most difficult thing in this process is not to forget anything and see the whole picture. After that, you can already draw conclusions about what should be changed in existing processes or how to refine IT systems. That is, when we understand and fix the “diagnosis of the disease”, we need to write a “recipe” on how to cure the patient desktop support.

So, I graduated from the institute and really wanted to work in the IT field, but could not understand who I should be? I rushed between a tester and a developer - these positions were still clear to me. Looking at my throwing, one of my acquaintances asked me a question: "Do you like to communicate with people?" I answered: "Yes." And his advice was - "go to analysts." In part, he was right, because this quality helps to obtain the necessary information that "rules our world." So at interviews I began to say that "I want to be an analyst." After visiting several interviews, I heard the question: “Do you want to be a systems analyst or business analyst? In our company, these concepts are different. " Babats! My mind broke into two parts. Wow! Analysts are different! Not quite understanding which of them is doing what, but knowing that after all they are two different people, at other interviews, I have already asked with a clever air: "Do you have a systems analyst or a business?" Once they answered me: “We have two in one!”. This also became a discovery for me. After a little thought, I decided that the phrase "system analyst" seems closer and clearer to me. Moreover, I graduated from a technical institute, and the word "system" smelled something technical. Therefore, with an even smarter look, I began to say that I want to engage in systems analysis. Although she herself did not fully understand the difference between business and systems analysis. and the word "system" smelled something technical. Therefore, with an even smarter look, I began to say that I want to engage in systems analysis. Although she herself did not fully understand the difference between business and systems analysis. and the word "system" smelled something technical. Therefore, with an even smarter look, I began to say that I want to engage in systems analysis. Although she herself did not fully understand the difference between business and systems analysis.

Let's take a closer look at the concepts of "systems analysis" and "business analysis". If we look at the origins of the words "system" and "business", then we see that "system" comes from the ancient Greek word meaning "whole, made up of parts; compound". And the word "business" from the English "business", "enterprise". It turns out that analysts do something that develops and changes an object consisting of parts (in the case of a system) and something on which our whole business and enterprise (in the case of a business) depends.

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