BA Human

AI can already draft your requirements documents, write your user stories, model your as-is process, and summarise a room full of stakeholder interviews — all before your coffee gets cold. So what’s actually left for the Business Analyst?

This session makes the case that BA has always meant two things: Business Analyst, and Be A Human. AI is remarkably good at the first — the drafting, the pattern-matching, the first-pass analysis. It cannot do the second: build the trust that makes a stakeholder admit the real problem, exercise judgment in genuine ambiguity, navigate the politics behind a sign-off, or own the accountability for a recommendation.

Drawing on real BA practice, this talk offers a practical reframe of the BA’s role in an AI-augmented world — what to hand to the machine, what to protect fiercely as human work, and a concrete playbook for BAs to start applying from Monday morning. It’s a call to double down on the skills that were never really about the document in the first place.

Key Takeaways

• AI has already absorbed the mechanical parts of BA work — drafting, documentation, first-pass analysis — and pretending otherwise wastes the room’s time.
• BA has always meant two things: Business Analyst (translating a business need into a solution) and Be A Human (translating people into progress). AI can only do the first.
• Five things stay irreducibly human: trust, judgment in ambiguity, political navigation, ethical accountability, and facilitation.
• The operating model is shifting, not disappearing — AI handles speed and first drafts; humans handle meaning, trust, trade-offs, and accountability.
• A practical starting point: let AI draft while you decide, reinvest the time saved into the room with stakeholders, and always ask whose problem you’re really solving.

About the Speaker

Riaz is a Partner in the Business Analysis service line at iqbusiness, a South African management consulting firm and a Reunert company. He works across the Cape Town and Johannesburg markets, leading client-facing delivery and business development for organisations including Standard Bank, Absa, Sasol, Old Mutual, and Woolworths. Beyond delivery, Riaz shapes the direction of the BA service line itself — from capability building and methodology to the practical question this talk explores: what the Business Analyst’s role becomes as AI reshapes the profession.