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Role of Business Analysis in Sourcing Contract Lifecycle
The following framework will aid project managers and business analysts to best identify areas of overlap between the two and, how to work together to determine who owns responsibility for contributing to each aspect of the project lifecycle. Determining ownership and distinguishing tasks accordingly can greatly improve sourcing outcomes. The outline also identifies the kinds of risk associated with assigning a project manager to a business-analyst project, and offers recommendations on resource management. It also provides guidance on how to determine which type of professional should assume specific project tasks, helping to resolve a common element of project failure.
An initial distinction between contract management and business analysis is in the vocabulary of each
discipline. In sourcing relationships, the principals are known as buyers, sellers and subcontractors. With business analysis, the principal players are either stakeholders, business analysts and developers or systems-administration staff.
In sourcing, contracts govern the relationship. Among business analysts, the BRD dictates terms (in fact, the BRD often later evolves into a contract). Both the contract and BRD provide project management with a framework for which they can produce deliverables. Contracts become the “rules of engagement,” whereas a BRD depicts what game will be played and project management defines how it will be played.
Contracts are sources of business intended to provide goods and services for buyers, and must act as risk-management tools to both buyer and seller. A BRD, on the other hand, defines the requirements necessary to provide both goods and services. By definition, a BRD may also be considered as a contract that manages risk and quality of deliverables to both the stakeholder (buyer) and the end user (seller).
Both contract management and business analysis along with their related functions and activities provide context from which project-management techniques such as scope, risk, time, cost, quality and communication can be applied. Taking a 30,000 feet view of the juxtaposition of the two disciplines, one can consider the entire process of global sourcing as a giant project in itself. Global sourcing is not simply project management, business analysis or contract management, independently. In reality, each plays an integral role as a comprehensive package and is dependant on the other. When experts consider the strategic intention of global sourcing — to remain agile and competitive in the marketplace by outsourcing commodities — the critical roles of business analysis and contract management become apparent. By clearly understanding this enterprise analysis approach to conducting business, the contract-management and business- analysis roles of global sourcing become evident.
Contract managers support project managers, much the same way as business analysts support project managers. Both propose to serve the project manager with the guidelines by which the project manager can deliver the goods and services prescribed by each others’ documentation. Not unlike a business analyst, a contract manager works with a variety of subject-matter experts, including purchasing, technical, finance, legal and project management, in order to develop the requirements necessary to BRD.
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