Evolving Professions: Project Management, Business Analyst, Business Architect
by Vicki Wrona, PMP:
In the spirit of continuing my discussion of the evolution of project management, this month I will describe the evolution of various professions as I have seen it occur. I have found there are a variety of conflicting opinions here. I welcome different perspectives on this, so please share your views.
I started working in project management in the 1980s to a limited extent while working at LTV Aerospace and Defense, continuing to evolve my project management skills at American Airlines and then for clients served by my company, Forward Momentum. The profession that I fondly think of as project management has now evolved into multiple professions.
Let’s start with project management and its certification. Project managers have a choice when becoming PM certified. One of the most globally recognized certifications is the PMP® certification managed by the Project Management Institute. PMI was founded in 1969, the PMP® certification was first offered in 1984 and currently there are approximately 500,000 PMPs worldwide. The core body of knowledge is called the PMBOK® Guide (A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge).
The first evolution that I experienced from project management is one that Karey Rees discussed in her post Project Manager and the Business Analyst: Who’s Who. This is the Business Analysis skill or profession, with its own certifications. Business analysts can become CBAP® certified, which is maintained by the International Institute of Business Analysts. While the business analysis skill has been recognized and developing for many years, the IIBA was founded recently, in 2003, and is the first organization to offer certifications for business analysts. The CBAP® certification is newer and is becoming more popular with currently approximately 2400 CBAPs. The core body of knowledge is called the BABOK® Guide (A Guide to the Business Analyst Body of Knowledge).
In my experience and as Karey Rees described in her article Project Manager and the Business Analyst: Who’s Who, some organizations still expect their PMs to perform the function of the business analyst, one area of which is to define, document and manage requirements. I have often filled both PM and BA roles on a project. Other organizations have a separate and distinct career track for BAs vs PMs, often with little to no overlap.
Another, more recent skill or profession is that of the business architect. Where the business analyst is a smaller, logical extension of the PM function, a business architect role takes a larger leap, involving a wider scope and additional skills. The work of the business architect has a longer life cycle than the project manager or business analyst, encompassing the work of both the BA and the PM along with a strategic, and often sales, aspect. (Those from a project management background may relate to the business architect as a program manager who has responsibility for strategy and possibly sales, along with defining requirements and completing the project.)
Since this profession is a young one which is still being defined, there are multiple frameworks, including the Business Architecture Guild’s Business Architecture Body of Knowledge Handbook (BIZBOK™), The Open Group Architecture Framework (TOGAF) by The Open Group and the eXtended Business Modeling Language (xBML) framework.
If you are like me and have been working in the project management area at least a couple decades, you can look back over your working career and realize you did some or all three of these professions, if not in name, then in function. That is certainly true for me. How about you?
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