A business analyst or a BA is a professional employed in several industries serving a crucial role in meeting customer and client needs. BAs are adept in a myriad of skills like problem solving, critical and analytical thinking as well as being well-versed in various tools and technologies which make them highly sought by organizations world-wide. The roles and responsibilities vary greatly between organizations and the opportunities/problems they are trying to solve.
IT BA vs. Non-IT BA
Although most BA jobs we see today are in IT organizations revolving around software projects and IT solutions, it is important to note that the scope of a BA is vast. The BABoK® v3 states “The business analyst is responsible for eliciting the actual needs of the stakeholders; which frequently involves investigating and clarifying their expressed desires; in order to determine underlying issues and causes”.
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Responsibilities of a Business Analyst
A BA is a multi-faceted role and has multiple key responsibilities. A BA is responsible for requirements elicitation, modeling, and validation with key project stakeholders. They serve as a liaison between business stakeholders and the implementation team, facilitating communication to reach consensus and understanding on key topics.
Here are some key responsibilities of a BA:
- Define business requirements: One of the very first tasks of a BA in a project is to collaborate with sponsors and key business stakeholders to identify and articulate the business need, goals, and objectives of the project. The business requirements must be at a sufficient detail to justify the investment of resources on the project.
- Identify key external and internal stakeholders: The BA must be able to identify all the stakeholders that are directly or indirectly impacted by the business requirements. These can be external or internal to the organization depending on the solution scope. Neglecting or failing to identify stakeholders may lead to unmet requirements and scope-creep late into delivery. BAs may group stakeholders into actors or user groups if they share similar attributes/roles.visit here to know more information : ynewsworld36
- Elicit Requirements: Once stakeholders have been identified, the BA employs several elicitation techniques to gather requirements and desires from the solution. The technique used depends on many factors like the nature of the stakeholder, formality required, and even geographical location.
- Analyze and Model Requirements: Interpreting stakeholders needs, concerns and desires to identify process gaps, solution capabilities and conflicting requirements is vital for a BA. Modeling these requirements into a requirements structure helps various stakeholders understand the scope and nature of requirements.
- Document and Validate Requirements: Documenting requirements lucidly and correctly helps remove ambiguity and helps gain clarity on what needs to be done. BAs need to verify and validate the requirements from stakeholders to ensure the analysis has been done correctly and that the requirements demonstrate the ability to meet the project goals and objectives.
- Manage Requirements: BAs need to identify changes, scope creep and shifting goals, and reflect them in the requirement documentation to keep them relevant. Communicating with implementation teams is also important so that they are aware of the changes to the implementation approach.
- Prioritize Requirements: Requirements may be many, but resources and timelines may be limited. In such a scenario the BA must collaborate with key stakeholders to define the right order in which requirements need to be implemented by using various prioritization techniques.click here for more : topwebs
- Solution Validation: The BA may partake in testing activities to validate the system behavior to be what the user intended, and that the solution would meet the business objectives of the project. Any deviation or risks needs to be communicated to appropriate stakeholders in a timely manner.
Conclusion
Business analysis can be a rewarding profession, you can start your journey by acquiring the entry certificate in Business analysis (ECBA) or the Certified Business Analysis Professional (CBAP) certification offered by the International Institute of Business Analysis (IIBA). You can opt for a detail-oriented ECBA Training course and CBAP Training Course . The business analysis certification courses will help you prepare and crack the ECBA and CBAP exam in your first attempt.