The Indiana Office of the Attorney General (OAG) is a complex, multi-faceted government agency that is both a law firm and a politically elected office serving many functions in an effort to protect and defend the constituents, laws, and government agencies and officials of the State of Indiana. The OAG has 28 separate and unique business units to accommodate all the legal, law enforcement, and operational functions handled within the office. There are approximately 400 OAG employees, just 10 of which make up the Information Technology Department where the business analyst and project manager roles reside. As a government agency funded by taxpayer dollars, we always strive to have the highest impact possible with the least amount of resources. In an IT department of only ten, my role as the sole business analyst and my counterpart’s role as the project manager are integral to the workflow of the entire organization.
Historically, the role of the business analyst within the OAG did not include a technology component, but the growing adoption of technology by the state and federal legal system steered the office toward the need to bridge the gap between the legal and technical fields. As the senior member of the IT department and having a degree in legal informatics, I am in a unique position to be able to understand the business and the technology equally. As the only business analyst, I touch every project with any technical component that comes through our office. A few of my recent projects include implementing an applicant tracking system for our human resources department, upgrading our call center system, and selecting and implementing a new eDiscovery review platform.
Within our office, the business analyst and project manager are individual entities that neededly dovetail. The project manager directs tasks from a high-level perspective, ensuring that specifications are met and that regular communication with vendors and stakeholders is delivered, while the business analyst implements the project plan at a functional level. As a business analyst, I work in close contact with the project manager to set team plans, recommend reasonable deadlines, and utilize the data at hand to ensure the best possible performance goals. Typically the business analyst and the project manager have entirely separate duties, but within the IT department at the OAG, the two roles often intertwine to ensure the timely deliverability of software implementations both broad and localized.
A successful business analyst must be able to understand the intricacies of the systems that the organization has in play. They need to get into the nuts and bolts and understand how all the parts of a system work together as one. A project manager doesn’t necessarily need to have technical knowledge to be successful, but it can be helpful. As an example, my project manager has some peripheral technical knowledge but his background is in finance. In our case, the project manager relies on the technical expertise and functional knowledge of our business analyst, which makes communication critical to our success. My project manager and I are in regular communication daily by email as well as in person. We have a standing weekly in person meeting scheduled to go over the status of each of our projects and discuss deadlines. We also each provide weekly written reports to the Director of Information Technology. We work in tandem to make sure we, as well as the OAG staff and our partners and vendors, are on the same trajectory for our targeted goals.
Staying organized is crucial to success. Collaboration space is crucial for team members, especially in a small office. When a business analyst and a project manager can work together on their projects without calling unnecessary meetings, the entire team can work more efficiently. Allocating resources for platforms such as Microsoft Project or Jira is important, but even resources such as an intranet site and the Microsoft Office suite can be very helpful tools. If resources are limited, examine the resources already available in your office and consider how they might be used to track tasks and increase efficiency and productivity. Even the use of a simple spreadsheet to track ongoing projects can be incredibly beneficial. Empowering your staff to adapt better organization and project tracking systems can have a ripple effect on the productivity of every employee.
The OAG is currently in the midst of an ambitious project to implement an entirely new case management system. A project of this magnitude requires a tremendous adoption phase from multiple business units to be a success. Not only is it challenging from the technology aspect, but the legal staff will have to adapt to an entirely new way of performing their day-to-day duties. One section has already gone live in the new system and the feedback is extremely positive with both user adoption and staff satisfaction is very high. Some successes the project manager and I have had with this current project is to map out all the fields used by each business unit to identify commonalities and anomalies to help design the new system in the most efficient way. We have also created a data dictionary for each business unit identifying and defining the data collected in each field. These steps, though tedious, will help the project to maintain success throughout its lifecycle and help to make the next system transition easier.
It is possible for one person to be both the business analyst and project manager, but larger projects benefit from having both a business analyst and project manager to keep the project on course. Having the business user and the vendor interact directly is not ideal and can lead to miscommunication. Good business requirement gathering requires a mediator with knowledge of both technical and user experiences. A business analyst is critical in translating business needs into the technical requirements and user stories for a successful solution. Additionally, large projects can be a long road where users and stakeholders can grow weary. Executive buy-in and stakeholder engagement can make or break a project. One of the first steps our project manager took when joining the team was to identify stakeholders and get them re-energized about our case management implementation project, and that effort was integral to our successful platform rollout.
There is never a shortage of projects in my office because technology is always changing and evolving and the legal field is as well. Additionally, all systems exist in a lifecycle so you are never setting it and forgetting it; there will always be maintenance, upgrades, replacements, and new implementations. A good business analyst and project manager can help shoulder the burden of a large project portfolio and champion progress and innovation within your organization resulting in a more productive and efficient office.
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