In November of 2012, New York State Executive Branch transformed the way IT services were provided, by pulling all staff identified as in IT roles out of the individual agencies and created a brand new agency called the Office for Information Technology Services (ITS) – going from zero to 5,000 staff literally overnight.  The disruption caused by this significant event has affected all of the areas of IT delivery and consolidation, and the focus over the past 5 years has been on centralizing Project Management, Operations and Technology Governance, while leaving the business solution units to navigate the muddy waters themselves.  One of the areas negatively affected is business analysis – how best to deliver this capability to our now 50+ customers in a consistent manner, especially in a constrained government environment?  
In August of 2017, a grassroots effort was begun to provide direction and guidance to the hundreds of business analysts, and became the ITS Business Analysis Community of Practice.  With our initial small successes, executive staff bought in, and the BACOP, initially envisioned to be a part-time effort, has become a staffed-full time initiative of the Chief Portfolio Officer.  This presentation will discuss the background of the transformation, the process of creating the BACOP from scratch, the successes and missteps to date, and the new vision for the future of Business Analysis in New York State ITS.

Learning Objectives:

• How major disruption can be overcome
• Importance of Business Analysis to customer delivery
• Importance of selling your vision and passion