Following the release of her book Business Analysis in the era of Generative Artificial Intelligence, Dr Kitty Hung speaks to Georgia Smith MBCS about her predictions for the role of business analysis in the age of AI and gives us a flavour of what she plans to talk about at the Business Analysis Conference Europe 2024.
The advent of easily accessible, widely applicable AI capabilities has impacted almost every area of business, and business analysis is no exception. But what does this mean for people working in the sector? According to Dr Kitty Hung, the key to remaining relevant is a willingness to embrace transformation.
Tell us about your new book, and what you're going to be speaking about at the conference.
Last year I gave my audience a summary of my book — published in February this year — about how business analysts can utilise generative AI to boost efficiency, and how they might need to transform as it develops. That book was probably the first in the world to link business analysis and generative AI — now there are more on the market doing the same thing, and I already need to be doing a second edition. Almost as soon as a book in this genre comes out, it’s old. I get asked often what I see happening to business analysis roles in the next 5 years — will we still be around? And I say that AI will be everywhere. It doesn’t matter whether you’re a supermarket cashier or a developer, you will be working with AI in some way.
The traditional role of a BA will not be relevant very soon; AI is everything, everywhere, all at once. It's not slowing down. It's not going away. Two years ago, if I asked if you had heard of a prompt engineer, you would ask what I was talking about — but now there are courses you can take in it. Similarly, companies are now hiring Chief AI Officers (CAIO), which is a brand new role. More and more organisations are actually applying AI and LLM technology internally and as part of their offering to clients. There will be less demand for roles that are administrative in nature, because AI will be able to automate those tasks.
So this year I want to deep dive about the transition from ‘a doer to a thinker’, and what I’ll be talking about is a 10 step roadmap to enable businesses and professionals to facilitate that development. As ‘doer’ BAs, we focus on task and execution. But with AI technology, we can automate things like data analytics, content generation, admin, etcetera — and transition ourselves to ‘thinkers’ who focus on strategy, creativity, innovation, thought leadership and emotional intelligence.
It’s also about employers supporting roles to evolve rather than allowing them to become obsolete. I still want to have my BA team, for example — but I want them to be able to use the AI effectively. Organisations need to provide the training and development to support that.
How will AI tools boost productivity for business analysts?
Traditionally, business analysts do quite a lot of things manually, but AI is enabling a lot of automation, which we can use to boost our productivity — especially because natural language processing has made it easier to give commands. By developing and mastering skills like prompt engineering that are key to obtaining optimal AI output, BAs can really embrace its power — for example saving time by using engines like ChatGPT 4 to generate whatever multimedia content is needed.
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Additionally, AI can translate many different languages simultaneously, which is fantastic for international businesses, and for business analysis especially: if I'm conducting large scale data analysis for a company with global offices, colleagues in different countries can send me data in their preferred language and AI can translate it to mine. It’s also fantastic for summarising large documents and classifying unstructured data by automating the metadata, which has been a huge problem for many companies until now. This makes data mining much easier. And these are just some of the ways AI will boost productivity.
How do you think the role of business analysts will need to develop to encompass that?
It’s not just about boosting productivity — we can't afford to live in the new world with the old mindset, and we do have to change the way we do things. Generative AI will streamline and automate many business processes, such as call centres, so we need to ask what new skills we need to acquire instead.
What business analysts will need to focus on are ‘soft’ skills that can’t be automated — if you’ve become a BA, you are already quite a people person, for example, so focus on those skills. Other things that AI can’t replicate yet are creativity, critical thinking, thought leadership, human oversight and decision making.
What’s one key takeaway you have for your audience?
I was in Portugal and Spain earlier this year hiking, and I walked through wine country. You can see the old structures they used to use when they trod the grapes manually, with their own feet. Now, it’s done mechanically — but there are still people in the factory doing things that the machine can’t; calculating the quality of the wine, and how to make it taste better. At the end of the day, the best job is still done by humans: wine tasting. And I want the audience to see a future with AI which follows the same path; embracing the new tools to allow ourselves to focus on the exciting jobs.
I’d say there are three key things I want business analysts to understand about AI. Firstly, AI will not replace you, but the person using AI will, so embrace it. Secondly, people are quick to trust AI’s output but it is not perfect; BAs and IT professionals need to use it responsibly, carefully and wisely. Finally, AI is a great tool to allow us to save our human brain power for the things it can’t do — it’s meant to enable us, not replace us.
