The title "business analyst" has been misappropriated by IT andneeds to be immediately released and returned to the business sideof the house. Who would have thought that a simple misnomer wouldhave such far-reaching consequences? Well, certainly not those inIT; they innocently set out to improve service quality andrelationships with their business customers by creating awell-intentioned liaison.

Let's examine the situation more closely. It all started when ITneeded better business requirements to build systems in support ofthe business. The business was reluctant to allocate a businessresource to an IT project when it believed that IT should fund itsown requirements gathering. While the need for this resource wasclear and justifiable, the source of funding caused the businessanalyst (BA) to reside on the IT side, which is where the problembegins.

Unfortunately, the IT-based BA typically has no firsthandbusiness experience. In fact, most job postings for BAs indicatethat industry knowledge is "desired" but not required. Morevaluable is that the candidate knows SAS, RUD, and SQL. It's nowonder that internally developed systems designed to support thebusiness often fail or receive tepid reception from the businessusers. The downfall of using a BA who lacks extensive businessknowledge is in not knowing what questions to ask, especially whengeneric processes need to be implemented countrywide.