Business analyst

Roles and responsibilities

The role of the BA is to apply analytical skills to business requests -- which may be high-level or lacking in detail -- and communicate these requests in a clear and unambiguous manner.

Skills and knowledge

Business subject knowledge: Business Analyst should have some background knowledge of the subject to make the requirements gathering efficient, or at least have the skills to apply logical analytical thought to a business issue. The degree of prior knowledge required depends highly on the complexity of the project. This kind of investigation is also known as domain analysis.

Business Processes: A Business Analyst provide expertise in the modeling/mapping of business processes, conduct as-is/to-be business processes, is instrumental in the business process re-engineering (BPR) and involved in the change management exercise. Examples of the process tools used by Business Analyst include Visio Professional, Aris Software, iGrafx Software and other.

Project Management: A Business Analyst must be well-versed in the project management practices and principles, must understand project management standards (PMBok, Prince2, etc) and have knowledge of project management tools like MS-Project.

IT capabilities: understanding of what systems can and cannot do.

Feasibility: analysis around how realistic the requirements are in terms of effort, time, costs.

Relevance: the purpose served by individual requirements in relation to larger business and/or project goals.

Data: this area will usually focus on identifying what data the business currently has, what data need to be carried over into the new systems and/or analysis around what can be achieved with a new system.

Techniques that a BA uses to gather and document requirements include UML, process flows, use cases, interview skills, workshop facilitation, and investigation of current state (existing systems and/or processes).

Skills required to successfully execute the business analysis process include communication skills, understanding of a variety of technologies and platforms (client/server and mainframe), entity-relationship diagrams (ERDs) and relational database concepts, object-oriented technologies (Rational Rose, object-oriented analysis, object-oriented design, object-oriented programming), and the systems development lifecycle (SDLC).

Also the BA needs to have the ability to assemble, analyze and evaluate data and to be able to make appropriate and well-reasoned recommendations and decisions to support the business stakeholders and the project team.

Good understanding and communication is required.

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