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I am a senior developer working in this team for 4+ years and have deep technical & functional knowledge about 3-4 internal applications that this team is managing.

Involved persons:

  • Developer (myself)
  • QA Lead
  • Tech Lead(TL)
  • Associate Director(AD)

Situation:

Our business analyst suddenly stopped working due to a medical situation and may return after 6-8 months. They are planning to manage without replacement.

Today we received a small change from business users that I would estimate at ~1 man day to complete requirement + coding.

Problem: AD & TL wants detailed discussions with the whole team.

Sample questions:

  • What is this change all about?
  • Whether this is fix or change request?
  • What are the proofs to say this is not an defect but new change?
  • What is our technical approach to fix this?
  • Is this change needed in app2 and app3?
  • To formulate requirement, do we need to contact users or not?
  • If yes , What to write in the email to users? What to ask and what should not?
  • How many jiras to be created? one per app or one combined jira for all apps?

My coworkers and I have all spent almost 4-5 hours in above discussions.

I find that discussing things repeatedly, and involving multiple people for small issues, is highly irritating and not needed.

What I want: I need to know how can I communicate with them, so that my daily life at office will be less stressful?

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    Could you perhaps reformat your question with a brief (3-4 sentence) summary and question at the top (including the outcome you believe is right)? I think part of your downvotes are because it is a bit of work to parse your question.
    – Jay
    Jun 22, 2019 at 6:24
  • @Jay, Thanks for sharing, I will edit.
    – NiceGuy
    Jun 22, 2019 at 14:41
  • I edited to reduce scope and verbosity, I hope now it fits the site.
    – NiceGuy
    Jun 22, 2019 at 15:46
  • They are the people above you. They want to know those details. You have no choice but give those details to them, or …… quit.
    – Nobody
    Jun 24, 2019 at 11:07

3 Answers 3

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If you believe you could perform the role well, take ownership of the process. Your team and manager will be grateful for you taking the initiative.

What I want: Someone takes ownership ( me or anyone) and communicates with business user, once requirement is finalized document it and explain to the team (if necessary).

Stop by your manager’s desk, and express your willingness and interest to take the lead in the absence of your colleague. Let them know you are willing to handle the requests so long as you can accomplish your other tasks, and will let them know if the workload becomes too much. Also let them know that you’ve been a bit frustrated by the current process and would like to see a change.

Part of being on a team is finding ways to cover the workload of individuals who need some extra help or take some time away from the team. I’m glad your initial reaction is perhaps to step up and help fill in for your colleague - your team and manager will appreciate your willingness to help (and it will be remembered come review/promotion/recommendations).

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I can manage this developer+ business analyst role by myself and everyone knew that but they are not letting me alone to do this.

What I want

This is not my job. Why you are asking this? Don't make this unnecessarily complex, this is simple. Let me do it, don't nag

Your question seems to have a one-sided slant to it. "I want this" and "I want that".

This is a business. Everything you and your team does has the potential to have a large positive or negative impact on the business. A negative impact could mean the loss of productivity, and in turn money, to the company. The fact that they want to have these discussions and use this decision making process seems prudent to me. It sounds to me like you want to be left alone and have sole decision making ability.

It may be that there's some room to make this process more efficient but you need to take your own considerations out of it. This isn't about you. It's about serving your client. If this is their process then you should respect it, even if you disagree with it. This is what they pay you for.

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  • I respectfully disagree and down-voted. This is not my job. Why you are asking this? Don't make this unnecessarily complex, this is simple. Let me do it, don't nag I mentioned in my question that I don't want to say like these but instead asking professional way here. But this answer means the opposite especially in these texts.
    – NiceGuy
    Jun 21, 2019 at 23:58
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    You don't want to say it like that, but that is in fact the crux of your desire... however you word it. You're asking us for a professional way to say "Leave me alone to do it by myself."
    – joeqwerty
    Jun 22, 2019 at 0:00
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    I'm saying that you want to impose your will on the client and have them change their process to suit your desires and I'm suggesting that you start trying to serve your client and stop trying to serve yourself. Serving the clients needs and desires should be your goal, whether or not you like, or agree, with their process.
    – joeqwerty
    Jun 22, 2019 at 17:27
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    Discussing and managing IS their process.
    – joeqwerty
    Jun 22, 2019 at 21:44
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    @NiceGuy you may want to consider a possibility: your assumption that you're able to just absorb the Analyst's role may be based on incorrect assumptions about what that role is, and what value it adds.
    – dwizum
    Jun 24, 2019 at 15:45
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It stinks to be micromanaged by a committee. If this becomes the norm, you will probably want to get another assignment where they don't do that.

In the meantime: Respectfully, try to think of the situation from the point of view of these people. In their minds, some or all of these things may be true.

  1. Transitions in people are difficult and a little scary.

  2. They trusted the business analyst who suddenly had to leave.

  3. The business analyst was their point-of-contact with the kind of work you did together, and spent similar amounts of time in conversations with them about each little project.

  4. They don't know your work as well and they want to spend time with you to get to know it.

  5. They see this as an a opportunity to learn more about how this work is done.

Try to think of all those conversations as things your AD and PL really needed rather than as a time-wasting nuisance. They probably were a time-wasting nuisance. I'm just asking you to think of them another way.

Then, ask for a conversation with one or both of them. Say something like "I was surprised and a bit frustrated by all the conversation we had about that small change order. It seemed to me the conversations took more time than doing the work. Is there anything I can do next time to make the process less time-consuming?"

This should open the door to some agreements about how to handle the workflow without your analyst's help.

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  • +1 for It stinks to be micromanaged by a committee. If this becomes the norm, you will probably want to get another assignment where they don't do that.
    – NiceGuy
    Jun 24, 2019 at 22:20

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