Picture the scene: it’s been almost 2 years since you bought your last iPhone.

You’ve heard the rumours, seen the teasers on your newsfeed and tuned in for Tim Cook’s keynote at the launch event. You might even have joined a queue several hours before the opening of your local Apple Store to be one of the very first to get your hands on the latest incarnation of the world’s most coveted consumer product.

You feel the adrenaline coursing through your veins as you caress its perfect curves, run your index finger along its flawless casing, assess its reassuring heft in the palm of your hand, marvel at its magnificent display, and envision the myriad untold ways in which this gorgeous device is going to satiate your inner aesthete’s appetite, and give you the technology you need to unlock your latent brilliance. You get the feeling this is the start of something big, as you’re united with the equipment you need to pursue the true path of your destiny.

You catch the eye of a ‘Genius’, and point proudly at your chosen configuration, barely able to contain your enthusiasm.

And the Genius asks you:

“So tell me, what are you going to use it for?”

“Erm…I dunno….camera, music, internet?”

“Well, the iPhone 4 does that, and it’s cheaper!” she says.

“Yes but, I want it better…faster…on a bigger screen”

“Why?”

“What do you mean ‘why?’”

“Why does it need to be faster? How fast does it need to be?”

“Well, I just….I just want one”

“But where will you use it? What for? How many transactions will you do per hour? How much music will you store, and at what rate will that increase? Do you keep things in the cloud or on the device?”

“Erm….I DON’T KNOW! Can I just have the bloody phone?”

OK, so clearly this scenario would never happen, because that’s not how retail works! Consumer retail is driven by the satisfaction of customer desire, and there’s an entire apparatus of marketing to stimulate that very desire.

But how about if you were to approach the task more like a business analyst?

It’s been almost 2 years since you bought your last iPhone.

You sit on the sofa, centre yourself and reflect on how you used it: what worked well, what didn’t work so well so well, and document it all. You study the news and the stock market and think about how the world will look in 2 years’ time. You assess where you are on your mission, and think again about why you are trying to fulfil it. From this, you generate a set of goals that will recalibrate your focus and get you back on track.

You look at what you’ve documented and tease out the requirements.

You now know the features you’re looking for.

So you walk into the Apple Store, take the document from your briefcase, and lay it out on one of those standing-height tables. You catch the eye of a Genius, and beckon her over.

“I’m looking for something that weighs 174 grams, has an A11 bionic processor with 64-bit architecture and supports 4G LTE, GSM, CDMA, HSPA+ and 802.11a/b/g/n/ac WiFi. You wouldn’t happen to have anything like that in stock would you?”

“Er….come again?”

“Do you have anything that fits that specification?”

“Erm…I honestly…have….no…idea”

A different, but equally unlikely scenario, I’m sure you’d agree.

But both scenarios reflect situations the BA encounters on an almost daily basis. This is a dynamic I like to describe as ‘The Analyst’s Burden”. We can be seen by many as the designated driver, the sober judge, the passion-killer.

For we, the righteous of the project community, are bound by the rules of the procurement process.

The second scene is not actually a million miles away from how most procurements begin. A shiny stall at a trade fair, a charismatic business development manager, a complementary glass of bubbly and a fantasy of what your business area would look like if all your problems were solved.

Systems underpin all the functions in a modern business, so it’s child’s play for a salesperson to demonstrate that all your problems emanate from your crumbling legacy system, and logical for you to assume that they will therefore disappear as soon as you buy the ‘Client Mega-Invoicer 3000’ or whatever it is.

The sales rep dazzles you with technical specifications as if they were comparing the torque increase you get from a supercharged V6 to a flat 8. Mesmerised by their eloquent bluster, you pick up a few key phrases, but it doesn’t matter, because they hands you a brochure that looks like it was designed by Jonny Ive, with everything he’s just said encoded into perfect sculpted prose….for you to reproduce faithfully in your business case.

Then a BA comes along and starts asking whether you have indeed correctly diagnosed your problems, and starts suggesting that your problems are probably more to do with the fact that you have no documented processes so none of your people do the same thing in the same way, they come in and sit at a PC for 8 hours a day, day in day out, and the only thing they have in common is a determined focus on getting through each weekday as quickly and painlessly as possible. They point out that your customers don’t know whether they’re coming or going because there’s so much variance in the activities that build their experiences, and the finance people have been reduced to budgeting based on what you spent on resources last year, such is the diabolical complexity of your balance sheet.

They ask you for any data you have to evidence the activity you’re supposed to be performing, time your staff with stopwatches, then pull them into workshops that explore in lurid detail the full horror of your management style.

Needless to say, the BA’s invites start to dry up, and they’re tagged with the unshakeable reputation of a ‘blocker’.

And herein lies the problem: when it comes to procuring systems, the business analysis process is somewhat at odds with the retail process your stakeholders are involved in, so the principal set of resources a good BA must draw from in this scenario are from the well of soft skills.

In my experience, there are two types of BA. First is the ‘Type A’ – the BA technocrat. They’re likely an ISEB alumna, with a freshly acquired array of esoteric techniques, and desperate to bend any assignment into something that would warrant the use of one. They want to be regarded as an expert in the manner of a qualified accountant or solicitor, to be listened to by simple virtue of their qualification to speak, and therefore get frustrated when they encounter resistance. For this reason, they tend to hop from job to job, and with each new role comes a new depth to their cynicism.

It’s as if they’ve learned a martial art, but will only spar with other pure aficionados of that martial art – and only if they play by the rules. So if accosted by a hooligan with a baseball bat, they forget that the outcome is self-defence and instead start fretting that the hooligan hasn’t got the right stance, and his belt isn’t tied properly – and that that the Ippon Seoi Nage he’s attempting to throw you with is not a legal move.

“This clown has no idea when it comes to judo” they think, and promptly get clobbered.

This is the kind of BA who frequently proclaims that “this isn’t proper Agile”, produces reams of documentation that nobody ever reads, and concludes that it is the organisation, not them, that’s hopeless.

The second type of BA , however, ‘Type B’, is a campaigner. They recognise that the role is about helping the business to improve, and since no two businesses, or even two projects, are the same, their approach needs to be tailored. They understand that change is about influence, that influence is a function of trusting relationships, and seek to understand their stakeholders, not just what they do, but how they feel about it, and tailor their approach accordingly.

They’re a model of professionalism – they do what they say they’re going to do when they say they’re going to do it, explain every step of what they’re doing and why, coach the people they interact with, and follow up every meeting with a sincere ‘thank you’, conveying their intrigue in what they’ve learned.

They’d be a lot more likely to engage the baseball-batted skinhead, earn his trust, discover that his aggression is a self-defence mechanism he’s spent his life perfecting in lieu of being able to read, and take him back in the pub for a pint of mild and walkthrough of Peter and Jane, eventually becoming godparent to his child.

That’s because the campaigner understands that whether it’s the procurement of a new client invoicing system, or the purchase of the latest iPhone, the psychology is the same – it’s about how you make people feel. So sometimes it’s worth losing the odd battle, if the alternative is a pyrrhic victory. And it’s not so much about what you present, as how you present it.

They know that people have short attention spans – and people under pressure even shorter.

Many organisations are unfathomably complicated bundles of organic evolution, which need to show quarterly growth. The Type B understands the reality that facts are a limited weapon when it comes to getting your point across – and that what you really need to give people is confidence.

Campaigners think long term – they embrace difficulties as efficient opportunities for learning about company culture.

But the truth is, a world-class BA needs to be a blend of ‘Type A’ and ‘Type B’. Type A to work with your solution designers, Type B to engage your stakeholders.

But to quote a former employee who was very good at both, you need to learn how to “BA by stealth”.

Once I’ve mastered it, I’ll let you know!